Page 100 of Courting the Wrong Duke

She strained to hear it.

Only silence answered.

Then warmth touched her cheek.

She looked up.

William stood before her.

His fingers rested lightly against her face, their warmth impossibly real against the cool perfume of the lilies. A stray lock of fair hair stirred across his forehead, though the flowers around them remained perfectly still.

She should have spoken.

She should have asked where her father had gone.

Instead she found herself watching his eyes, impossibly blue beneath a sky that had somehow become morning without ever passing through night.

“You're here,” she whispered.

His smile was quiet. “I've always been coming toward you.”

The words made no sense, yet she understood them perfectly.

His hand slipped gently beneath her chin, and she made no effort to move away. She could not have done so if she wished.

She did not wish.

The lilies bent softly around them, enclosing them in a world of white and fragrance as he lowered his head.

His kiss was feather-light.

Warm. Patient.

It carried the scent of summer and river water and lilies, and for one endless, impossible moment the rest of the world simply ceased to exist.

Someone was calling her.

Faintly at first.

Then louder.

“Lady Rosalind?”

The lilies dissolved into sunlight before the river slipped away.

William's warmth vanished from beneath her fingertips.

Rosalind woke with a sharp breath, her nightdress damp against her skin, the morning sun already spilling through the curtains.

“My lady?”

Nelly stood beside the bed, one hand resting lightly upon the bedpost.

Rosalind blinked, her heart still beating far too quickly. Almost without thinking, her fingers rose to her lips.

They were cool.

Yet for one fleeting, impossible moment, she could still have sworn they remembered the warmth of William's kiss.