“You did but a moment ago,” she reminded him gently. “You just didn’t know it.”
“Then I don’t wish to repeat the effort,” he said, his eyes intense on hers. “If I’m busy playing music, how can I ask you to dance?”
Her heart tumbled as she gazed up at the man she loved. She was ruined for anyone else. “Who needs music to dance?”
He took her in his arms and waltzed her slowly about the quiet, empty music room. With each synchronized step, he held her closer. With each twirl, the future pulled them further apart.
She didn’t dare meet his eyes. Whatever she glimpsed there would be her undoing.
He no doubt believed he was finally giving her that dance she’d thought she’d never have. But she knew what these stolen moments truly were.
A final goodbye.
Chapter 12
Daniel stood outside the front door of Crowmere Castle and bid his farewell to the many guests who preferred to return home at once rather than remain on unhallowed grounds a single moment longer. The castle’s ghostly murmurs and strange sightings had unnerved every one of its temporary inhabitants.
“My lord?” One of the footmen materialized at Daniel’s side. “Shall I ready your coach now, or have it waiting for you in the morning?”
Cold twisted Daniel’s stomach. Despite his original disinclination to ever set foot again in Crowmere Castle, now that the time had come to depart, the thought of doing so filled him with hollowness too exquisite to bear.
Leaving Cornwall meant leaving Rebecca. Devil take it, he was no longer certain that was a loss he could endure.
“Not tonight,” he said to the footman. “Perhaps tomorrow afternoon would be better.”
The footman inclined his head. “As you wish, my lord.”
Daniel’s mood soured. No. Not as he wished. His world was slowly crumbling apart. Everything he thought he wanted, everything he’d worked so hard to achieve… paled if Rebecca wasn’t right there beside him. He closed his eyes.
There was no use fighting the truth. He was inlovewith her.
Always had been.
As the last of the departing carriages rumbled over the bridge and out of view, he turned away from the drawbridge, away from the stables, and strode instead through the geometric rows of flowers in the front garden.
Once, he might have been surprised that cursed grounds this sinister could be home to something so pure and lovely.
Now, he knew better.
He turned to glance over his shoulder at the imposing stone of the fortified castle. The love of his life was somewhere inside. But a woman like Rebecca wasn’t waiting around for a white knight to rescue her. She was too strong for that.
She’d done all of the rescuing herself.
For years, she’d managed to survive without family, without a true guardian, cut off from friends and loved ones. More than survive. She’d managed to twist the tale.
Whilst Daniel was off learning to be a viscount, she’d been minding the earldom through ingenious anonymous notes. Whilst other young ladies struggled to navigate the fraught waters of thebeau monde, Rebecca quite literally designed a labyrinth to which only she knew all its secrets.
All this time, Daniel had allowed his grandmother’s high-handed influence and his fear of others rejecting Rebecca to act as a drawbridge demarcating the battle lines of his world versus hers.
But Rebecca wasn’t fighting a battle. She was living the life she wanted. She would never bow to the constraints of proscribed mores or cower before the likes of Lady Octavia.
The force to be reckoned with wasn’t the judgmental whim of theton, but the desires of Rebecca herself. She’d proven time and again that others’ opinions held no power over her.
Women’s brains couldn’t do figures? Rebecca did. Women couldn’t find their way out of a hatbox? Have a hedge maze. Women were helpless without a maid—or a man? Even smugglers hadn’t found the treacherous strip of isolated beach Rebecca chose to bathe in. She wasn’t an extraordinary woman. She was an extraordinaryperson.
One who did not require his protection or his coddling. The only thing Rebecca needed was the right to decide her future for herself.
Including whether or not Daniel became part of it.
