Page 56 of Tempting the Reclusive Duke
"You're certain?" he asked quietly as they began to move.
"I'm certain of nothing except that I would rather dance with you than stand safely at the edge of the room." She met his eyes directly. "Is that enough?"
"It's everything," he said roughly.
They moved into the dance, and it was like coming home. Her body remembered his, remembered the perfect way they fit together, the way he guided her with subtle pressure and absolute certainty. The last time they'd been this close, lightning had split the sky and rain had lashed the windows. Now they were surrounded by crystal and candlelight, by music and malice, but the essential truth remained the same. When she was in his arms, the rest of the world ceased to matter.
"They're all watching," she murmured as they completed their first circuit of the floor.
"Let them watch." His hand tightened on hers. "Let them see what they've lost by their narrow-minded stupidity. Let them see that brilliance and beauty can't be dimmed by their whispers."
"Pretty words, Your Grace. Have you been reading poetry?"
"Byron, actually. You left a volume in the library." His thumb brushed across her gloved palm, the gesture so subtle no one could see it, so intimate she nearly stumbled. "I've been trying to understand what you see in his overwrought verses."
"And?"
"And I think I begin to comprehend. 'She walks in beauty, like the night'—I thought it melodramatic nonsense. But watching you enter this ballroom, head high despite their viciousness, I finally understood what he meant."
"Adrian," she breathed, her carefully constructed defenses beginning to crumble.
"I know," he said. "I know we agreed to forget, to maintain distance, to be sensible. But I find I'm tired of being sensible. I've been sensible for years, andwhere has it gotten me? Alone in a magnificent house with eighteen thousand books and no one to argue with about Latin pronunciation."
"You have Graves."
"Graves refuses to engage with my literary opinions. He says it's above his station, though I suspect he simply finds me tedious."
"Impossible. You're many things, Adrian Blackburn, but never tedious."
They turned again, and she caught sight of their reflection in the mirrored walls. They looked right together, she thought with a pang. As if they'd been designed as matching pieces of some cosmic puzzle, finally slotted into place after years of searching.
"Do you know why I really came tonight?" he asked suddenly.
"To save me from social catastrophe?"
"No." His voice dropped lower, meant only for her. "I came because I heard you might accept Browne's proposal. The thought of you marrying him, of you finding contentment with someone else...I couldn't bear it. So I came to torture myself with one last glimpse before you made the sensible choice."
"But I didn't make the sensible choice."
"No," he agreed, wonder and something else in his voice. "You didn't. Why, Eveline? Why refuse him when he offered everything you need?"
She was quiet for a long moment, letting the music and movement carry them while she searched for words. How could she explain that Theodore's proposal, perfect in every rational way, had only clarified what she truly wanted? That his talk of Byzantine manuscripts and intellectual partnership had made her think of another library, another man, another kind of partnership entirely?
"Because," she said finally, "he offered me safety, and I've never been safe. He offered me comfort, and comfort has always felt like a cage. He offered me everything except the one thing I actually need."
"Which is?"
She looked up at him then, meeting his storm-grey eyes with all the courage she'd used to face down the gossips and Theodore's proposals and her own stubborn pride.
"The freedom to choose my own disasters," she said simply. "And the right to find my own salvation, even if it looks like ruin to everyone else."
Something shifted in his expression, a dawning understanding that made her heart race. His hand at her waist pulled her fractionally closer, propriety be damned.
"Eveline," he said, and her name on his lips was a prayer and a promise and a question all at once.
But before he could say more, the music swelled to its conclusion. They slowed, stopped, stood for a moment in the center of the floor while around them the other dancers dispersed. They should move, should step apart, should return to the pretense of formal distance.
But neither of them moved.
