Hugo stilled.
Lily’s heart pounded, but now that she had begun, she could not pull the truth back inside.
“You and your lessons, and your gowns, and your midnight archery, and your ridiculous, impossible suggestions. You have made me want something I cannot have.”
His expression changed. “Lily…”
“Do not.” Her voice shook. “Do not say my name like that. You taught me how to charm a man I do not want so that I would stop wanting the man I cannot have. How is that anything other than cruelty?”
“You think I am playing a game with your feelings?”
He closed the distance between them in two strides, and Lily had to tip her head back to meet his gaze.
“You think I selected those gowns and taught you those dances and set up that archery range at midnight because I was playing?”
“Then what are you doing?”
His breath caught.
For the first time since she had known him, Hugo looked as if the truth had cornered him.
“I am trying to give you what you asked for,” he said, his voice rough, “and it is tearing me apart.”
The words hung between them.
Raw.
Unfinished.
Moonlight caught the amber of his eyes, and Lily’s breath came in short, uneven pulls. The space between them was nothing now. Inches. Less than inches. Every lesson, every glance, every argument, every touch had led them here, to the edge of something neither of them could pretend away.
“Then stop.” Her voice cracked. “Stop giving me what I asked for and tell me what you want.”
“You know what I want.”
“Say it.”
“Lily.”
“Say it, Hugo.”
He stepped closer. His hand came up and cradled the side of her face. His thumb traced the line of her jaw, and the touch was so gentle, so at odds with the raw, wrecked look in his eyes, that her breath shook.
“I want you.” The words came low and unsteady, stripped of every defense he had ever built. “Not for a performance. Not for an arrangement. Not so that I can hand you off to a man who will spend the rest of his life pressing ferns and never once understanding what he has.”
His forehead dropped to hers. His breath was warm against her lips.
“I want you, Lily. I have wanted you since you walked into my parlor, shoved a piece of paper into my chest and looked at me as though I were the worst man in London.”
“You were the worst man in London.”
“I know.” His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth. “And you made me want to be better. Do you have any idea how terrifying that is?”
Lily’s fingers curled into the front of his coat.
“That is the most words you have ever said without a single joke.”
“I know. It is awful. I may never recover.”
