Prologue #4
‘I hope he never comes back.’ Benedict took her hand, his fingers wrapped around hers with quiet strength.
There was no urgency in it, just presence.
A silent promise: I’m here. You’re safe.
I won’t let anything happen to you. And somehow, in that small connection, the world felt a little less threatening.
‘You and me both.’ She squeezed his hand in return. ‘But I don’t think there’s much chance of that. He went away to find his fortune somewhere in the West. He’ll forget me there.’
‘I wouldn’t count on that. You would be hard to forget.’
‘You are very close to me,’ she whispered, ignoring the fact that she was the one who’d stepped close to him.
‘I feel very brave, then. Or maybe foolish,’ he whispered back.
His hands circled her waist, tugging her even closer.
She went unresistingly, filled with curiosity and some heady, overpowering emotion she couldn’t understand.
It was dizzying, disorienting, and she clutched at his shoulders to hold herself upright.
She’d never been so close to a man, except that one, awful time Paul Brosnahan had tried to kiss her. This was nothing at all like that. This was filled with giddy joy, like lolling in the sun on a summer’s day.
‘Which do you think it is?’ she whispered, studying the curve of his lips.
‘Foolish, for certain,’ he answered, his accent roughened.
She felt as if she were in a hazy dream, far away yet so much more immediate than anything she’d ever known before. His head tipped towards her and he kissed her.
The touch of those beautiful lips was so soft at first, velvety, warm, pressing teasingly once, twice. When she didn’t, couldn’t, move away, when she instead edged even closer to him, the kiss deepened, became urgent.
Something deep in her heart responded to that urgency and need, a tangled excitement that expanded and expanded until she feared she would burst with it! She moaned, her lips parting until shockingly, she felt the tip of his tongue touch hers…
A peal of bells, something at first she thought came from inside her mind, shattered the sweet moment all too soon. Jane stumbled back, falling back to earth, heavy and leaden.
They fell apart, staring at each other in that one endless, breathless moment. Jane knew she would remember it, remember him and how he looked, for a very long time.
‘I—I must go,’ she gasped. She spun round and ran towards the gate that led to the park in front of her house, as if she could outrun what had happened.
She knew she couldn’t look back, but she had to.
That kiss lingered like a spark still burning on her lips, but something—fear, uncertainty—pulled her away.
Benedict still watched her, not moving from where she’d left him.
His hair was tousled in the wind, his face like a classical statue.
It was not just a look between them; it was a silent question, a flicker of hope, maybe even regret.
Their eyes searched the other’s face from a distance, wide with emotion, as if asking, do you feel it too? Should I have stayed?
Everything unsaid hovered in the air. It was a moment suspended in time—tender, aching and unforgettable. She knew she would never, ever forget it. Even when she went into the house, and locked herself in her room, she couldn’t let go of the way he’d made her feel.
Benedict felt as if the ground under him rocked, cracked, shifted and reformed into something altogether new. The sun burst out from behind smothering clouds, and the air seemed full of music—all because of one girl.
All because of one kiss. It wasn’t like any other kiss he’d had, and she was unlike any other girl. It rewrote something deep inside him. It was as if his heart had suddenly recognised something it had been waiting for all along.
When it had ended, he’d been left blinking, as if he’d stepped into a new version of reality. His soul had been quietly rearranged. It wasn’t just a kiss, it was a turning point. A before and after.
It was something that could never be. But how could he forget it?
He stood there for a long time, hoping and fearing she might reappear. She did not, and that cold loneliness slowly seeped into him again. He’d lived with it so long, his whole life, until he never really noticed it any more. Not until seeing her had thawed it.
He turned and strolled away, his hands stuffed in his coat pockets in a most uncouth way, and he found he wanted to hum a tune.
Humming! Not at all like him. Not at all suitable for the heir to the Duke of Trent.
He was usually serious, reserved—it was the only way to protect himself.
But not now, not at this very moment. Now he felt…
free. Light. And he intended to hold onto that feeling for as long as he possibly could.
He wandered the streets, losing himself in the crowds until he couldn’t avoid going back any longer. His real life was waiting. He turned away from Jane’s little park, from her cozy red-brick house, and back to his aunt’s chilly townhouse further uptown.
He closed his eyes for a moment before he went in, and thought of Jane.
Thought of the way she’d looked when she laughed, as if light poured out from inside her.
Thought of the sound of it, like music made just for that moment.
Thought of the understanding in her gaze, the acceptance in her smile—for him. Just him, not a future duke.
Being a duke-to-be was all anyone really saw when they met him.
It overshadowed everything he did, everything he thought, hoped, dreamed or said.
Being trapped as the heir to a dukedom made him feel as if he were living behind a gilded mask—honoured, envied, yet suffocated in duty.
He was a symbol, not a person, bound by expectations of his name.
His choices were just illusions: to marry for alliance, lead with stoicism and never show weakness. He longed for something real.
He could only try to plan to make the most of it, to help others in the future, to study and work. He could be a duke who was more than a figurehead. He could use his power not to maintain his family’s privilege, but to lift others up with it.
It was not the worst life in the world; he knew that very well. It was a great privilege to be able to help others. Yet it was a lonely life, a drab one, set apart. He hid deep in himself, and only left the facade to be seen.
Until he’d seen Jane across the bookshop.
There was nothing drab about her. It was as if every ray of sunlight in the world had gathered on her.
He thought of the shine of her dark hair, her glowing green eyes, her tall figure bravely striding out into the world.
Her voice, lightly touched with the musical sound of Ireland, sparkled like a stream, like diamonds in a tiara, only better, brighter.
He found he had to know more, to know everything: what she read, thought and felt, what made her laugh.
It couldn’t last long at all; he knew that very well.
The harder he grasped those golden moments with her, the faster they slipped away.
Yet maybe he could remember them, take them out when the coldness closed in again, and know there was a beautiful girl out there who hadn’t known who he was, but had liked him anyway. And maybe, just maybe, he could find a way to see her again before he had to leave New York and go home.
He thought of what waited for him in England, at Rollston Court.
That chilly place always made him feel as if he was stepping into a vast, echoing cathedral of stone and history.
The walls, thick and ancient, seemed to hold the cold of centuries.
Long corridors stretched into shadows, and portraits of his stern ancestors watched silently.
He turned back to his aunt’s house on 52nd Street.
It was elegant, all pale stone and green shutters, but nothing as forbidding as Rollston Court.
Aunt Louisa had found a way to escape the duke-whirlpool when she’d been young—she’d married an American man and gone off to live in New York, far from her brother and the cold corridors of Rollston Court.
Now she had practically become a fashionable American herself, full of laughter and colour.