She let out a breath and glanced down at her slippered feet. Silence stretched between them. Finally, she looked up and pointed to the discarded note. “There. Pick that up and read it, then you will know the truth of it.”
He bent and retrieved the wrinkled parchment. He smoothed it out and instantly recognized the handwriting as his own, uneven scrawl.
“It is your last note to me, before I had to…” She paused, drew in a sharp breath. “Before things ended between us.”
He glanced down at the note, the creases well worn from being folded and unfolded, read over and over again. The edges had long since torn and frayed. Hope squeezed his chest. “You kept it.”
She looked at him from beneath her lashes. “I’ve clung to the foolish hope that things could be mended between us.”
He stepped forward and touched his lips to hers—soft, feather-light, a question. Then voices drifted toward them on the breeze, the unmistakable sound of two women speaking earnestly.
Quickly, he pulled back. “Meet me in the library at midnight.”
* * *
Olivia sat at the card table, not watching the timepiece on the mantel. Indeed, she was happily engrossed in her game when a maid approached, bobbed a curtsey and handed her a folded note. Olivia thanked her and opened the parchment.
The library.
No name, no explanation, but then, she didn’t need one. She knew perfectly well whom the note was from.
She glanced at the gilded timepiece. Quarter past eleven. She wasn’t due to secret off to the library for another forty-five minutes yet. Folding the note, she set it aside. When she glanced up, the other four guests at the table were staring at her. Her cheeks flushed. “Just a small mishap with my wardrobe. Nothing to fret about.”
With a tight smile, she turned her focus back to the game. A few minutes later, another note arrived.
Now.
The man was nothing if not persistent. Folding the note, she made her excuses and slipped out of the parlor, toward the library.
She was a fool to run when he called, but there was no hope for it. On a deep, elemental level, she would always follow where he led.
The library door was open just a crack, and she slipped inside. The room was pitch black, save the sliver of pale moonlight that seeped in through the crack in the curtains. Her gaze swept the room and caught on a tall, dark shadow.
Instinctively, she knew it was Adam—or, perhaps a very large fern.
“Well,” she said.
He crossed the short distance between them and placed one hand on the wall behind her head, his lips mere inches from hers. Although the room was still swathed in darkness, she could smell mint leaf on his breath, almost feel his lips as they slowly descended toward hers…
He reached behind her and locked the door.
“Did anyone see you?” His warm breath fanned her cheek, forcing a shiver of awareness up her spine.
“Does it matter if they did?” She was a ruined woman anyway. People expected her to scurry off into darkened libraries with men of questionable character.
“It matters to me.”
He pressed his lower body to hers, holding her fast against the door. Her arms were free; she could have pushed him away. She didn’t. She gloried in the feel of him, the weight of his body, the heat of his skin.
She swallowed. “Why did you want to see me?”
All at once, his weight shifted off her, his footfalls heavy as he moved across the room. Some distance away, she heard a tin rattle, then the telltale strike of a flint. A small amber flame bloomed in the darkness as Adam lit a beeswax candle, then another, and another, until the room had a beautiful healthy glow.
She stepped into the middle of the room and he stalked toward her, circling her like a hungry leopard. She watched him curiously as he circled, his eyes raking her body from head to foot. Liquid heat pooled low in her belly, spreading through her limbs like fire.
“You’ve managed to thoroughly ensnare me.”
She blinked. “Pardon?”
“What is it about you, Olivia, that drives me to distraction?”
“I…” Was she meant to answer that? She hadn’t any clue, really. Father always said she was abnormally stubborn, which was perhaps not a virtue—although she liked to think it was.
When she didn’t finish, he continued. “I was so certain I could remain unaffected…” Stepping close, he ran a finger along her jawline, reverent, feather light, as though he were touching her for the very first time. “So certain you no longer held sway over my heart.”
Oh! Inwardly, she beamed. Except, he’d growled the words, so perhaps that wasn’t a good thing. No, the way he scowled at her, anger glinting in those dark, brown eyes, it most certainly wasn’t a good thing.