She smiled. “So have I.”
His hands found her waist again. “We can’t do this out here.”
“Then take me somewhere,” she said. “Quickly.”
He looked at her, stunned for half a second. “You’re sure?”
She nodded once. “Yes.”
That was all he needed.
They moved fast, ducking into the shadows at the edge of the terrace. The corridor just off the servants’ stairs was quiet. They slipped through a half-open door and found themselves in a linen passage, dim, warm, hushed. The only sound was their breathing, ragged now, and the distant hum of the ball still echoing from the grand rooms below.
He pulled her into an alcove, kissed her again.
“You are going to ruin me,” he whispered.
She laughed, but her voice caught. “You’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted to be ruined by. So ruin me properly.”
He kissed her like he meant to prove it.
Their hands tangled, her fingers slipping inside the edges of his coat. His mouth moved to her jaw, down to the column of her neck. She gasped, her head tipping back.
“We need a room,” he said, voice tight. “Now.”
She nodded.
He pulled her by the hand, past the quiet stretch of corridor, the marble giving way to stone and the wallpaper thinning to whitewash. Past the grand rooms and drawing halls, into a less-used wing of the house until they reached an unmarked door with worn handle. A guest room, likely. He turned the handle slowly; it gave.
He stepped in first, pulled her inside, and shut the door with a soft click.
Still holding her hand.
Still watching her like she was some impossible dream.
“Anna…”
She stepped forward, drew her fingers across the line of his cravat. “Say it again.”
His brow furrowed, gently. “What?”
“What you said in the garden.”
He swallowed hard. “I love you.”
She kissed him.
The room was small and spare with the ceiling low enough to press the air close. Faint light slipped through a slatted window,casting pale bands across a plain chair, a narrow bed, and a cold hearth. But they barely noticed. The room could have been anything. Henry turned to face her, and for the first time in all their weeks of circling, avoiding and aching since they left Yeats Hall, he looked at her without restraint.
“You are sure,” he said, as though one more confirmation might steady him.
Anna stepped toward him and reached for the edge of his cravat. Her fingers trembled as she pulled the knot loose.
“I was sure the moment you said my name like it mattered,” she said.
He caught her face between his hands. His thumb swept gently across her cheek, and then he kissed her– deep, slow, devastating.
Every part of her came alive at once.
