Chapter 16

Of the two questions Tristan had asked Andromeda—about her own current desires and about her pretend betrothed—the former had sent her running. Not because she did not know the answer to it, but because she did, and the surety in her soul scared her. Knowing what she wanted and reaching out to take it were two entirely different things.

Was she ready to reach, to grasp, to take?

Andromeda stood at the balcony overlooking the ballroom.

Alex pointed into the ballroom. "There's Isabella. Who is that fellow she's dancing with?"

"I'm not quite sure," Andromeda admitted. "I've not learned to identify the gentleman of the ton by the tops of their heads." Impressive he could identify her sister by the top of hers. But perhaps not, for three women below stood out above all the others because of their hair. It flickered like gold beneath the burning candlelight and crystal chandeliers above. Prudence, Imogen, and Isabella had never experienced a ball hosted by their mother from the dream of the dance floor. They'd come no closer than this. It was good, so terribly good, that Lottie had done this.

But Andromeda could not conquer a pang of sadness all the same. All this, them, going on without them. The clock had started once more. Soon, everything would change.

"The ballroom is a dream." On the other side of Alex, June sighed, peeking through the balcony's railings.

The ballroom was lovely, a fairy forest of golden boughs and wreaths drooping from the chandeliers. Lottie had created magic.

"I wish I was old enough to attend." June backed away from the balcony and fell into the steps of a quadrille with an invisible partner.

"Do you see your brother, Alex?" Andromeda asked.

"No." Alex looked up at her. "Are you going to marry him?"

Oh, hell and chaos.

"Who are we spying on?" Lottie appeared at Andromeda's elbow, saving her from answering Alex. She leaned against the balustrade.

"I thought you were down there," Andromeda said.

"Oh, no. I'm scheming."

"My brother says you shouldn't scheme." Alex's grin would worry Tristan if he saw it. It meant, without a doubt, trouble. "But I do like a good scheme myself."

Lottie leaned over the balustrade to scowl at Alex, who was across from Andromeda. "Thirteen-year-old boys should not scheme at all."

"So everyone says," he grumbled.

"This is fun, Alex." June danced behind them. "You should dance the waltz with me when they play it."

Alex whipped around to face her, his face a picture of horror from his wide eyes to his gaping mouth. "You're a child!"

June stopped dancing to face her antagonist with fists on her hips. "So are you."

"I'm thirteen."

"I'm eight." Said as if eight was quite grown up, was, in fact, more mature than thirteen.

They faced off, both bent at the hips, leaning toward one another with scowls that would scare the crows away.

Lottie chuckled. "I think it's time for the two of you to retire to the nursery. You can hear the music quite well from there, and Samuel has declared that you are to have dancing and games and a special treat tonight, just as we used to do when we were children during Mama's parties.

"Champagne?" Alex asked.

Lottie rolled her eyes. "Go." She swatted them toward the hallway, and when they were running down the hall and out of earshot, she said, "That boy is trouble. If you marry Kingston, you will have your hands full. Are you sure you can handle it?"

"Yes." She had no doubt of that. It would be difficult, but she liked the boy, and he might just need her a little bit. If no one had told Tristan they were proud of him, it seemed likely Alex had suffered the same disappointments of omission.

"Now that he's gone," Lottie said, returning to Andromeda's side at the balcony, "we continue scheming."

"Lady Aphrodite?"

"Precisely. Do you think she's here yet? Do you think she's here at all?" Lottie craned her neck to peer deeper into the ballroom. "Oh!" She squeaked like a mouse when caught by a human. "Piffle. There's Noble. I did not think he would come."

Andromeda spotted the man easily. He hovered near the doors that led into the garden, and he held a champagne flute in each of his large hands. He was as tall as Tristan but with lighter hair, a dirty blond to match his light-brown eyes. They'd known the man since childhood, and he'd once been part of their play. He gave attention only to Samuel now. And, of course, the women who flocked to him like moths to a flame.

At the moment, his flame called two women to their fates. He had one at each of his elbows, and Andromeda thought she recognized both as well-known and quite cheerful widows. He leaned close to one woman and whispered something in her ear, then he twisted to do the same to the other. They all laughed, Noble throwing his head back in his mirth. When he lowered his gaze from the chandelier-shadowed ceiling, he seemed to spy them, to catch them watching. His laugh, his very smile, melted away.

Lottie gasped. "He's looking at us. He's looking at me. Scowling, naturally. Always scowling. And what am I doing to him, I ask you? Nothing."

Lottie squinted to see better across the ballroom. "Perhaps he's wearing the Noble Smirk and not a scowl." Whatever his facial expression, the language of his posture was clear. He downed first one flute of champagne and then the other and stalked off, leaving two very confused and certainly less cheerful widows in his wake. Moths burnt to ash in the bright, quickly extinguished flame of his attention.

"I wonder what ails him," Andromeda said.

"Me, likely." Lottie shook her head and leaned her hip on the balcony, putting her profile to the ballroom below. "Men are useless. It's a shame we need them for so many things."

"What are we looking for, other than Lord Noble?"

"An exodus from the ballroom, I think. If Lady Aphrodite holds her readings in residences where balls are held, then we should wait for a moment when ladies of a certain age and disposition—our readers mainly—are leaving the ballroom, sneaking off to other places."

"What if they're just going to relieve themselves?"

"A possibility, of course," Lottie admitted. "But at the same time?"

"Excellent point." Andromeda dragged her fingertip along the balcony's edge, then froze. "There he is."

"Noble?" Lottie peered over the edge.

"No. Tristan."

"Tristan, is it?"

"He's dancing with someone." And Andromeda did not like it. Her toes curled in her slippers. Whoever she was, this woman would be a safer wife for Tristan than Andromeda, a woman without a secret.

She turned from the sight and found solace in the decorations, the music, the creation of a fairy dream in a London home. "It's absolutely lovely, Lottie. Mother would be proud. I think you were right. This was a good idea. It needed to be done. And not just to trap this Lady Aphrodite."

Lottie said in an almost whisper, "I felt closer to her while planning the ball. And I feel like… like I could squint and make the ballroom a blur and see her down there waltzing with Papa."

"Me, too." How funny. She'd spent the last several years trying to keep her mother's memory close but now, when it seemed to be slipping away, she felt unexpectedly dropped into the past. Her mother's parties, her father's painting. She'd stared into the eyes of her younger self, a man by her side who wanted her to fashion a future with him, and for a moment it had felt so possible, more possible than all the dreams she'd harbored as a young girl.

"Andromeda." A deep, familiar voice from behind. She turned, and there he was—horribly handsome in black and white, his hair slicked back so that she wished to muss it and find that rogue lock, pull it over his eye, then kiss him hard, drag him into some shadowed alcove and—

"The waltz is almost upon us." He held out a hand.

She put her hand in his, and it felt like the boldest thing she'd ever done. He kept her close as he escorted her down the wide staircase that led from the balcony and into the ballroom, and she could not help but notice how everyone's heads swung toward them, how everyone's gazes settled heavy on them. Their descent was a declaration without words. It should terrify her, but she found herself searching for the face of the woman who had danced with Tristan before, a very different emotion from terror inspiring her actions.

Her arm hooked through his, she squeezed. "Who were you dancing with earlier?"

"I don't remember. Someone your brother told me to dance with. Someone with social influence, I suppose."

"Did he have his guide in mind when he made this suggestion?" She tried to keep the brittle edge from her words and failed.

He chuckled. "Are you worried Clearford is trying to encourage me to court other maidens?" He squeezed her hand where it rested on his forearm. "He's not. He has claimed this ball is to introduce me as a right and proper character to the ton. Do I make a lovely debutante, do you think?"

She chuckled, hiding her mouth with her hand, relief pouring through her. "Exceedingly."

"Look," he said when they were almost at the bottom of the stairs. "Lady Eldridge. She appears quite put out."

"She had better smooth that wrinkle in her nose before Lottie sees it and assumes the woman has smelled something distasteful. The mere suggestion will send her into a frantic attempt to find the offensive scent and eradicate it. Or she will kick Lady Eldridge out for nonverbal aspersions on her event."

Tristan clucked. "We can't let your sister toss her out. We need Lady Eldridge to see everything."

"Everything being you and I waltzing? Everything being you staking a claim to a duke's sister?"

"You're a sharp woman, Captain."

They hit the ballroom floor at the same time, and he swept her toward the middle of the dance floor, just beneath the gleaming chandeliers. The string quartet thrummed to life, and with a smile only for her, Tristan took her into his arms and spun her in elegant arcs through the other couples.

"You're wearing gloves," she said, breathless even though they'd only been dancing for a few steps.

"Seemed rather necessary this evening."

She hated them. She could not see his scarred hands. She could not feel the leather of them. She chewed the inside of her cheek, fighting the urge to stop their dance and peel those offending gloves from his fingers.

"How did you learn to dance like this?" she asked, a desperate distraction for herself.

"I may be a bastard, but I'm an earl's bastard, one raised at his knee since I can remember. Dear Papa wished me to be educated as any gentleman would be."

"He was good to you, then?"

He made a humming sound in his throat. "His wife was better. She would have loved this. Alex's mother." His hands tightened on her body. "Katherine was full of light. Joy. Kindness, too, and she died too soon. Not sure my father would have taken much notice of me if not for her. I said he insisted, but it is more accurate to say she insisted I be educated as a gentleman."

"I wish I could have met her."

"She would have admired you greatly." He pulled her close, a direct challenge to propriety. "How do you slow down time? How do you somehow stop the world from spinning around me?" His words, low and whispered in her ear, sent tendrils of pleasure to her belly. "I do not think of work or of my next move when I am with you. All ambition drops away but for that having to do with you." His lips close to her ear, his voice low and deep. "Pleasuring you, making you laugh, making you mine. You stop time, and I do not care to start it back again."

She tried to laugh, but it came out strangled. "Stopping time? A talent far beyond my capabilities."

"Not at all. The Current is still in need of improvements, Lady Eldridge is still a thorn in my arse, and I still worry about Alex. I see no other way to conquer all these things except for moving forward relentlessly, doing everything I can to get to the one place in the future when it is all better, when everything is resolved. I've not stopped moving. Ever. Katherine started me up like a clock. Gave me a watch, told me I'd better use my time wisely because that and my own mind were to be my only inheritance. I've lived by that lesson. But when I'm with you, I know the sensation of a rocking boat going still, of peace, like some ravenous hunger that's never sated inside me finally finds… fullness."

"We must find you a good meal."

His green eyes had become glowing emeralds, and it hurt, almost, to look into them, to see the truth of his words there, to consider what that truth meant for her, for the heady feelings waltzing in her chest. She wanted to help him get to that place he spoke of in the future where they'd conquered their problems. More problems would, naturally, arise, just different ones. But for the first time in oh so long, she felt like moving forward, and she felt as if in his arms she could. No more waltzing in circles in the dark, but a straightforward march into a new day.

He nodded across the room. "Samuel is speaking with Lady Eldridge."

"Yes, I see. That's good, I think. Perhaps—" She squeaked into a stop, then inhaled sharply because what she saw she could not tell Tristan about. Three of the women who borrowed her mother's books were leaving the ballroom arm in arm. "Hell and chaos, there they go," she muttered.

"There who goes?"

The melody rose around them with a fury, gathering power and force, and then it broke, and she broke from him, glancing over her shoulder at the women disappearing up the stairs. Tristan moved his hands from her back, and she pressed her own against her belly.

"I am feeling a little unwell." She focused on the golden toes of her slippers. "I'm a little tired, I think. I must retire. Just for a bit. I'll return for the second waltz."

"I'll come with you," he said, worry darkening his eyes.

"No, no. You stay here and make friends with the ton. Ensure your brother's aunt sees you doing so. Perhaps talk to her. I'll be fine. I'll return." And then, and she did not like to even think the word, but, yes, she fled. Not from him. She would return to him.

She fled toward the women leaking from the ballroom. They jogged up the stairs, whispering, giggling, and Andromeda followed. They stepped through tall double doors and into the hall outside the ballroom. Still she followed, waiting only a few breaths to do so. Lottie had decorated the darker space beyond the glittering ballroom with wreaths and garlands of glinting silver, a fairytale forest. The candles in silver sconces glittered off the silver leaves. The women had found the main staircase, and they descended. Andromeda followed on silent feet, grateful for her soft-soled dancing slippers. Delicate things that would fall apart if she danced too much.

A creak. She stopped, held her breath, slowly peeked over her shoulder.

Nothing but darkness, shadows and shivering silvered tree boughs. Shivering? She must be imagining it. Or perhaps not. The ball was a crush, a true success. Of course, people were about, shaking the decorations, dissipating the shadows.

She continued tiptoeing down the stairs, following the women's laughter, and when she reached the hall, the candle flames cast a different sort of flickering glow. The garlands hung here were bronze, and they cast a bronze haze over the glinting shadows. Candlelight liked bronze, it seemed, and the hall became a tangled forest, enchanted and—

Another squeak. Another rustle. Andromeda jerked to look over her shoulder, but the women were slipping out of the hall and into the staircase that led to the basement. Andromeda crossed the space and followed, tiptoeing down two steps before—

Another creak. She jumped and looked around. Still, she seemed alone, but…

"Is anyone there?" she asked, her voice falling soft on the walls, dissipating into the bronzed candlelight. She shook her head. She should not be so silly. She was near the hall. If someone happened to walk by, well, of course they did.

In fact, if the women were seeking out Lady Aphrodite, the mysterious woman had chosen her pathway cleverly. Andromeda had thought she'd follow the ladies along a more hidden secret path, but that was not the case. What if they were discovered where they were not supposed to be? A risk, that. This way, along this well-beaten path, no questions would be asked.

But once she slipped down this staircase and into the butler's room… then the danger began, the risk of discovery. Her heart beat a tattoo against her ribs, a warning to turn back, but she descended the staircase, anyway. No decorations in the butler's room, only the dark and a few candles on the wall near the only other door across the room. She went through it.

Now she stood at a crossroads. She could head toward the front of the house and the wine cellars or toward the back and the servants' hall and kitchen. The kitchens seemed likely to be a more inhabited area, and surely Lady Aphrodite would not choose that location for her gathering.

Wine cellars, then. She made her way down the hall with one hand on the wall. There were three spaces for wine, and the one closest to the stairs seemed likely to be where tonight's libations had been stored, but the one in the corner, more difficult to reach, where the older vintages were kept—she'd try there. Its doorway beckoned as she rounded a corner, a dark portal into a void of nothing. Surely, the mysterious lady would have light; surely, she'd hear the sounds of poetry meeting the night air. Nothing, though, and when she stepped into the door frame, swinging the door open, she knew she'd chosen wrong.

Another noise, like the padding of a foot softly against the floor. Barely audible, but she heard it. Right behind her. She pressed a palm to the frame and turned slowly around, her heart beating in her ears.

"I hear you," she said, ignoring the waver in her voice, the chill tingling up her spine that told her someone watched. "I've heard you following me since upstairs. Show yourself." She heard breathing, and she smelled… sea and salt and ink. "Tristan? Is that you?" Oh, please let it be Tristan because alternatives did not appeal. "Do come out if it's you. You're frightening me."

A body stepped into the dim light. A familiar body, too big for his evening wear and too rough for a pastel-colored ball and too beautiful for her.

But focused entirely on her, nonetheless.

She exhaled. "It is you. What are you doing here?" The question chased the relief from her body. He could find her out. Find them out. She'd forgotten the danger of the newspaperman in the pleasures of his courtship, but her fear rushed back to her now like pinpricks against every inch of her skin.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, his face a hard mask of lines and angles in the flickering light. She'd been right to fear this man following her. He could discover everything. And what would he do once he did?

"I… I'm visiting the wine cellar."

"To rest?"

"It's cool and calm down there. The crush of the ballroom proved… overstimulating. I would like to be alone for a moment or two."

His face softened. "I was worried about you. I'm glad to see you well. But you're lying."

"I'm not!" She flinched as she spoke.

He prowled closer, and she stepped backwards into the dark room.

"Very well. Falsehood or not, I find I care very little about why you're here."

"Why?"

"Because where you are is terribly convenient. I have a rather private, personal question to ask you. I've been dying to know the answer all evening."

"What is it?"

"Do you remember what you promised me?"

For a moment, her mind provided no recollections, but then the answer flooded her in a flash of light. He'd asked her to touch herself and think of him.

She swallowed hard. "Yes, I remember."

"And have you kept your promise?"

She closed her eyes. "I have." Every morning. And most nights before she fell asleep.

His hand on her chin in the darkness. "I promised myself I would not touch you tonight, except for the chaste touches allowed in ballrooms. But it's been two weeks, Andromeda. What do you think I should do?"

She licked her lips. "Have you … while thinking of me?"

"An incomplete question. But I take your meaning. And yes, I have. I lay back on my bed and close my eyes and think of every bit of you I've touched, imagine touching it again. You make me feel like a green boy, eager and hungry." A small kiss, soft as a shadow, on her lips. "Two weeks is too long. Tell me, have you had any time to read?"

Her eyes popped open, though in the darkness of the cellar she gained no greater sight than when they'd been closed. "Books? At a time like this? I'd rather you ravish me."

A beat of silence.

Then, "Very well, Andromeda. I will."

He stepped toward her, backing her farther into the room and reaching out with one leg behind him to close the door. She shouldn't want his pursuit now. She had a scandalous lady poet to pin down. But she could not conjure the words to stop him, did not even want to. Her footsteps matched his in a different sort of waltz from the one they'd shared before. When the backs of her legs hit something hard—a barrel, she yelped and wrapped her fingers around the edge.

His hands wrapped around her waist, lifted her, sat her on top of the barrel.

She clutched his shoulders, knowing where they were even in the dark, and she clung to him tightly. Not releasing her waist, he knelt before her on first one knee, then both, slipping his hand beneath the hem of her skirt and finding her ankle, rubbing his thumb over every hill and valley there.

"Delicate bones and silk stockings," he said, the words faint, hot breaths against her legs. "Is your skin more silken than the stockings? I hope to find out. Some other day. Tonight"—he ran his hands up her calves and squeezed her legs just below the knee—"I'll discover how you taste."

She sliced her hands into the hair at his nape, from wool to the rough satin of his hair, each sensation adding to those he gave her below. What did he look like kneeling before her? Like an acolyte adoring his goddess? How silly? She was no goddess. But beneath his hands, his lips, his every word, she felt like one. He kissed up the inside of her leg, leaving heated stars of perfection where no one but he could see.

Though not now. Later, alone in the candlelight of her bedroom, she'd pull up her shift and inspect the skin of her inner thighs, searching for rough red kisses left by the scruff of his chin, searching for the marks his lips must surely be leaving on her.

He nipped her inner thigh, and she yelped, tightened her hold on his hair as sensation rippled through her. She knew what he was doing, had read of it, had seen illustrations. But she'd never imagined because she'd not thought she'd ever see the light again. But he'd lit each candle inside her until the room around them—dark and cold and silent—glowed as if illumined by every candle in the world, by every gas lamp, by the sun itself. She could see her way forward now, and he stood before her, beckoning.

She stepped out of the grief and fear that had held her so tightly for so long and into light.