Page 17 of The Pureblood Daughter
The emotion confuses her, causes her step to falter, but Lord Rosetti lifts her as easily as if she were a rose blossom, and she’s back on her feet and dancing as if nothing happened.
Around and around they turn, their feet moving across the polished floor. Faces drift by in a blur, and only the viscount’s face is in focus now. That same curl bounces across his forehead, his eyes ablaze with green fire, his skin lustrous and golden.
Adelina has never wanted to press her lips against another’s the way she does now. She wants to know what his tongue feels like, wants to catch his lip between her teeth just to see how it tastes.
To do so would be inappropriate, shocking, and she would never allow such a thing, but the want—theneed—curls in her belly like a kitten waiting to pounce.
Too soon, the music ends, and then the viscount is bowing to her, and she’s curtsying as if she has any idea what’s happening right now. The room has stopped spinning, and as she casts her gaze about, she’s startled to find the golden-haired beauty Lord Rosetti was dancing with earlier standing beside Lady Rosetti. Like her parents’ expressions, the women’s faces are opposites of each other.
The young woman glowers, her perfectly symmetrical brows pulled down low over eyes simmering with contempt. Lady Rosetti’s dark lips are quirked into a pleasant smile. She claps along delicately with the rest of the crowd, and when she and Adelina lock eyes, she nods almost imperceptibly. It feels like... acceptance? But why the countess would accept Adelina, the sickly only daughter of a low-ranking baron, Adelina couldn’t guess. She nods back, then turns to look up at the viscount.
“Thank you for the dance, Miss Gray.” He bows his dark-haired head, and she curtsies back politely. “I’ll not be selfish; it seems other gentlemen are waiting to ask for a dance.” His eyes flick to his left, and when Adelina turns to look, she’s surprised to find not one butthreeyoung men lingering, their eyes following her, watching and waiting. She’s used to being a wallflower, but the viscount’s attentions have not gone unnoticed, and as her mother has said before, men want what other men want.
Adelina smiles bashfully, then turns back to the viscount, but he’s already backing away, smirking as he’s swallowed up by the crowd in the ballroom. Before she can take a step after him, a young man who’s never taken an interest in her before sweeps in, asking her for a dance, and she allows him to take her hand as the orchestra prepares for the next dance.
Meet me in the hedge maze.
“What?” Adelina says, looking up to meet the young man’s gaze. He blinks down at her, and his eyes are lackluster compared to Lord Rosetti’s. “What did you say?”
“Nothing, Miss Gray,” the man says, then laughs as if she told a joke.
I’ll be waiting.
The voice—it’s the same as the one she heard in her bedroom before the owl alighted on her windowsill.
She casts her gaze about the crowded room, and her eyes land on Lord Rosetti just before he steps through a doorway and disappears from sight.
It can’t be, she tells herself as her partner steps close and wraps his arm around her waist, holding her a bit too tight.I must be going mad.
Adelina curtsies to her dance partner, his name not coming easily to the forefront of her mind, and then hurries away before another young man can take his place. Her hands shake, but she barely notices as she heads for the doorway leading to the back gardens. She has to know if she’s going crazy, has to know if it really is the viscount’s voice in her head.
“Adelina!”
It’s her mother, calling out through the crowd. But Adelina pretends not to hear, doesn’t even pause or turn in her mother’s direction. Instead, she hastens her pace, slipping through the doorway and into the balmy night air before her mother can catch her.
Torches flickering with a warm glow line the dirt path to the hedge maze, which rises up in the dark like a wave ready to swallow her whole. She moves toward it, casting a wary glance over her shoulder to ensure no one is watching, and then slips into its inky embrace.
I’m here, says the voice.
Where?It feels foolish to talk to herself in her head, so Adelina clears her throat and whispers, “Where?”
Turn left.
After a moment’s hesitation, she does. Her royal-blue skirt trails over the damp grass, and the darkness welcomes her as her eyes adjust slowly. The moon and stars are out, twinkling overhead, lighting her way.
Left again.
She follows the voice’s instructions, turning left and right, getting hopelessly lost within the maze. If anyone were to find her out here, alone in the dark, she’d have some explaining to do.
Adelina navigates the maze, turning right around a shadowy corner, and there he is.
He’s waiting in the dark, hands in his trouser pockets, as if he knew she would soon come along and find him.He turns to face her, and the way the moonlight cuts across his face makes him look carved of stone. It’s almost unsettling how flawlessly beautiful he is.
“Viscount,” Adelina whispers, pausing a distance away from him. She doesn’t trust herself not to get too close, and that fantasy of his lips still brushes against the edges of her mind.
“You found me,” he says, though there’s no hint of surprise in his voice. He might as well be commenting on the moon in the sky or the grass underfoot.
Adelina narrows her blue eyes while taking one hesitant step forward. “What’s going on?” she asks, then glances back over her shoulder. The hedge maze is dark and quiet.
