AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Leo? What are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood.” He spoke carefully, as if he needed to create each word anew.
“What, pray, brings a duke to this neighborhood in the middle of the night?”
“There was a dinner. Then a ball. Then a game of cards.”
“I suspect there might have been some drinking too.”
He considered this, then said, “I concede there may have been some drinking too.”
The clouds shifted. Moonlight filled the street. Leo’s gaze shifted too, focused on her. Suddenly, all the parts of her he had touched with his fingers, and the parts he had touched with his tongue, and the parts he had touched with his words—all those parts seared into life as his gaze swept over her.
But he was engaged to someone else, and there was nothing she could do. Because he had made a choice and he had not chosen her, and this was the way the world worked, and it was all for the best.
Yet still his confession echoed in her mind: Once upon a time, when they were different people, the one he had chosen was her.
The moment passed, as a cool breeze rippled around them and blew the clouds back over the moon. The air grew heavier with the threat of rain.
She did not know what he wanted.
She did not even know whatshewanted.
“I saw you today,” he said, words ever so slightly slurred. “Spanish art, and sad-eyed madonnas, and there you were.”
“Yes.”
“Isawyou.”
She waited. She had never seen Leo drunk before.
“That must not happen again,” he added.
“Encountering each other in a public place?”
“Should not happen.”
“Are you to dictate where in London I may go, for fear of treading in your path? Duke or not, you do not tell me where I can go.Youcan avoidme.”
“I’m doing a fine job of that so far.”
A single fat raindrop fell on his cheek. Another landed on the street. Neither moved.
Then words were raining out of her too.
“You turned my world upside down,” she said. “With what you told me about … Vienna.”
“I swore I’d never tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Man has his pride.”
“I always sensed walls between us and now I know why. Why did you tell me?”
He breathed out audibly. “You thought I thought you were not good enough for me. For ten years, you believed that. I did not want you to think I think—” He paused, frowning, and started again. “I do not want you to think thatanyonethinks you are not good enough. You are good enough for anyone. They—we—they must try to be good enough for you.”
Was he speaking as a friend? As a lover? He cared for her. Maybe he even loved her, though “love” was such a complex, circumstantial word, it really was quite useless.
