Page 18 of Cora
The air between them was charged. Electric. Cora held her breath, waiting.
“Well?” she prompted when he simply stared at her.
The banker—her husband—startled as if he’d been lost in reverie staring at her veiled face. Carefully, he pinched the tulle and raised it.
Then he bent his head and touched his lips to hers.
Cora’s eyes fluttered closed. For some reason she had expected his kiss to be cold, but he was warm—so warm. He tasted faintly of mint and his skin carried the scent of sandalwood tinged with something muskier. She hated the way he smelled better than any man she had ever met.
Most of all, she hated the way her body yielded to him instinctively.
The instant his mouth met hers, the knot inside Cora’s chest loosened fractionally. Air rushed from her lungs. She turned lightheaded, breathing him in. He kept their kiss light and brief, as befitted a solemn occasion. His hand came to her elbow, a meaningless gesture, but the contact turned her insides to jelly.
She broke off with a gasp.
She would not turn weak in the knees for this man.
With her heart pounding in her throat, Cora raised her gaze to meet his. She couldn’t not look at him, though everything inside her screamed in warning. What a waste to bestow the severe beauty of an avenging angel upon the worst man ever to live.
His eyes were a deep shade of umber, like the shadows of a Rembrandt painting, flecked with lighter hints of amber and framed ornately with a thick fringe of lashes. Beautiful eyes, haunted with regret and hard with determination.
Alight with triumph.
She didn’t even know what game they were playing, and she’d already lost.
* * *
Gideon
Mine.
The word throbbed in his mind with each beat of Gideon’s heart. Waves of triumph and terror pulsed through him.
Now that he had her, what was he going todowith her?
Beyond the obvious, of course. The thought of finally, after all these years, touching her satin skin turned his palms damp like a schoolboy in the grips of his first crush.
Yet Cora kept a cool distance even as she tucked her gloved hand into his elbow and allowed him to lead her down the aisle to damningly faint applause. This was his parents’ private chapel, attached to the mansion Gideon’s grandfather had built almost a century before when this section of London was still more countryside than city. He maintained his own lodgings and had ever since he grew weary of his mother’s constant attempts to meddle in his love life.
“Welcome to the family, Cora,” his father said, bowing. Gideon’s mother, Martha, kept her expression carefully blank but for the slight flattening of her lips. She inspected his bride with apparent scorn, but his instinct to put his wife protectively behind him was unnecessary, for Cora simply returned her gaze, unflinching, and answered, “Thank you.”
Not,I am pleased to be here.She obviously wasn’t. To her credit, she didn’t lie.
The faint creak of a wheel indicated Reggie’s presence. Cora’s attention shifted to his brother, and a hint of warmth flared in those icy green depths.
“You must have interesting stories to tell.”
Reggie beamed. Gideon suffered a rush of emotion he identified belatedly as envy. He was jealous of his brother. Imagine, he, an able-bodied man, envying a man who couldn’t walk.
Yet he did. He couldn’t even be angry with Cora. If anything, her kindness toward his unlucky sibling made his heart swell with a pained mix of pride and covetousness.
He wanted that look directed at him, and no one else.
“You’ll have all of luncheon to regale her with tales of reading books about places you’ll never visit. Then we must get her settled at home.”
“Gideon.” His mother’s exasperation was well-earned, as was the disdainful look his wife cast him. He instantly felt contrite.
“With apologies, Reg.”
