Grace paused to watch, her gold skirts swirling around her as she stilled. He followed her gaze. There were three couples dancing, each pressed close enough to their partners that it made the dancing feel like something far more. An older masked woman danced with a tall, fair-haired man, the two of them locked in each other’s eyes as they moved. Closest to Ewan and Grace, a dark-haired woman spun from her lover’s arms, offering her a wide, winning smile before beckoning her from the dance . . . and presumably somewhere more private, for how quickly the women disappeared through the crowd.
And next to him, Grace smiled, her utter delight impossible to deny.
“Would you like to dance?”
She looked to him, confusion on her face, as though he’d spoken a language she didn’t understand.
He turned and set his glass on a nearby table, and when he turned back, extended his hand to her. “This time, no masks.”
“You’re wearing a mask.”
He shook his head. “Not the kind that matters.”
Not tonight. Not ever again with her.
She stepped into his arms, and the crowd around them cleared a space, and they danced, quickly finding the rhythm of the music. She gave herself up to his arms and the movement, and they were soon swaying and rocking and turning again and again, faster and faster with the music, until he grew tired of the infinitesimal distance between them and lifted her clean off her feet, high against him, and her arms and legs were wrapping around him and she was laughing down at him, and the crowd went wild with excitement.
When the music ended, they were both breathing heavily and laughing, and her beautiful brown eyes were on his, and everything was easy and simple and real for a moment, and Ewan felt something strangely like peace for the first time in an age . . . perhaps ever.
He couldn’t stop himself from leaning down and stealing a kiss, quick and soft and perfect, because she gave herself up to it immediately, and sighed when he pulled away.
“No masks,” he whispered. “Not tonight.”
Not between us.
“Why don’t you take pleasure here?” he asked her again, softly. “Why not make space for your own alongside everyone else’s?”
“Because pleasure is for sharing,” she said.
And sharing was too much trust. He understood that better than anyone.
But he wanted to give her all of it. The trust, the sharing, the pleasure. Whatever she wished. “Let me share it with you. Tonight.”
She was still for a long moment, not breaking his gaze, their breaths still coming fast and harsh, mingling together. Finally, she nodded. “No masks.”
And Ewan wasn’t sure he would ever feel a pleasure as keen as the one she gave him then. They separated, but he laced his fingers through hers, refusing to let her go as they fetched his bourbon and Grace led them to the door.
He drank as they walked. “This is some of the best I’ve ever tasted.”
She inclined her head. “I shall inform our providers.”
Devil and Whit.
“Or perhaps you’d like to tell them yourself,” she added casually. “I hear you are hauling for Sedley-Whittington now.”
So. She knew. “Lady Henrietta was kind enough to let me join the crew.”
“Why?”
Purpose.
He didn’t say it, but she seemed to hear it anyway. “And so this is your plan? Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, hauling cargo? Tuesday, Thursday, House of Lords?”
“It’s honest work,” he said, adding dryly, “Unlike Parliament.”
He liked it. He liked the strain in his muscles at the end of the day and the way the people he worked alongside took pride in it. He liked the taste of the ale that came at the end of the workday.
“In my experience, aristocrats don’t care much for honest work.”
He didn’t want to talk about aristocrats. “This place is for my pleasure?”
She met his eyes. “Yes.”
“No aristocrats tonight.” He gave her a small smile. “But you knew that would be my first request, didn’t you?”
Her lips turned up. “Indeed, sir. I did.”
“Thank you,” he said, softly.
“And what would be your second?” she asked.
His reply was instant. “I want to know Dahlia.”
A beat, while she considered. While he held his breath. And then she waved a hand toward the door of the next room, one level deeper into this magnificent world she’d created.
An invitation to explore.
An invitation to know her.
He met her eyes. “Show me.”
“With pleasure.”
Chapter Twenty-One
He loved Dominion.
She could see it in him, in the way he eased into the space, letting the lush delight of it wash over him. When she’d found him watching Fortuna, she’d had trouble looking away from the way he was so riveted to the magic. He knew it was a trick, but he gave himself over to it nonetheless.
And in that moment, as she experienced Dominion through his eyes, she knew she would never regret inviting him. Because in the very act of accepting her invitation, of coming to the club, of delivering himself over to it, he gave her hope.
And that was what she wanted, wasn’t it?
Wild and ridiculous and implausible and painful.
But also, rather perfect.
When they’d danced, he’d lifted her high in the air and given her the pleasure she’d so often denied herself. Freedom. Joy. Happiness, even in the tiniest sliver.
Didn’t they deserve that? After all these years?
They took it, walking through the door from the receiving room to the central oval room of the club, which had been transformed into a circus tent of sorts—the lushly upholstered furnishings moved to the outer edges of the room, and a large trapeze hung from the ceiling, upon which an aerialist performed with unimaginable strength for an audience of—Grace calculated quickly—nearly fifty people.
“Your club,” he said, softly.
She looked to him, unsurprised that he knew something of this place—he was no fool. But few knew the truth of it. “How much do you know?”
“I know it is for women,” he said.
“It is, on all nights but Dominion, and tonight, no man is here without a chaperone.”
He raised his brows. “And how do you keep the men at bay once they’ve experienced it?”
“An excellent question. Men are curious beasts, are they not? They at once wish to keep us out of their spaces and also loathe the idea of us making space for ourselves.”
“You know that better than anyone.”
His meaning was clear. She had been blocked from title, and threatened for her very existence even once she’d made it clear that she had no interest in that title. She swallowed, her thoughts clearly with his, and returned her attention to the room. “Guests are only allowed to attend with my express permission.”
“And you have them researched.”
She nodded. “Thoroughly. And once they are approved, they are ferried, blindfolded, from locations around the city by my own staff, and brought in through underground tunnels.”
He looked to her instantly. “I wasn’t.”
“No,” she said, softly. “You weren’t.”