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A nervous, sputtering laugh bubbles from her. When she tries to turn around and face me, I hold her still. Taking a quiet moment, I inhale her sweet scent deep into my lungs as she leans back into me.
“Do you like dancing, Eve?”
She shakes her head. “Not really.” The reply surprises me. With her love of music, I thought dancing would be her thing too. Sounds silly now that I think about it, but it made sense before.
“Neither do I,” I tell her, grasping her left hand with my right one in front of her waist and spinning her again to face me. Swaying her from side to side, I give her a breakdown of tonight. “The car will stop, and Andrew will be waiting to take you inside the hotel through the staff entrance at the back. The offer is still there for you to come with me.”
“I’m okay. Thank you,” she whispers, holding tighter to my arm with her other hand. The heat of her touch seeps through the cotton of my shirt and my skin as I continue swaying us in slow circles around the balcony overlooking the garden and the river.
“Don’t thank me. I’ll be making it worth my while later.”
“Can I ask you something?” she ventures, looking up at me. Her teeth gnaw at her deep-red-painted lips. “Do you get anxious before these events?”
“No.”
“Not even a bit nervous?” The grimace of discomfort on her face makes my chest tighten. “Not even just a teeny tiny bit?”
“No, I get grumpy. I don’t like these farcical things, but as you like to say about me and Hush, it’s a means to an end.”
“You’re always grumpy, Your Grace,” she laughs softly. After a quiet second, she adds, “I was wrong about that…or you, mainly. You’re not a means to an end. At least not anymore.”
“Once I’ve walked through with Arthur, I’ll join you at the table. Julian will be there already.”
“He doesn’t like me very much.”
“Julian isn’t himself, and things are fraught at the club right now,” I say casually. It takes a moment for me to realise that I’m on the verge of saying too much. Of divulging information no one outside of the Society is to know.
“How so?” Eve asks, rolling onto her tiptoes to wrap her arms around my shoulders as I anchor my hands on her waist. “It always looks like it’s running smoothly as far as…those types of clubs go. Or I imagine they go?”
My phone vibrates in the pocket of my suit trousers with a loud accompanying trill. “That will be our car waiting for us. Do you have your pouch?”
“Yes, it’s squeezed into the ridiculously tiny bag your stylist said would go with the shoes.”
My stare chases hers down to her feet. The light from inside hits the crystals dotted on the skin-coloured mesh just so, making her feet appear like they’re glittering.
“I have something for you.” I pause as we get inside and turn her to face the glass pane.
With the day fading outside, her reflection ghosts back at us while I reach into the inside pocket of my jacket and pull out the diamond necklace I had Percival send over with the stylist.
Dark eyes bug wide. “Holy fuck,” Eve blurts, watching as the heavy piece of jewellery hangs from my grasp on the clasp. “I can’t. No. Nope. That’s…I can’t. If something happened to—”
“It’s insured, and there’s going to be a lot of security around you.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because you’re with me, and I’m with the next King of England.”
“Of course.” She lets out a deep breath before inhaling deeply again.
“You’re doing your babbling thing again.”
“It’s that or I shit myself. Given you’ve only really fucked me once, I don’t think that’s the done thing, right?”
There’s no way I can resist the urge to kiss her when she’s this adorable with her odd potty mouth and flustering nerves.
“The necklace will be safe around your neck, and you will be fine next to me. I promise,” I add the latter as she continues craning her neck back onto my chest after our kiss. “It belonged to my great-great-grandmother on my father’s side.”
“It’s very pretty,” Eve murmurs as I stand her straight and put the necklace on her. It sits perfectly around her throat. The large teardrop rubies and surrounding diamonds look relucent against her creamy skin, hiding the marks I left.
