Page 41 of My Lord Rogue

Her breath caught. The implication was so bold, so unguarded, that she felt it in the base of her spine. She looked away, the world suddenly molten and unstable.

The music changed, modulating to a minor key. The other dancers blurred, their forms indistinct behind the fog of candlelight and the gloss of the marble. It was as if the rest of the room had vanished, leaving only the two of them suspended in aworld of scent and heat and the slow, inexorable turning of the dance.

His hand slipped fractionally lower, just above the curve of her hip. Her pulse thudded, wild and ragged. She felt the pressure of his fingers, the latent strength in his arm, the hunger barely veiled in the set of his jaw.

“I thought you hated me,” she murmured, her mouth close to his ear.

He bent his head, and the edge of his mask grazed her cheek. “I tried. It didn’t take.”

She felt herself smile, not out of happiness but out of the relief of finally surrendering. She stopped trying to hold herself at arm’s length, stopped counting the seconds until the dance would end.

Their hands found new ways to touch—his thumb tracing the line of her ribs, her fingers curling into the fabric at his shoulder. Each turn tightened the loop of their bodies, each pause filled with the mingled heat of their breath. The locket at her neck pressed into her collarbone, a small, insistent reminder of everything she had tried to bury. But even that weight felt lighter, now.

They danced, and the rest of the world did not matter.

At the end of the waltz, the music surged, the tempo doubling for a final, triumphant spin. Teddy pulled her close—closer than any rule of propriety allowed—and she did not resist. Her arm slid up to the nape of his neck, their bodies aligned, every plane and hollow finding its match.

The room applauded, a scattered rain of claps and laughter, but for a moment, neither of them moved. Theo’s mask pressed against his, and she felt his breath, tasted the sweet burn of brandy and the salt of her own anticipation.

“Do you want this?” he asked, the words a whisper so soft it might have been a thought.

She answered by tilting her head, just enough to bring their mouths within a whisper of contact. “Yes,” she said, the word a shock in her own ears. “I want this.”

He did not kiss her, not then. Instead, he traced his gloved fingers along her jaw, down her throat, to the hollow at her shoulder. The touch was more intimate than any embrace, more possessive than any claim.

“I will not be the first to let go,” he said.

And she believed him.

The music faded. The spell broke.

They parted, reluctantly, her hand sliding from his arm as if released from a trance. The room came back into focus, the noise and heat and the flicker of lanterns, the judicious stares of a hundred masked strangers. Verity caught Theo’s eye, her smile so wide and wicked that it threatened to split her face.

Theo felt exposed, but for once she did not mind.

She found herself laughing—low and shocked and giddy—as Teddy offered his arm again.

They walked from the dance floor, not as predator and prey, not as rival fictions, but as equals. And if the eyes of the world watched, so be it.

Let them.

Tonight, she was alive.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The rose garden at St. Ervan Hall was not a garden at all, not really. It was an empire of thorns, a massing of blush and blood-velvet, every bloom set on the verge of explosion. At dawn, the hedges held their breath in a haze of wet light, the beds overflowed with old English hybrids, the kind that tore at the skin and left secrets embedded beneath the nail. Theo walked among them, skirts heavy with dew, hands sticky from tracing the ruptured hearts of the blossoms. She had come to escape the house, the eyes, the replay of last night’s fever-dream, but the silence was too dense, and she could not escape the sound of her own breathing.

Her gown dragged behind her, picking up mud and lost petals as it went. She made a study of not thinking, not feeling. She catalogued the lemony tang of rose leaves, the bruised sweetness of earth, the sensation of dawn wind licking water from her bare shoulders. When her thoughts wandered back to the ballroom, she disciplined them with a prick of thorn, a sharp jolt to the pad of her thumb.

She wondered if anyone else was awake. She wondered, too, how much of the previous night had been real, and how muchonly a product of masks, wine, and the lunatic pulse of the quartet. The dance, the touch of his hands, the murmur of his voice at her ear—she tried to tell herself it was nothing, or at least nothing new. But the memory of him pressed close, a ghost that refused to fade with daylight.

She turned down a side path, shoes sinking into loam, and found herself at the arbor. Here, the roses had been trained for decades, centuries, into an arch of impossible density. The overhead lattice dripped with rainwater, every leaf was tipped with light. She drew her fingertips along the wet wood, the chill piercing her skin in a way that felt almost holy.

She let her eyes drift shut, only for a moment. When she opened them, he was standing on the path.

He was not meant to be there. He had always come from the side, the back, never the direct approach. He was still in his ball attire—cravat askew, shirt half-untucked. His hair was damp and wild, and his eyes had the flat, bottomless look of a man who had not slept.

“Lady Pattishall,” he said. Not Theo, never Theo, not in the open.