Ward choked on his wine. “The boating accident?”
“I was drowning and he saved me,” she said, lifting her glass in a clear salute to her husband.
The wine’s flowery fragrance floated into the carriage. Ward watched her throat working as she swallowed. “Can you tell me what happened?”
She twisted up one shoulder. “The sailboat capsized; I didn’t know how to swim. It was so foolish! We were within sight of the shore, but as it turned out, it is possible to drown very close to land.”
The only response Ward could think of was a curse, so he kept silent.
“All these years later, I’ve forgiven myself for surviving, but at the time it was unbearable. I watched him go under and never come up again.”
“He would never have chosen differently,” Ward said, keeping it matter-of-fact. He finished his wine, took her glass, and placed them both in the basket.
Her smile was rueful. “I do remind myself of that.”
The carriage rocked under them, and she shook her head with a sudden impatient gesture. “Why are we discussing such a dismal subject?”
“We are tracing the steps of a particular dance,” Ward said, standing for a moment in the swaying carriage before he sat down beside her. So closely that his leg touched hers.
“A dance?” she asked.
“A dance.” His lips brushed the curl of her ear. She smelled of berries again, not sweet or insipid, but something wilder than flowers, with a bite.
She drew away, and the coolness in her eyes insisted that she didn’t welcome his kiss or the press of his thigh.
But he was learning to read her. To understand her.
When Mrs. Eugenia Snowe felt threatened, she drew her ladylike guise around herself like chain mail.
“In this particular movement of the dance, I am offering myself,” he said. “A gift, though I will admit to thinking that diamonds would look lovely here.”
When Ward’s callused finger touched the hollow at the base of Eugenia’s neck, she felt warm all over, as if he radiated heat. The neck . . . such an innocuous place. But when Ward’s fingers slid slowly, slowly under her ear, his eyes intent on her face, she could feel his touch in all her most sensitive places.
His hand curled around the back of her neck as he watched her for permission. She couldn’t remember desire like this, as if liquid fire ran over her skin. No, that was wrong, she must have felt this with Andrew.
It was a physical reaction, a mating response . . .
“I loved my husband,” she heard herself say.
The caressing fingers paused and Ward nodded, eyes respectful. “I’m certain he was a good man, Eugenia.”
“He was a great man,” she said fiercely. “He was going to change things in the House of Lords. He was—he would have done so much.”
Sweet hunger thrummed through her so strongly she could scarcely believe she had waited seven years to feel this again.
“May I kiss you?” Ward asked.
“Yes.” Her head turned to the perfect angle for his kiss, making it clear to him, but also to herself. She was going to do this thing, this . . .
This step away from Andrew. This step away from death and into life. It was only a small step, but she knew that it would change everything.
She would stop hiding in her office. She would attend balls and the theater—she used to love plays—and someday a man would come along who had Andrew’s elegant charm and joie de vivre.
Not quite yet, though. She would enjoy herself first, learning to live in the world and not in the cloister that was Snowe’s Registry.
As Ward’s lips touched hers, her body shuddered, as if she were waking from a seven-year sleep. She raised her arms and slid them around his neck.
She was no longer married. Or a virgin. Or young. Perhaps she should be clear about the future, though. She didn’t want to hurt him, because Edward Reeve may be one of the strongest, toughest men she’d ever met, but she had the idea he was capable of being hurt.
She drew back just as he was about to deepen the kiss and cradled the strong planes of his face with her hands. “Ward,” she whispered.
Intelligent eyes, ferocious and desirous. “Eugenia,” he replied. Her voice throbbed with desire, but his was calm.
She took a deep breath. She had learned while running Snowe’s that clarity was important. “I may always be in love with Andrew. I am not ready to marry again and I wouldn’t want you to think of me in that light.”
“I understand,” Ward said. He put a hand over hers, braced on the seat between them. “We are considering courtesies that can be exchanged between friends, Eugenia.”
Her gaze darted down to their ungloved hands. His hand dwarfed her slim fingers.