The words settled heavily between them. He lifted a hand then, reaching for her without caution. His fingers brushed gently against her cheek, and Eleanor did not move away.
"You deserve everything you once hoped for," he said, his voice lower now. "More than that, you deserve to be with someone who knows exactly what he has been given."
The last thread of restraint broke. He did not seem to pause to reconsider, and he did not retreat into caution or practicality or any of the barriers he had spent years constructing. He simply moved, closing what little distance remained between them, and kissed her.
There was nothing hesitant in it. It was sudden, driven by everything that had been building between them for far too long to remain contained any longer. Eleanor made the smallest sound of surprise against him, but she did not pull away. Instead, her hand caught lightly at his sleeve, holding there as though steadying herself against the force of the moment.
For those few suspended seconds, everything else disappeared; the arrangement, the rules, every careful reminder that this was not real. All of it fell away beneath the simple reality of him kissing her as though he had wanted to for far longer than either of them had admitted.
And when she kissed him back, however briefly, however instinctively, it was enough to make everything else vanish entirely.
CHAPTER 18
The town was quiet that evening.
Julian had chosen the club deliberately, for it offered a kind of anonymity he did not have at Harrowby. It was a place where he could sit without interruption, without expectation, and attempt to put his thoughts back into order.
It was not working.
He sat at a table near the window, a glass untouched in front of him, his attention fixed somewhere beyond the street outside. The events of the previous evening refused to arrange themselves into anything coherent. They did not fit within the structure he had built his life around, and every attempt to force them into place only made the disruption more apparent.
He had kissed her. That fact alone should have been enough to require distance, or at least some immediate effort to restorecontrol. Instead, it was not something he regretted, but it had altered everything in a way he could not ignore.
He could still feel it; the certainty of it, not to mention his utter lack of hesitation. It had not been an accident. That was the problem.
Julian reached for his glass, though he did not drink from it. His grip tightened slightly before he set it down again. He should not have allowed it. He should have–
"Lord Harrowby."
The voice cut cleanly through his thoughts. Julian looked up to see Rosamund standing beside the table, composed as ever. There was no surprise in her expression, no uncertainty. He almost envied her for that.
"Lady Rosamund."
He did not rise.
"I had thought I might find you here," she said, taking the seat opposite him without waiting to be invited.
"That was presumptuous."
"And yet correct."
Julian did not answer that. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The quiet between them was not comfortable, but it was familiar at least.
"You have been difficult to reach," she said at last.
"That is because I had no desire to be found."
"That has never stopped me before."
"No," Julian said. "It has not."
Rosamund regarded him for a moment, her gaze assessing, taking in more than he would have preferred. He did not want to see her, for he had very little to say to her. Not only that, but he had gone to the club that evening with the hopes that he would have some time alone, not with the intent of being hounded.
"You look unsettled," she noted.
"I am not."
"You are," she said calmly. "You simply do not care to admit it. But then, I cannot say that I blame you for that."