Page 17 of Courting Trouble
“You taste like icing,” she murmured. Feeling abruptly shy and ridiculous, she wanted to pluck the words back before they reached him.
“Cake,” he explained in that deliberate way of his. “It’s my birthday.”
“Oh! I had no idea.”
“Why would you?”
The words weren’t meant to sound like a rebuke, she knew, but she felt it all the same. Why would she know such things about someone so beneath her?
“Well, happy birthday, Titus Conleith,” she said, summoning a smile that drew his gaze to her lips. “How old are you now?”
“Seventeen.”
Her eyebrows drew up at that. As tall as he’d become, as wise as the soul behind his gaze was, it was easy to forget he remained three years her junior.
“You should get back,” he said, echoing her earlier thoughts. Releasing her, he let out a shaky breath, retrieved his gloves, and stood.
Nora felt his absence with a keen sort of ache that almost shamed her. She wasn’t a woman of such need. She didn’t form attachments, nor did she entertain impossible notions. So…what was this between them?
“I’ll go in ahead to make sure that bastard is gone,” he offered, pulling the white gloves on to hide the rough fingers he’d only just caressed her with. Ones that would offend any woman in that ballroom.
But not her.
“Of course. Thank you and… Goodnight, Titus.”
He gazed down at her a breathless moment, and she almost thought he might reach down, haul her to her feet, and kiss her wits right out of her.
And perhaps more.
Instead he balled his fist at his side and strode away from her, but not before the night breeze carried his words over his shoulder.
“Goodnight… Nora.”
Sniffling, Nora looked down at the handkerchief in her hand and gasped at the initials she found embroidered there.
They were hers.
She’d offered him this very handkerchief years ago in the paddock.
He’d kept it all these years.
Cruel to be Kind
Goodnight, Nora.
He said it nearly every evening for three blissful months, and it never ceased to vibrate through her with a warm incandescence.
Titus Conleith had been not only her most lovely secret, but also a revelation.
Was it always like this, she wondered, falling in love? It was as if the world—nay—the entirecosmoshad shifted to make way for the two of them to revel in each other.
And no one seemed to notice.
Or, rather, they’d been too rapt to pay heed to anyone else.
Her father had been not only furious but befuddled by the abject silence emanating from the direction of the Marquess of Blandbury, the man claimed to be inaccessible due to his health. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, the Baron had barely spoken a word to her, presumably moving on to more important matters now that Parliament had resumed session.
Nora still attended balls and soirees, fittings and functions as any dutiful debutante should, but whenever she had a moment to herself, it belonged to Titus, as well.
