Chapter 17
“You left rather abruptly.”
Amelia’s voice cut through the drawing room’s silence, startling Tobias into stillness at the threshold. He’d thought the entire household abed—had counted on it, in fact. The last thing he needed was another conversation where he had to pretend to understand all his emotions.
Yet there she stood before the dying fire, still in that blasted beautiful lilac gown that had tormented him all evening. The candlelight painted her in shades of gold and shadow, making her seem almost ethereal. Untouchable.
“I found the company rather tedious,” he said, proud of how steady his voice remained despite everything. He draped his coat over a chair, tugging at his cravat with fingers that felt clumsy. “You seemed to be managing well enough without my presence.”
“Did I?” She turned fully to face him, and something in her expression made his breath catch. “I’m not certain I’d call it managing. Surviving, perhaps. Performing.”
He moved further into the room before he could think better of it, drawn by forces he’d long since stopped trying to name. “You danced beautifully. Denby could scarcely take his eyes off you.”
“You were watching us.”
The observation was unexpected, her verbalization of it was even more so. He froze mid-step, watching colour bloom across her cheeks even as her chin lifted with that particular defiance he’d come to know so well.
“I was merely ensuring your return to society proceeded smoothly,” he said, the lie tasting like ash. “As promised.”
“Of course.” Her laugh held no humour. “How very dutiful of you, my lord. Tell me, did Lord Denby meet with your approval? Should I expect a formal offer of courtship within the fortnight?”
“If he has any sense whatsoever.” The words emerged rougher than intended, scraped raw by six months of wanting what he couldn’t have. “He’d be a fool not to pursue you.”
“And you would encourage such pursuit?”
No. Heavens, no. The very thought makes me want to commit violence.
“I would encourage whatever makes you happy,” he said instead, each word a small death.
She was quiet for a long moment, her gaze searching his face with an intensity that made him want to look away. To flee before she saw too much, understood too clearly how thoroughly she’d undone him.
“I realized tonight,” she said at last, her voice softer now, “that I’ve never truly learned to dance properly. My husband wasn’t... fond of such things. He said waltzing was indecent. That respectable ladies didn’t press themselves against strange men in public.”
The casual cruelty of it—of Edward denying her even that small pleasure—made Tobias’s jaw tighten. “My brother was a fool.”
For some reason, he didn’t want to call Edward her husband. He could not—or would not—think about what that meant.
“Was he?” She moved closer, and Tobias found himself rooted in place, unable to retreat even as every instinct screamed danger. “Perhaps he simply understood propriety better than some.”
“Propriety is often just another word for cruelty dressed in evening clothes.”
Her lips quirked at that, a ghost of genuine amusement flickering across her features. “How very radical of you, my lord. Next you’ll be suggesting women should be allowed to vote.”
“Why not?” He forced himself to smile, to match her lighter tone even as his heart hammered against his ribs. “You’ve managed an entire estate for six months. I’d wager you understand politics better than half the House of Lords.”
“You’re trying to distract me.”
“Is it working?”
“No.” She stopped an arm’s length away, close enough that he could smell the lavender in her hair, could see the rapid flutter of her pulse at her throat. “If I’m to find someone respectable, I suppose I should practice. Dancing, I mean. Properly.”
The suggestion hung between them, weighted with meanings he didn’t dare examine too closely. He should refuse. Should claim fatigue, suggest they retire to their separate chambers like sensible people.
Instead, he heard himself say, “Then let me help you.”
Her eyes widened fractionally. “Tobias—”
“I’m perfectly qualified.” He stepped closer, closing that final distance, and extended his hand. “Despite my reputation, I did attend dancing lessons as a boy. Occasionally, I even paid attention.”
She stared at his outstretched palm as though it were something dangerous. Forbidden. Her fingers trembled when they finally touched his, and the contact—skin against skin, warm and real and devastating—sent electricity racing up his arm.
“There’s no music,” she whispered.
He drew her closer, his free hand settling at her waist with a lightness that cost him everything. The curve of her body beneath his palm, separated only by layers of silk and propriety, threatened to undo him completely.
“Then listen to the silence,” he murmured.
They began to move.
Awkwardly at first—her steps uncertain, his too careful, both of them acutely aware of every point of contact. But gradually, as the silence stretched and the candles flickered their dancing shadows across the walls, something shifted.
Their bodies remembered what their minds denied.
His hand tightened fractionally at her waist, guiding her through a turn.
Her fingers curled more securely against his shoulder.
Their steps found rhythm—not the precise, rigid movements Edward would have demanded, but something more natural. More real.
More dangerous.
“You’re doing beautifully,” he said softly, and meant it. “See? You didn’t need lessons at all.”
“I had an excellent teacher.” Her voice had gone breathless, and when she looked up at him through lowered lashes, something in his chest cracked wide open. “Though I suspect he’s rather more patient with me than he was with his actual instructors.”
“You have no idea the torments I inflicted upon poor Monsieur Dubois.” He guided her through another turn, closer now, propriety forgotten in the hushed intimacy of candlelight and silence. “I once convinced him I’d gone deaf. Spent an entire lesson pretending I couldn’t hear the music.”
Her laugh was startled, genuine—the first real sound of joy he’d heard from her all evening. “You did not.”
“I absolutely did. Daniel and I had a bet to see who could drive their instructor to resignation first. I believe I won by default when Dubois declared me ‘unteachable’ and refused to return.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“I prefer ‘creatively resistant to authority.’”
They were barely moving now, swaying more than dancing, caught in the spell of firelight and proximity. Her scent wrapped around him like opium smoke.
As though they’d always belonged this way.
When she looked up, he was already watching her. Had been watching her, he realized, since the moment she’d turned to face him. Perhaps since the moment he’d first seen her all those months ago, standing in Edward’s garden with sadness in her eyes and strength in every line of her body.
His gaze held hers, steady but charged with everything he couldn’t say. Everything he’d spent six months trying to deny.
I care for you. I care for you far more than propriety allows. And finding you another husband is killing me by degrees, but I’ll do it anyway because you deserve better than your brother-in-law’s scandal-tainted affection.
The words lodged in his throat, unspeakable. But his body betrayed him anyway—his hand tightening at her waist, his thumb tracing absent patterns against the silk, his head lowering fractionally until their faces were mere inches apart.
They’d stopped dancing entirely.
Her breath ghosted across his lips, rapid and shallow. Her eyes had gone dark, pupils blown wide in the candlelight. And there—written across her face with devastating clarity—was the same longing that had been eating him alive for months.
She felt the pull between them, too.
She cared for him, there was no denying it.
It was as blatant in her eyes as he knew it was in his own, and yet he could not say it out loud—could not ask it, could not say a thing, for the sake of propriety.
For the fear that he misread the look in her eye, that it was gratitude that he saw and mistook for…
As they turned—or rather, as he turned them, because he couldn’t help himself, couldn’t stop touching her even as his mind screamed warnings—a loose curl escaped its pins. It fell across her cheek, soft and dark against pale skin.
Without thinking, he reached up.
His fingers brushed the errant strand aside, tucking it gently behind her ear. But instead of withdrawing—instead of doing what propriety and honour demanded—his hand lingered. His knuckles traced the curve of her cheek with devastating tenderness. His thumb found the corner of her mouth.
She inhaled sharply, her lips parting.
Neither spoke. The moment stretched, suspended between heartbeats, trembling with everything unacknowledged. His heart thundered against his ribs. Hers—he could feel it now, could feel the wild flutter beneath his palm at her waist—matched the rhythm.
They stood so close he could feel the warmth of her breath. Could count the gold flecks in her blue eyes. Could see his own longing reflected at him with such perfect clarity that it stole what remained of his sanity.
One movement. That’s all it would take. One slight lean forward and his lips would find hers, and this terrible wanting would finally—
Amelia drew a sharp breath and stepped back.
The loss of her was immediate and devastating. Cold air rushed into the space where warmth had been, and Tobias found himself standing alone in the centre of the drawing room with his hand still outstretched, reaching for something he could never have.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice trembling despite obvious efforts at control. “That was... helpful.”
Helpful. The word was a knife between his ribs.
“Anytime, my lady.” His own voice sounded foreign to his ears—too rough, too raw, stripped of every careful defence.
She gathered her skirts with shaking hands, the lilac silk whispering against the floor.
Her composure was returning, he could see it settling over her like armour.
But her hands trembled. Her breath still came too fast. And her eyes—when they met his for one final, devastating moment—held enough longing to destroy him completely.
“Good night, my lord.”
She turned quickly, almost fleeing, and disappeared through the doorway before he could formulate any response beyond her name.
“Amelia—”
But she was already gone, her footsteps fading up the stairs until only silence remained.
Tobias stood motionless in the empty drawing room, his hand still suspended in the air where hers had been. The candles guttered. The fire died to embers. And slowly—so slowly it felt like surrender—he allowed his arm to fall to his side.
His other hand rose unbidden to his face, his fingers finding the exact spot where her breath had ghosted across his skin. Where her lips had been inches from his own. Where for one perfect, impossible moment, he’d believed—
“Fool,” he whispered to the darkness.
He’d held heaven in his arms and let honour force him to release it.
The drawing room door stood ajar, and through it he could see the staircase she’d climbed. Could imagine her now in her chamber, perhaps pressed against the door as she’d been that night in the nursery, breathing hard, fighting the same battle he was losing.
His hand closed slowly around empty air, capturing nothing. Holding silence.
And somewhere upstairs, in a room he’d never enter, Amelia Grant pressed trembling fingers to lips that still burned with the ghost of an almost-kiss, and wondered whether desire was always this devastating.
Or if it was only devastating when the person you wanted was the one person you could never have.