All I want is to kiss you and touch you.
As she had every night since the house party, Evie lay in bed wide awake, staring up at the ceiling over her bed, her body burning as she remembered those extraordinary moments with Max in the muniment room.
His caress, so hot and tender, so wickedly luscious, had ignited a longing within her that she’d never felt before. She tried to suppress it with reminders that he was not hers to dream about and that he still intended to marry someone else, someone beautiful and elegant, who suited him far more than she ever could. However, those cold facts were not enough to banish the erotic confessions that made her ache.
All I can think about is what it would be like to have your body naked under mine.
She’d never had anyone explain the facts of life to her, but thanks to texts on biology and medicine, and a few stealthy peeks at pornographic literature during her adolescence, she knew what Max’s confession meant.
He wanted to lie with her. To invade her body with his own and have carnal knowledge of her.
Not even in her wildest romantic daydreams could she have imagined herself to be the recipient of such erotic masculine desires, and every time she thought of Max wanting her in such a way, euphoric joy rose up inside her, making her feel so vibrantly alive that sleep was impossible. Sometimes she even imagined his hand caressing her again in that shocking, intimate way, evoking the same rising tension, the same desperate hunger she’d felt then.
At the time it had happened, she’d run, yanking down her skirts and ducking out of the library when his back was turned, but now, two weeks later, in the quiet darkness of her room, there was no such escape. She could only lie awake, her body afirewith this strange, aching need, her mind wondering what more she could have experienced with him had they not been interrupted.
Whatever might have happened, by the time the ball was twenty-four hours away and the end of this fantastical romantic holiday was in sight, Evie feared she’d spend all the remaining days of her life wondering just what wondrous things she’d run away from on that glorious spring afternoon.
***
“Wait, miss, wait,” Liza implored. “Don’t move until I’ve got this last hook done up.”
“But I want to see,” Evie cried, in an agony of suspense, her back to the dressing mirror. “Oh, do hurry, Liza, please.”
Delia, fully dressed and watching from the doorway, laughed. “Really, Evie, darling, when are you going to give a nod to etiquette and address Moore here in the proper way?”
“But it seems so unfriendly to call someone by only their surname,” she protested, trying not to fidget as the maid fastened the last hook beneath her armpit. “Blame it on my middle-class upbringing.”
“There, I’ve finally got it,” Liza said and stepped back. “You can look now.”
“No, she can’t,” Delia cried before Evie could turn around. “We have to wait for Chapman.”
Evie groaned at the additional delay, but before she could ask why on earth they had to wait for Delia’s maid, Chapman herself came bustling in. “Here at last, my lady.”
“Finally!” Delia cried, turning as her maid crossed to her side. “I began to fear the hotel had lost them somehow.”
“Sorry, my lady. There was a long line of ladies’ maids at the concierge. Lots of balls tonight, it seems.”
“What is that?” Evie asked, leaning closer.
“Something of mine for you to wear, darling. I had Chapman fetch it from the hotel vault.”
The maid opened the box, and Evie gasped at the stunning necklace of emeralds set in gold that was nestled inside. “I’m to wear that? Are those real emeralds?”
Delia laughed. “Have you wear paste jewels to your first ball? Never! Of course they’re real.”
“Goodness,” Evie breathed, feeling giddy as Chapman slipped the necklace around her neck. “The only jewelI’ve ever worn is my mother’s carnelian ring, and that’s only at Christmas. Can I look now?” she asked, the question ending on a plaintive note. “If you say no,” she added at once, “I’m looking anyway.”
Delia smiled and placed hands on her shoulders. “Yes, darling, you can look now.”
Evie turned to face the mirror and stared, completely stupefied by what she saw.
The gown, pale jade silk shot with threads of gold, shimmered in the light, giving her skin an almost ethereal glow and sparking the amber and gold glints in her hazel eyes. Vivienne’s design had eschewed the enormous leg-o’mutton sleeves that were so ubiquitous now in favor of absurdly small scraps of silk that skimmed the very edge of each shoulder in a way that was modern and fresh and scandalously daring.
Her hair, a riot of curls piled high on her head with a few loose tendrils framing her face, was secured with gold-studded hairpins, each stud shaped like a rose. She’d always thought of her hair as boring, but now, with the gold of the roses to enhance the mink-brown strands, she realized her hair didn’t have to be boring at all. She could only hope Liza had used enough of those pins to keep it all from tumbling down in the middle of the ball.
Emeralds glittered at her throat, falling in cascades to the plunging neckline of her gown, so dazzling that she blinked. “Heavens!” she cried, laughing in amazement, feeling a bit dizzy as she stared at her reflection. “Maybe I really am Cinderella.”
“Just as long as you remember you don’t have to dash off at midnight,” Delia replied. “In fact, you won’t be leaving until at least four o’clock. You have to stay all the way to the last waltz.”
