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“Why do you lie to yourself?” Tia Osiris asked, and Cora sighed, wishing she was somewhere with a closing door.
“I’m not lying, I’m being sensible,” she insisted for her own sake as much as Tia Osiris’s.
“You are being a total arsewit.”
This offering came from Cassandra, who had arrived an hour earlier to regale Cora, once again, with a lecture in all the ways she was a dimwitted imbecile for letting Manuela go to Scotland without confessing her true feelings.
“I can’t be involved in another scandal,” she said looking at the women on either side of her. They looked back at her, stone-faced, from under their bonnets. “I am serious. Alfie is mere weeks from returning to London. Not to mention I finally have the building for the club. Or that I’m poised to lead the biggest railway project of the last twenty years.” She stood there, shoulders hunched up to her ears, pressing two fingers into the stinging in her eyes and swallowing down the despair crawling up her throat. “Manuela.” Cora had not uttered her name for days, and hearing it now made something painful and wretched twist in her chest. “Manuela and I had a deal, she has her obligations,her duties, and I have mine. How we feel doesn’t matter. I don’t miss her, I’m just tired,” she lied as her aunt and friend sent her matching disbelieving glares.
“So you are telling me that this reign of terror we have all endured has nothing to do with the fact that the woman you have been utterly infatuated with is gone,” Tia Osiris scoffed.
“I have never in my life been infatuated,” Cora retorted, ignoring her aunt. “And yes, that is what I am saying. I am stressed and tired of being pestered in my own home. My mood has nothing to do with Manuela,” Cora insisted stubbornly, through a painfully clenched jaw. “I—”
A footman running toward them interrupted her from listing another reason why they were all dead wrong about what she wanted.
“Your Grace,” he croaked the second he reached them. He looked completely terrified. It seemed Laurent had taken himself out of the line of fire. The coward.
“I thought I said no interruptions!” she wailed, wishing she’d gone to her cottage in Nice like she’d intended.
“Mademoiselle Caceres Galvan is here to see you.”
Cora whipped around in the direction of the house so fast, she became lightheaded. Her ears were ringing. “What?” Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, the footman’s words rang like cannon fire.
Mademoiselle Caceres Galvan. Bang.
Here. Bang.
To see you. Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Miss Caceres Galvan is here.” he repeated, his voice shaking. In her periphery she could see her aunt’s and Cassandra’s discreet smiles. But she was frozen in place. Her hands worryingly cold as her heart pounded erratically. Hope and elation whirling inside her. “It seems she has just arrived from Calais and would like an audience.”
“Yes,” Cora said, before finally moving toward the house. “Yes, I will see her. Tia, Cassandra, I must go.”
“I thought you said you were done with her?” Cassandra teased.
“I was obviously lying through my teeth,” Cora groused as she set off at a run.
“Can we meet her in the morning?” Tia Osiris called after her, but Cora was already halfway up the steps to the house and then there she was. Travel-worn and weary. A riot of chocolate curls all over her face, and she looked like she was dead on her feet. Cora had never in her life seen anything—not the Sistine chapel, notThe Birth of Venus—that could compare to what she had before her.
“You’re here.” Even she could hear the awe in her voice.
“I am,” Manuela said with a small, nervous laugh. She looked wary, like she didn’t know how she’d be received. Like she expected to be turned away. Cora almost dissolved into laughter at the thought of all the lies she’d just told her aunt and best friend. “I know our agreement is done, but—”
“I’ve missed you,” Cora said, reaching for her, unable to keep the truth from Manuela. Not when she’d been braver than Cora. She placed a hand on Manuela’s cheek, and her princess immediately pressed into the touch. Always so open, so devastatingly honest.
“I’ve dreamed of your hands,” she whispered and turned her face to press a kiss to Cora’s palm. She groaned as need cut through her and moved to kiss her brave princess. They had an audience and she didn’t care.
In front of Laurent, the footmen and whoever wanted to look, she tightened her arms around her lover’s waist and gently nipped at that plump, delectable bottom lip.
“I missed every inch of you.” One of those little lusty sounds escaped Manuela, and Cora slid her tongue in for a taste. Manuela returned the caress in earnest, sliding her own tongue along hers, and soon they were kissing hungrily. Hands gripping hard enough to tear at their clothes, ragged breaths echoing around them. Cora let herself go and poured everything she’d been holding in for days into Manuela, weak with gratitude, blazing with joy.
“My love,” Manuela whispered, and Cora’s heart broke open. Desire, yearning, love, rushed out of it like an avalanche. “I don’t know what I will do next,” she said, those brown eyes open and honest. That was Manuela, wearing every one of her feelings on her sleeve. Her love, her fear, her sadness, there for the world to see. “But I knew I needed more time with you.”
Cora didn’t know what there was to be done. She had spoken the truth earlier when she’d said she could not risk a scandal, but now standing here with Manuela in her arms, she knew for sure she couldn’t just walk away. There were no clear answers, and there would not be any easy solutions.
“I am so glad you’re here,” Cora said as she ran her hands over that lush body she’d so desperately missed.
“Really?” Manuela asked, her eyes shadowed with uncertainty. “This is one of the many downsides of being impulsive,” she said, her shoulders drooping. “The realization of how monumentally reckless you’ve been usually crashes on you all at once, which usually leads to utter mortification.”
