Page 41 of Her Heartless Duke

“Scandalous?” he returned with a mischievous grin as they swayed to the music. “Don’t be telling me you are afraid. I will not believe it.”

She laughed softly at that. With the knowledge that she was going to meet her demise soon, she had felt that it would be a tragedy to live out the remainder of her days in fear.

“You believe correctly, Your Grace,” she smiled jauntily up at him. “One must live to the fullest, after all. I do not want to leave this world with regrets.”

“Do not say that!” he chided her.

“Do not say what?”

“Do not speak of leaving this world.”

She saw his eyes turn dark and stormy, felt his fingers pressing into her back, and she feared that she may have touched something in him she should not have.

He whirled her around and then pulled her back into his arms. “Do you not fear death anymore as you said before?” he asked her softly.

She looked up at him and smiled. “I fear it more than ever, Your Grace. But I fear even more a life half-lived.”

“Then let us make every moment count,” he replied. “They are watching us—now, let us give them something to talk about.”

He grinned conspiratorially at her and Olivia felt herself being swept up in the sheer force of his presence. She knew very well what he was referring to—that intricate series of steps, twirling and bowing to the music.

The same sequence of steps that she had completed before she collapsed at Anderleigh Hall.

She smiled back at him. “I am ready, Your Grace.”

He nodded and unleashed her onto the dance floor, his eyes trained on her closely as she danced by him, whirling like a flower tossed in the wind, her feet barely touching the marble floor as she went.

She felt herself growing faint, the headache and darkness threatening to swallow her vision.

Not yet!

She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She had to finish this dance, had to make this moment last for just a second longer…

She pushed through the pounding and the darkness. Swept up in the music, she felt as if she was floating instead of dancing.

“Olivia!”

That frantic voice calling her name barely broke through the haze she felt she was shrouded in. She blinked and found herself staring up into the bright lights of the chandelier. There was a sea of indistinct faces above her, their individual features so blurred she could not recognize a single one at all.

“W-what happened?” she murmured.

She saw Isaac’s mouth moving. He was talking to her but the words came out warped, like they were talking underwater. She could not understand what he was saying at all.

She closed her eyes and shook her head dazedly.

“What did you do to her?” she heard someone ask angrily.

Daniel, she realized. Her brother was here and he sounded furious.

“We were just dancing…”

Isaac sounded so confused, so lost that it broke her heart.

“Daniel,” she murmured. “Daniel, I am perfectly alright.”

“No, you are not,” he snapped at her. “Come, Olivia. We are heading back home.”

She tried to protest even as he cradled her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing, though her whole body felt leaden.