Page 39 of A Bride By Morning
With that barrier gone, Gabriel experimentally slid his hand up Lydia’s arm to brush his bare fingertips against the exposed skin above her own glove.
Lydia’s breath caught, and her eyes shifted to meet his. They stared at each other in the low candlelight, and it was as if they were the only people in that room. Gabriel’s entire body was attuned to Lydia. To the heat of her, to her every reaction at his touch. She trembled as he glided his thumb down that little square patch of bare skin in a teasing caress. Her response gratified him. More: it dissolved the ice in his blood, forming heat in its path.
So this was what it was like to be alive. He’d believed his soul dead for so long that he’d almost forgotten what it was like to hunger for Lydia. She was the only thing he had ever coveted in his entire life.
Suddenly, that ballroom became an impediment. All the people in it were obstacles. Here, he couldn’t touch her freely. He couldn’t lean forward and nip at those full pink lips until she kissed him. He couldn’t shove up that pretty skirt she wore and set his mouth against her just to hear her scream his name.
A shuddering breath left Lydia. In her gaze, Gabriel glimpsed a need that echoed his own. The aria faded to background noise, and all that remained was the texture of her skin against his fingertips, gooseflesh that puckered at his touch. Did she respond like that everywhere? He hadn’t seen her without clothes.
A flare in her eyes indicated that his thoughts were not secret. Her teeth snagged her lower lip, and his attention fixated on the movement. Such a small gesture that betrayed a great deal.
You shouldn’t want me,he thought to her.Broken man that I am. You can’t fix shattered glass.
Then the singing ceased, and the spell was broken. The audience around Gabriel and Lydia broke into applause, and servants rushed to ignite more candles in their sconces. Gabriel quickly dropped his hand from Lydia’s arm and slid his glove back on.
The room became ablaze with golden light, and the din of chatter increased as guests stood from their chairs to reconvene in discussion before dinner.
Gabriel helped Lydia to her feet. “Must we stay for dinner?” she whispered.
He paused. He shouldn’t indulge her—shouldn’t give her pleasure when he couldn’t be a proper husband—but all his thoughts fixated on the lingering sensation of her skin at his fingertips. At the meager access he’d been granted and the strange levity in his chest that he hadn’t experienced in years.
“It might be considered rude to leave,” he said.
“Us? Newlyweds on our honeymoon? I think we’re considered the exception.”
“Here I thought you were growing bored of Meadowcroft.”
She leaned in, her voice for his ears alone. “Bored of Meadowcroft. Not of my husband.”
Her smile was contagious, an adorable twist of her lips. She wanted to be alone.With him. Despite everything. The buoyancy spread even further through his chest.
Before he could squash it down, he said, “You inform Lady Arundell, and I’ll retrieve our coats.”
Her grin was brighter than the candlelight.
As Gabriel accepted their garments from the servant and waited for Lydia to apologize for their premature departure, The Duchess of Hastings approached. “Leaving so soon?” Caroline asked.
“It seems Lady Montgomery is eager to return home, and so am I.”
Caroline assessed him, her gaze as piercing as a needle through skin. Gabriel’s cousin had always been profoundly clever; when he’d returned from Moscow, she was one of the few people he couldn’t fool with his charming deception. He imagined she recognized the loneliness in his soul as one that matched hers.
“You seem different,” she said softly.
“Do I?”
“Happy.” Her regard was relentless. “Or its closest approximation since your return.”
Something about that confirmation disconcerted him. Yes, he supposed that strange levity he’d identified earlier was the first twinge of joy he’d experienced in years—a feeling that had become as foreign as a new language.
But he detested it; that thrill left him too vulnerable to his enemies. It leftLydiavulnerable.
What was happiness in the hands of an assassin but a weapon to be utilized like a blade?
Caroline made a faint noise. “And now you’re overthinking.”
“You’re a romantic.” His voice was almost harsh. If he spent any longer in that room, he wouldn’t be able to maintain his Lord Montgomery role. “I would have thought your own marriage ought to have disabused you of the notion.”
Caroline’s expression hardened. “It’s not romanticism. I comprehend what it looks like when someone is trying to shut out another person entirely.”
