“Neither did I.”
And yet neither moved.
The music resumed behind them, a waltz.
Leticia didn’t turn to go.
“I knew it was you,” he said. “Not by name. But in the way you moved.”
She went still.
The wind stirred the lanterns and her hem, but she didn’t turn toward him. Didn’t speak. Not yet.
He stepped beside her, not close enough to touch. “I danced with you before. At the musicale.”
“I remember.”
A pause. “I should have known then.”
She looked up at him slowly. The lines of his face were unreadablein the half-light.
“You do now.”
“Yes.”
The air between them held, not with tension, but with the fragile burden of possibility.
She looked toward the ballroom windows, where music bled out faintly into the night.
“Two weeks, my lord,” she said. Her voice was softer now, as if testing the shape of it.
He nodded, hesitated. “If we are to maintain the illusion, perhaps you should call me by my given name, Gabriel or Ash, if you wish.”
She looked at him, something flickering behind her eyes. “That would complicate things…Gabriel. You must call me Leticia.”
A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, but he said nothing more.
Leticia breathed in the salt air. Her skin tingled beneath her borrowed gown.
She had stepped into the garden to clear her thoughts. Instead, she’d stepped deeper into uncertainty.
Neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke.
And neither knew how it would resolve.
Chapter Nine
The light wastoo bright. Leticia blinked against it, her temples pulsing with a dull ache. Even the softness of the pillow could not soothe the tension that had crept into her bones. She hadn’t cried. Not last night. Not even when the mask came off and the gown was unfastened and folded away. But her body felt as if she had.
The curtains were open. Morning light spilled across the room, pale and relentless, painting every surface with a truth she wasn’t ready to face.
Alice must have come and gone already, leaving the room in a state of gentle readiness. Her brushes were neatly aligned, tea steaming faintly on the tray, her slippers placed just so at the foot of the chaise.
Leticia sat up slowly, her fingers brushing the silk coverlet. Her hands trembled, though she wasn’t cold. Everything inside her felt hollow, half-frozen, as if warmth had gone missing.
Across the room, a note from her aunt rested against the teapot. A soft envelope. Pale lavender paper with her aunt’s unmistakable handwriting.
My dearest,
