“Where did you come from?”
“I fell over the railing,” she explained, feeling like an idiot. Who fell off balconies? On the same day she fell into a hole.
“Do you do that often?”
“No, of course not.”
All evidence to the contrary.
“I had no idea societal conventions changed so much when I was on the Continent. Do they routinely physically launch girls onto the Marriage Mart now?” He released her, and she slid slowly down the length of his body.
She cleared her throat again. “I stumbled, is all.”
He tensed as the sky exploded behind him. The brightly coloured light showed the fine sheen of perspiration on his brow and the tightening of his knuckles around his flask. He took a deep draught. “I’m sure you can find a better vantage point to watch the spectacle,” he said tightly.
She recognized the tension in his voice. She’d heard it a number of times when her grandmother was beset. “Are you quite well?” she asked gently.
He took another swallow and nodded. Another volley of fireworks exploded, and he jerked, spilling whiskey on his cuff. “It’s the noise, isn’t it?” she asked.
“It’s nothing.” His jaw clenched.
“You were on the Continent during the war.”
“What of it?” The red light cast his features into sinister shadows.
“I imagine the fireworks sound like musket fire or cannons.” She stepped closer, until she could smell the whiskey on his sleeve and see the fine tremble of his muscles as he strove to appear unconcerned. “My grandmother was in London when the riots broke out in the ’80s. She was trapped in a carriage for several hours while the mob pelted it with stones and refuse. Even now she can’t abide a crowd or a carriage. It sends her right back to that day. And it’s been thirty-five years.”
“I am not an old lady.”
“Nor was she, at the time.” She slipped her hand through his and his fingers tightened around hers. “We all have ghosts,” she added softly. She stepped closer still, until she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. They glinted in the flashing lights, gray as ice and smoke.
“If I can catch my breath, it will pass.”
“Perhaps if you concentrate on something else, it might not trouble you so.”
“On what do you suggest I might concentrate?”
She didn’t think he realized he was still holding her hand. His breathing seemed easier. At least until she replied. “Me.”
He paused, breath stilled. “I beg your pardon?”
She swallowed. “Look at me,” she said. “Nothing else.” Oh dear, this would work better if she were a diamond of the first water. But it always calmed her grandmother to stare at her spaniel, Chartreuse, or eat a plate of cupcakes. Since neither were available, Persephone’s face would have to do. “Breathe when I breathe.”
She inhaled slowly and held it before exhaling. “Again.” She thought he looked less pained, but she couldn’t be sure.
And then the fireworks reached a crescendo that even she found disruptive. He shuddered, visibly trying to restrain his reaction. His breath stalled and he pressed back against the stone wall under the terrace. Persephone did the only thing she could think of.
She rose up on the tip of her toes and kissed him.
His pulse pounded so hard she felt it through his jacket, through her fingertips when she touched him. His kiss burned with whiskey and desperation, and something else she couldn’t understand. His mouth was open against her as he struggled to control his breath, and then it was lips and tongues and heat. She was the fireworks now; and when he deepened the kiss, a fuse she had no idea could be lit fired her with colors and light. It was both gentle and primal and the combination made her knees weak.
It took her far too long to realize that the fireworks had ended, and he was no longer panicking. Not in the slightest. He was too busy drawing her up against this body, one hand fisted in her dress, the other in her hair. His lips slanted over hers, tasting her. No not tasting, tasting implied polite nibbles. He was feasting. And she’d had no idea of the hunger inside her own body. She drew back, gasping. It was her own heart now that raced too fast. “I’m not on the Marriage Mart,” she blurted.
“And yet I am officially diverted.” His eyes caught on her lips. They tingled as if he was still kissing her. His thumb brushed her mouth lightly and she felt it everywhere. “Are you not betrothed then since I’ve been away?”
“Of course not.”
“Why, of course not?”
Wasn’t being knocked off a balcony bad enough for one ball? Did she also have to be humiliated? “I have no great fortune, and no great beauty,” she forced herself to say. But she apparently had a great capacity for ruining a moment, as well as herself. She really ought to stick to digging in the dirt. She bobbed a quick curtsy and then fled into the gardens.
He watched her go.
“Are you still really what you seem, I wonder?” The sky was a bowl of smoke and light behind him. “I hope so, for your sake.”