Alexander Ashford
I am standing three inches from Charlotte Ellis in the middle of my own ballroom and the thing I just said is hanging between us with nowhere to go.
The chandelier light catches the midnight blue of her dress, turns the fabric to something between silk and shadow.
She is holding the stem I handed her, eucalyptus, because I saw her reaching and my body moved before my mind could stop it.
Her fingers are wrapped around the greenery and mine are still extended, the space between our hands small enough that I can feel the warmth of her skin without touching it.
Four hundred guests will arrive within the hour.
Sebastian will be among them. Victoria. The trustees who hold the future of this estate in their procedural review.
And I am standing here unable to move because Charlotte Ellis is looking at me like I have said something that requires an answer she is not certain she can give.
You were right about everything.
I meant the flowers. The anemones instead of ranunculus. The second chandelier. The way the arch catches the light precisely as she calculated it would.
I did not only mean the flowers.
She knows. I can see it in the way her breath has gone shallow, the way her shoulders have drawn back as if bracing for impact.
The peony I left on her kit bag. The eucalyptus I keep accepting from her hands.
The hour I spent in this room before she arrived, checking arrangements that did not need checking because being near her work was the closest I could get to being near her.
I should step back. I should let her go check the entrance hall arrangements as she said she needed to.
I should remember that my brother is photographing my movements and sending them to her phone, that Victoria is almost certainly reporting every detail of my behaviour to Sebastian, that the inheritance I have spent three months defending hangs on appearing stable and controlled and not at all like a man who has lost his capacity for reason over a florist from Oxford.
I do not step back.
Charlotte turns the eucalyptus stem in her fingers. The motion is slow, deliberate, the way she handles everything in her work. I have watched her condition stems for hours. I have memorised the particular care she takes with living things.
The voice from the corridor grows louder. Mrs Hartley, directing someone about the coat check station. The gala is beginning. The world is about to walk through my doors.
I am supposed to be hosting it.
Instead I am cataloguing the exact shade of Charlotte's eyes in chandelier light, the way her hair catches the gleam, the slight tremor in her hands that tells me she is not as composed as she appears.
I am noticing that she has not moved either.
That the space between us has not changed.
That she is looking at my mouth and then looking away, quickly, as if she did not mean to do it.
She did mean to do it.
I know because I have been looking at hers.
When Charlotte speaks, her voice is steadier than I expect.
The entrance hall, she says. I should check the arrangements before the guests.
She does not say she should leave. She says she should check the arrangements. The distinction is thin but I hear it.
I take the eucalyptus from her hand. My fingers brush hers in the transfer and the contact is brief, barely a second, but it runs through me like a current. I set the stem on the nearest surface, a marble side table that belonged to my grandmother, and when I look up again Charlotte has not moved.
The entrance hall can wait, I tell her.
Her eyebrows draw together. I do not think I have ever refused her something before. I have argued with her about chandelier placement. I have questioned her choice of ranunculus. But I have not refused.
I watch her process this.
The flowers, she starts.
Will be exactly as you left them, I finish. You have checked them three times. I watched you do it.
Her chin lifts. Are you keeping count.
It is not a question. It is a challenge. Charlotte Ellis does not back down from challenges. I have learned this about her over two weeks of arguments about lighting and sightlines and the precise tension required in wired stems.
Yes, I tell her. I am keeping count.
She exhales. The sound is small, controlled, but I hear it nonetheless. I hear everything she does. The rustle of her dress when she shifts her weight. The barely audible swallow. The way her breath has gone uneven again.
We cannot do this here, she says. Whatever this is.
I know what this is. I have known since the day she stood in my library with a cold cafe latte and pencil marks on her proposal and told me she did not argue, she advocated.
I have known since she handed me eucalyptus when I could not breathe and asked nothing in return.
I have known since I photographed her margin notes and looked at them late at night when I could not sleep, which is every night now, because I cannot stop thinking about her.
I know, I say.
Sebastian is out there, she continues, and her voice drops, becomes something between a warning and a confession. And his fiancee. And whoever else is watching you. This is not the place.
She is right. She is absolutely right. The ballroom is about to fill with people who would love nothing more than to witness the Earl of Bodington losing his composure over the hired florist. Victoria would file it away as ammunition.
Sebastian would use it as evidence of my instability.
The trustees would hear about it within days.
I should care about this more than I do.
I step closer.
Charlotte goes still. Completely still, the way she went still in the service corridor when I thanked her for the eucalyptus. Her eyes widen fractionally. Her lips part. She does not step back.
I am aware of every inch of space between us.
Approximately six inches now. Close enough that I can smell her, something floral and green, something that is probably her own product but that I have come to associate entirely with her.
Close enough that if I reached out I could touch the fabric of her dress, the skin of her arm, the curve of her jaw.
I do not reach out.
What I do is lean down, slowly, giving her every opportunity to stop me, and speak directly into her ear.
Tomorrow, I say. After the gala. Come back.
My mouth is close enough to her skin that I can feel the heat radiating from her. I do not touch her. I do not kiss her neck, though the urge to do so is nearly physical in its intensity. I stay exactly where I am and wait for her answer.
Her voice, when it comes, is barely a whisper.
Tomorrow.
I straighten. The movement takes more control than I would like to admit.
My hands are at my sides, deliberately placed, because if I allow them to move they will end up in her hair and we will not make it through the next five minutes without creating exactly the kind of scene that would end us both.
Tomorrow, I repeat. I will show you the file. Everything I should have told you weeks ago. And then.
I stop. I have never been uncertain about my words before. I have been trained since childhood to speak precisely, to measure sentences before releasing them, to never say more than I intend.
I intend to say more than I should.
And then we will discuss what happens next, I finish. Because there is a next. Whether or not we are prepared for it.
Charlotte stares at me. Her composure has cracked. Not much, but enough. Enough that I can see the same thing in her face that I am trying to keep off mine. The same impossible pull. The same awareness that we have crossed something and cannot uncross it.
She nods once.
Then she turns and walks toward the ballroom doors, her kit bag in one hand, her shoulders straight, her stride even.
She does not look back. I watch her go and I do not follow because if I follow her I will catch her in the corridor and push her against the nearest wall and find out exactly how she tastes and we will both regret it.
We will not regret it at all.
That is the problem.
I stand alone in the ballroom for another thirty seconds, looking at the arch she built, the flowers she chose, the space she has transformed. Then I straighten my jacket, compose my expression into something appropriate for greeting four hundred guests, and walk toward the entrance hall.
Oliver intercepts me at the drawing room door.
You look like a man who has just done something inadvisable, he says.
I have done nothing, I tell him. Yet.
Yet, Oliver repeats. He studies my face with the particular attention of someone who has known me for twenty years.
Alexander. I need you to focus tonight. Sebastian is already here.
Victoria is positioned by the champagne.
The chairman of the trustees arrived ten minutes ago and asked specifically to speak with you about the procedural review.
I hear the warning in his voice. I understand the stakes. I have understood the stakes for three months.
But Charlotte is somewhere in this house, wearing midnight blue, carrying eucalyptus, waiting for tomorrow.
I am focused, I tell Oliver.
He does not believe me. I can see it in the set of his mouth, the concern in his eyes. But he steps aside and lets me pass, and I walk into the entrance hall to greet my guests with Charlotte's perfume still in my lungs and her voice still echoing in my ears.
Tomorrow.
We will discuss what happens next.
I know what I want to happen next. I have known for weeks. The only question is whether she will let me tell her, and whether either of us is ready for what comes after.
The first guests arrive. I smile. I shake hands. I play the role I was born into.
Across the room, Charlotte adjusts a stem that does not need adjusting, and when she looks up and catches my eye, the corner of her mouth lifts.
The gala begins.