Page 72 of A Lady of Means
Moria read the signs in the ballroom before her like a fortune on the palm of a stranger.Or, rather, she read her own fortune.Fear and some dark, familiar grief spread over her.
She shook her head as if she could deny what she already knew.
Lawrence’s gray-green eyes were hooded from the other side of the dance floor.
I’m sorry,his lips mouthed.
“Is anything amiss, Lady Moria?”
Moria looked to the Duke, his eyes serious and tender.
The music came to a halt, and he did not immediately let her go.He held onto her like a wilted flower with a broken stem that needed support to stay upright.She both admired and hated the protective embrace at once.She identified the feeling as something more akin to self-loathing, she hated that she appeared to need it more than she loathed his willingness to give it, or that he was the man to give it.
She followed his eyes to the terrace, and she nodded.She would not cry, she would not misstep, she would not give the hundreds of pairs of eyes any reason to see anything less than the image she had crafted so artfully over years of hard work.She hadn’t crumpled in the past, and she would not now.
Not a mere foot soldier, then; more like the goddess of war.That’s whathe’dcalled her.
She could get through this night, if it came close to killing her, and she would pick through the pieces tomorrow.
“Go on, I’ll meet you in a few moments,” the Duke prompted.
She had been about to say the same thing, giving herself time to ask her family just what the hell they were on about; but she couldn’t publicly contradict a duke, in case anyone was listening.It was a strong possibility that many around her were.
This is what you wanted;some voice told her.
To be noticed, yes, but watched?
No.
There was a chance she had played her part just a little too well.
* * *
She waited no morethan five minutes on the balcony in abject misery when the Duke joined her.He came to sit next to her on a stone bench, shucking his coat and wrapping it around her.
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
“George,” he corrected, taking her hands in his.
“Are we on first-name terms, then?”she heard the playful words that came from her lips like they'd been spoken by some other woman who didn’t feel her world shattering into rubble around her.
He gave a warm, affectionate little laugh, and her heart was seized with so many emotions at once: hope, tenderness, anguish, self-recrimination, the sheer injustice of it all.
“I would like for us to be.Very much.”
Even as terror gripped her heart, she play-acted.
She contorted her mouth into a little moue, and said, “How much?”leaning closer to him.
“I’ll show you,” he whispered, his hands coming around to cup her face, pulling her lips to his.She could feel how badly he wanted her in the way his lips cradled hers, the way his tongue made its way carefully into her mouth- possessive, but not greedy.His hands snaked around the back of her coiffure as he pulled her closer, closer still.
Even as she wrapped her arms around his neck, she fought with herself, a targeted effort to push out all other thoughts but the feel of this man who was with her, here now, kissing her.
He broke the kiss, removing himself from the seat to kneel before her.
He took her hands that had come up to cover her mouth, with his own.
He stayed that way a moment, this golden prince, looking up at her with anticipation, with admiration.
