Page 143 of The Scandal You Started
“Thank you, Cassie.”
“Rayna,” Monty croaked, his moustache turning downwards with the sadness of a betrayed lover.
She grinned guiltily just as Erin and Jake, who’d interestingly been glued to each other’s sides the entire evening, joined the circle.
“What’s going on?” Erin asked. “Why does Monty look so upset?”
“Rayna might be leaving Two Worlds,” River answered.
“What?” Erin exclaimed, her expression mirroring Monty’s. “You can’t do that!”
Rayna, Dominic, Cassie, Kelly, and River burst out laughing.
Chapter 41
Rayna
“Darling, where are we going?” Dominic asked, amusement adding a richness to his tone.
Rayna’s heels clicked on the exposed wooden floorboards as she tugged him by the hand through a corridor, leading them away from the gala hall.
With the long skirt of her silk dress hiked in a gloved fist, she grinned back at him, her stride easy but mischievous. “We’re sneaking away for a bit.”
“Why is that?”
“Why not?”
Rayna hadn’t planned to slip out of the gala, but after a satisfying three-course dinner and mingling with the guests and her friends in the lively hall, the opportunity to escape through the distracted crowd had arisen. So she’d instructed Dominic to follow her and taken it.
Not just to get away from the noise and spend a moment alone with him, but it also wasn’t every day she got to explore the museum when it was quiet and dark.
There was something so enchanting about the rooms of displays when they were aglow under the moonlight and very little other lighting. Like it made them feel more real, or so different from how they could be viewed during the day. It was creepy too, but in a magical, otherworldly way.
Several turns further down, there was a brighter, slightly larger corridor lined with bigTregency-style windows at two metre intervals and large, gilded paintings hanging between. On the other wall, moonlight streaked across marble busts and smaller paintings, and four full-length statues of naked, muscular men were spaced directly through the middle.
Rayna let go of Dominic’s hand as they came to a stop. An idea that was whimsical and romantic,so not like her, tugged at her mind with cheeky, childlike persistence.
“Can you put this in your pocket?” she said, holding her phone out to him.
He took it without a word and slipped it into the same pocket that housed her staff badge, as she had neither pockets nor her clutch with her.
“Hand, please.”
Like the good boy he was, Dominic put his palm out before her. “What are we doing, my love?”
“Something I didn’t know I wanted to try up until now,” she said, clasping his fingers.
She relied on him for balance as she kicked one ankle up, resting it on the edge of her knee. Flicking her dress out of the way, she unbuckled the strap of her dark green, pointed stiletto heel and pulled it off.
“Hold this.”
He took the shoe by the strap, and she swapped hands to take the other one off too. He took that one off her too, dangling them higher up to stare at them.
“How you managed to walk in these all evening is entirely beyond me,” he muttered.
Rayna chuckled. “They’re actually quite comfortable.”
Still, she wiggled her toes, appreciating the freedom of being barefoot, as she grabbed fistfuls of her dress, lifting it up past her ankles.
