“I am not nervous.”
“You have rearranged your asparagus four times without eating any of it.”
She looked down at her plate. The asparagus had, in fact, been organized into a precise geometric pattern. She pressed her lips together.
Hugo rose from his chair. He picked up his plate and his glass and walked to her end of the table. He set them beside hers and sat in the chair next to her, close enough that his knee pressed against hers beneath the tablecloth.
“Better?” he said.
“You were twenty feet away.”
“An unacceptable distance on my wedding night.” He cut a small piece of the honeyed pear on his plate and lifted his fork. “Open.”
Lily stared at the fork. “You are not going to feed me.”
“I am. Open.”
“Hugo.”
“Lily.”
She opened her mouth. He slid the fork between her lips, and her eyes closed as the sweetness hit her tongue. A soft sound escaped her, half pleasure and half surprise, and the sound traveled through Hugo like a lit fuse.
She opened her eyes. He was watching her. He had not moved the fork.
“Good?”
“It is a pear, Hugo. It is not a revelation.”
“The sound you just made suggests otherwise.”
Color flooded her cheeks. He set the fork down and reached for the honeyed pear with his fingers, lifting a thin slice to her mouth. Her lips parted. She took it from his fingers, and her tongue brushed his thumb. The contact, brief, wet, and electric, sent a bolt of heat straight through his chest.
He stood. He turned to the doorway where a footman had appeared.
“That will be all for the evening.”
The footman bowed and disappeared. The door closed.
Hugo turned back to Lily. She sat in her chair with honey on her lower lip and her green eyes wide and dark in the candlelight.
He crossed the room in three strides, bent, and lifted her from the chair. She gasped and gripped his shoulders. He held her against his chest with one arm beneath her knees and the other at her back, and she weighed nothing.
“What are you doing?”
“Carrying my wife upstairs.”
“I can walk.”
“You can. But I have been thinking about this since the lake, and I will not be denied it now.”
He carried her through the dining room and into the corridor. The candlelight threw their shadow long and merged against the wall. Lily’s fingers curled into the fabric of his coat, and her breath warmed the side of his neck. He climbed the staircase with her in his arms and felt the particular, devastating rightness of holding something he had wanted for so long he had forgotten what it felt like to want.
At the door to her chambers, he paused. He looked down at her. She looked up at him. The lamplight caught the honey still glistening on her lower lip.
“I already have my dessert,” he murmured. “She is in my arms.”
He carried her inside and set her on her feet beside the bed. The fire burned low in the grate. The curtains were drawn. The room held the quiet, golden warmth of a space that had been prepared for this moment and was now waiting for them to fill it.
