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‘You were meant to be the bride today,’ he said through gritted teeth, but the look he gave her was full of concern as they spun across the floor. His sympathy almost undid her. The sense of loss, not for something she’d wanted but for the future she’d expected, almost overwhelming. Could he sense it?
Lance’s arms firmed, holding her tighter, holding her together. She recognised that feeling. The pounding heart. The sick ache in her stomach. She’d always known where she was headed in life, never questioning it. Now, she had no idea what was in store for her, and she was afraid of what might come.
‘How did you know?’
The papers could be cruel but most of them hadn’t been gauche enough to mention it, too busy commemorating the new King and Queen to ask questions about her.
He nodded towards the new couple, a frown on his face. ‘I have friends in high places.’
‘You don’t seem happy about the marriage,’ she said.
He stiffened under her hands. ‘I loathe any situation in which people are forced to do things out of duty rather than desire.’
‘The press say it’s a love match.’
Before her family’s deaths, Annalise had confided in Sara that she had a secret admirer. She’d never told Sara his name, but Sara suspected it was the man to whom she was now married. The way he held her close as they danced, as if she were something precious, breakable, his eyes never leaving her face...
‘How delightfully naïve. Tabloids lie. Or print what they’re told to.’
She’d never expected he’d direct his air of disdain towards her, and found it stung. Still, she didn’t need to meekly accept it. She’d accepted far too much without a fight. No longer.
‘So the myriad stories about you are untrue?’
Lance raised a supercilious eyebrow. ‘Checking up on me?’
The heat raced to her cheeks like an inferno as the corner of his perfect lips began to curl into a grin. She couldn’t lie, she’d experienced enough of that in her short life. The unvarnished truth was far better.
‘Perhaps...a little?’
‘They tell exactly the right story about me. Disappointed?’ Then his mouth broke into a wicked smile that caused a complicated dance in her belly.
‘Thrilled.’
He laughed, a deep, throaty sound which rolled right through her in a glorious rumble.
Lance lifted his arm and twirled her in a perfectly executed spin that left her divinely light-headed. Or perhaps it was the man himself. Then he drew her close with an arm a touch lower than the polite height of her shoulder blade, his fingers splayed firm against the fabric of her dress.
‘And what else have you learned about me through your avid investigations?’
That he had the body of a god, the face of an angel and the reputation of a tomcat. She couldn’t help wanting to knowallof him.
‘Is there anything else to know, other than the apparent truth of what they tell?’
A look flashed across his face, a tightness around his eyes, and then it slid away as he twirled her in a giddy dance across the floor, the chandelier sparkling above her. In his arms she felt more of a queen than she’d ever done when she really had a chance of being one.
‘You seem to have my measure, then,’ he said. She couldn’t miss the hollow, flat sound of the words.
She wasn’t sure of it at all. The man was known as a rake, and if that were true he should have been whisking her off into a darkened alcove. Yet all he’d ever been was kind, which in her world was something novel.
Lance looked over her head, at the watching crowd. ‘Want to give that lot something to talk about?’ he asked, and she nodded. Then his hand slid down low on her waist, an impolite position for the polite company of a Lauritanian royal ballroom. His arm tightened and dragged her against him. The air pushed out of her with an ‘oof’.
He held her tight against his rock-hard body. The murmur of the crowd grew louder as the strains of the music changed to something slower. A rumba beat, her dance teacher would have said.A dance that represents desire and yearning between partners.She couldn’t comprehend why she should learn it at the time. If her parents had known, they would have thought it the height of scandal. But her dance teacher, preparing her for ballrooms across the world and many dances with a king, had told her that one day she’d understand. She lost the sultry rhythm and stumbled a step.
Lance dropped his mouth to her ear. A whisper of breath across her throat washed goosebumps over her. ‘Let me lead you.’
Sara shouldn’t, but shewanted. Craved the promise in his voice. Craved to melt into him.
Then he moved, andhowhe moved with her. As if they were created for one another. She let him take her, only a sliver of air between them, yet it was as if they were one person. The sublime push and pull as her body did everything his wanted, so perfectly in tune her mind blanked to all else bar him. The hiss of the crowd, the cloying scent of perfumes mixed with orchids. It all melted into the distant background as she concentrated on how they danced together, the heat of his body against hers. She felt dizzy in that joyous way she had when as a child she’d been allowed one ride on a carousel.
