Page 45

“For the handkerchief?”

“For your kindness the other night.” It seemed too vast a phrase. The sound of her own words hovering in the open made her jittery. “And for renewing our bargain, I suppose. I do appreciate your favors.”

He clucked his tongue. “Prepare to pay your share, Miss St. Quinton. I’m afraid my public image needs more rehabilitating than even I first suspected.”

The kerchief slowed mid-rotation. “Oh?”

She should not feel this bud of … irrational happiness at his words. His troubles might have nothing to do with courting Miss Penney.

“My father and I dined with the Penneys last night.”

Her throat suddenly felt as though she’d swallowed the handkerchief whole.

“Miss Penney hardly spoke two words to me. I think it’s our fathers who should wed, really—they managed to compare accomplishments for three hours without ceasing.”

Sophie focused on the gentle chafe of fabric wheeling around her thumb. “And Lady Penney?”

He snorted. “She gave me plenty of attention, if one counts glowering and quizzing me about the extent of my education. You should’ve seen the way she studied my table manners—as though my soup spoon were a dagger that might turn her family’s reputation to tatters.”

“Careful,” she said quietly. She bent her chin to mask her smile, for they were passing another light-lending building. “You’re beginning to sound quite …”

She couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stand it, either. She lifted her eyes, smile and all, to watch as the light gifted her a glimpse of him. “Sarcastic. Not unlike me.”

It stole a little of her breath, his smile. A genuine, boyish grin that had no roots—only pleasure.

“Am I?” He shifted in his seat, because she saw his knees spread wider, taking up more of the space between them. “How horrid.”

The quiet stretched, filling the empty bench space and blotting out the accepted monotony of wheels and cobbles and hooves. He was scarcely within kicking distance, and still she was more shivery, every follicle of her skin more alive, than she had been during any of the fumbling kisses of her youth.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“Hm?”

He dipped his chin. “Your arms.”

She had crossed them, was running her palms up and down as if to create warmth. She stopped. “Would you sit beside me?”

There was a beat of stillness. She couldn’t say what he would do—and then his right arm came out of his coat, and then his left. A single, almost soundless movement placed him beside her. The warmth of his leg trailed along her thigh. She should correct the error and put distance between them.

He slowly swung his greatcoat behind her shoulders, close enough she could feel the heat radiating off his skin, the graze of his knuckles against the rapid pulse in her neck. Inches. Inches separated them.

“Rafe?” The sweet word rolled over her tongue before she questioned her right to taste it. “May I call you that?”

His hands stilled, hovering about her neck and shoulders, the coat still in his grasp. “Usually one asks before taking the liberty.”

She grinned, her exhale half laugh. It might’ve been centimeters now; somehow, they were drawing nearer. “I thought two people who trust each other enough to be fools together”—she paused to wet her lips—“might form the habit of using given names.”

A chink of light fell, just over his left eye. Oh, God. There had been a spark of something indefinable in his gaze, she thought, but the only certainty was green. The night expanded his pupils, pronounced his black, and yet he had never appeared more alive with color.

Her lips brushed his. A whisper of contact, less than a kiss. His palms found skin, heated callouses against her neck and cheek and jaw.

“What do you think?” It seemed her words shouldn’t exist, with so little of her voice to back them. His breath was hot against her mouth, a third presence that seemed to beckon, Here are his lips, kiss them, if you’d like.

“I—” He hesitated. “We … shouldn’t.”

Sophie’s breaths turned choppy. She fought to contain them, to burrow inside the folds of her cloak and pray she could soon flee with the same rapidity her desire just had. She sank away from him.

“Sophie—”