Page 10 of Sweet Venom Of Time (Blade of Shadows #6)
Like a caged bird pretending its clipped wings had never known the sky.
With every delicate wave of the fan, I summoned a coolness the evening air refused to grant, willing it to soothe the heat blooming across my cheeks. But this fan was more than an accessory.
It was a shield.
A fragile barrier to conceal the quiver of my lips, to hide the tremor of fear threading its way through me, threatening to unravel all at once.
“Your gloves, my lady.”
Mary’s voice pulled me back from the precipice of my thoughts. She presented them with reverence, their silk fabric gleaming under the candlelight—an understated elegance, soft yet inescapable.
I slid my arms into their long, encasing embrace, feeling the fabric tighten over my skin like a second layer of flesh, smooth and deceptive.
The gloves stretched past my elbows, a seamless extension of the gown’s creamy hue. They were paradoxical—shielding yet exposing, concealing yet proclaiming. A whisper of status, wealth, and quiet power stitched into every seam.
I folded one hand over the other, the fan resting lightly between my fingers as the silk whispered secrets only the wearer could hear—secrets of restraint, of silent suffering, of a woman adorned for admiration but never for freedom.
With gloved hands and a fluttering fan, I became the perfect portrait of poise and nobility.
Yet beneath the fine fabric and gilded expectations, my heart still raged, beating a furious rhythm against the constraints of silk and circumstance.
“Let’s have a look at you, Lady Elizabeth,” Mary’s gentle voice coaxed me to turn.
I spun, my movements slow, cautious. The heavy skirts cascaded around me in shimmering waves, pooling at my feet like the petals of an opulent flower caught in an unforgiving breeze. For a fleeting moment, I was anchored only by Mary’s touch—a lifeline against the undertow of satin and duty.
She peered at me through the looking glass, her soft smile holding something deeper than mere admiration. She could see me—not just the polished surface, but the turmoil roiling beneath it.
“You look beautiful,” she murmured, eyes searching mine with quiet understanding.
“Thank you, Mary,” I replied, though the words felt like a fragile whisper, barely carrying the weight of my gratitude.
I found something rare within these suffocating walls in her friendship—a semblance of solace. She was merely a maid to others, but to me, she was more. A confidante. A sister in spirit. The one soul who might understand the storm churning beneath my poised exterior.
“Try not to worry so much,” Mary said, smoothing a stray curl with a motherly tenderness. “This night will pass, as all nights do. And I’ll be there in every thought.”
I held her gaze in the mirror, gripping those words like a talisman.
She meant them as comfort, but they only brushed against the raw, exposed edges of my anxiety.
Tonight, I was to be paraded before a room full of watchful eyes, offered to a man I loathed. The weight of that truth pressed down on me, stealing the breath from my lungs and leaving me dizzy with dread. But it was not only the fear of the evening that unsettled me—it was him.
The stranger.
The man whose arrival had shattered the monotony of my suffering, igniting a fire within me that no sense of duty could extinguish.
I remembered the collision in the hallway, the jolt of impact as his hands found my arms, the startling intimacy of his grip—steadying, strong. The memory was still imprinted on my skin.
And his eyes—gods help me, his eyes—had burned with something wild, untamed.
A glint of wilderness in a world that demanded order.
The mere recollection sent my pulse racing.
His attire had been an anomaly among the meticulously curated wealth of my father’s estate; the styling of his coat was unfamiliar, his self otherworldly in a place built on rigid decorum. He was not one of us.
A traveler, perhaps. A man accustomed to lands beyond the reach of our noble circles. There had been something in how he carried himself, a quiet defiance in the set of his shoulders—as though he belonged to a world far greater than the gilded cage I inhabited.
And then there had been his smile.
Oh, that smile—a mere flicker, gone before I could grasp its meaning. But it had changed something.
A fleeting curve of his lips, yet it had unraveled me.
“Lady Elizabeth?”
Mary’s voice pulled me back to the present, laced with quiet concern.
“Forgive me,” I murmured, smoothing the front panel of my gown as if I could press away the lingering thoughts that refused to leave me. “I was… somewhere else.”
Mary tilted her head, eyes twinkling with knowing mischief. “Somewhere, or with someone?”
I hesitated for the briefest moment before conceding, “Perhaps both.”
Her lips curved into a conspiratorial smile as she leaned closer. “Whoever he is,” she whispered, her voice as light as a feather against the charged air between us, “he has certainly made an impression.”
Heat bloomed across my cheeks, betraying me before I could form a proper defense. “It’s foolishness,” I admitted, though they felt like a lie as I spoke the words.
Because no matter how much I tried to dismiss it, I knew.
I would carry that moment with me for as long as breath filled my lungs—the unexpected thrill of contact, the firm grip that had steadied more than just my body.
And as I vanished down the corridor, he left behind more than just a fleeting memory.
He left behind questions.
And a longing for answers I feared I would never receive.
Nestled within my chamber’s silk and brocade confines, I felt like a ship adrift, my thoughts unmoored, wafting ceaselessly toward him—toward the stranger whose touch had set my world alight.
He became something more in my mind’s eye with each passing moment. A wanderer. An adventurer. A man who had braved the tempests of distant oceans and stood with quiet confidence in foreign courts, his stories as plentiful as the stars.
The clock ticked, marking the march of time, yet I remained ensnared in the past. I traced the memory of our collision, the firm pressure of his hands against my shoulders, the fleeting charge that had passed between us.
I closed my eyes—and there he was.
A ghostly aura lingered in the quiet of my room, half-formed from shadows and whispers, compelling in ways I could scarcely articulate.
My heart, once so disciplined and so accustomed to the restrained pace of expectation, now beat with its own will.
It fluttered as the lace brushed against my skin, mistaking it for his touch.
It soared at the rustle of leaves beyond my window, imagining it the sound of his return.
I chastised myself for such fancies—what sense was there in yearning for a specter, for a phantom who existed only within the hazy realm of chance?
And yet…
As the gloaming cast its velvety curtain across the sky, I allowed myself the indulgence of dreams where our paths might cross again.
In the grandeur of a ballroom, our hands might find one another, our steps aligning in a dance as old as time itself.
Across the throng of reception, our gazes might meet—a look laden with secrets and silent promises.
Our voices might mingle beneath the moon’s gentle glow, soft as the summer breeze that kissed the roses below my window.
And just for a moment, I let myself believe.
The infatuation nestled within me—a clandestine spark, flickering in the darkness, threatening to ignite the air I breathed.
It was irrational—a fantasy spun from a single, stolen moment.
An ember in the otherwise cold hearth of my existence.
Yet it warmed me, as the suffocating reality of my betrothal loomed like a execution. Lord Winston. The very name sent shards of ice through my veins, unnerving me to the marrow.
“Off you go,” Mary murmured, tucking an errant strand of hair into place.
My feet carried me forward with hesitant grace, each step down the grand staircase a silent plea for courage. The balusters blurred into a maze of intricate carvings, the sweeping arc of polished wood guiding and entangling me.
This house, this world—a gilded prison.
And at the foot of the stairs, time stilled.
As if the world itself had paused, holding its breath.
He stood there.
The stranger.
The man who had haunted my thoughts, slipping unbidden into my waking reveries. He had stepped through the open door of my father’s estate as if willed into existence by my longing, as if fate had drawn him back to me.
Dark. Handsome.
His being filled the space like smoke—intoxicating, inescapable.
Our eyes locked, and in that instant, a tempest raged between us—silent but undeniable.
Was there recognition in his gaze? A torrid understanding?
Or was it merely the hopeful whisper of my heart, desperate to believe that destiny had not been so cruel?
“Elizabeth.”
My father’s voice decimated the charged silence, splintering the moment as effortlessly as a blade through silk.
I turned, finding him standing there—his frame rigid, his attire as ostentatious as ever, crowned by one of those stark white wigs that seemed an affront to fashion itself.
I reached the last step just as he beckoned me forward, his voice steeped in importance. “I’d like you to meet our guest, Lord Amir Hassan of Anatolia. Lord Hassan, I present my daughter, Lady Elizabeth Alexander.”
Lord Hassan.
The name curled through the air, unfamiliar yet now irrevocably his.
With a poise I scarcely felt, I approached the man who had unknowingly kindled such turmoil within me.
He took my gloved hand, and a jolt shot through me when his lips brushed the back of it—like the first flash of lightning splitting an oppressive sky.
The contact was fleeting, yet it left an imprint, a quiet claiming of space between us. His grip was gentle but firm, the warmth of his skin stark against the cool propriety demanded of us both.