No matter how fraught their interactions had been, she could predict his conduct. As her sense of familiarity renewed, she relaxed against his chest. That same, solid chest she remembered huddling against.
Suddenly, they weren’t in any retiring room, royal or not. They were in a yew maze. Sheltering from spread wings of onyx darkness, the same warm, bewildering sensation winding into her limbs….
This time, however, Neville wasn’t thrusting her away. Instead, he was clutching her close. Indeed, his strength was the only reason she could still stand. He cradled the back of her head with one hand and, with his other, repeatedly rubbed soothing circles into the small of her back.
Safe. She was safe.
“Millie…” He pressed his brow against hers. “Whythe devildidn’t you heed my warning?”
Her sense of warmth and shelter evaporated. She went stiff and cold again.
But Neville did not seem to have noticed.
“I was so afraid!” he exclaimed.
The circles he’d been making against her back ceased, and she felt the pressure of his hands, one between her hips and the other between her shoulder blades. Then, a light pitter-patter of his touch rained over her back, as if he must check, and then check again, to make sure she was real.
“I was determined to reach you, but I didn’t think I could—”
Reach her?From where?
“—and yet, Iwasable to rescue you, after all, praise God!”
Rescue?
Nevillethoughthe’drescuedher? He hadn’t even known she’d be here!
“You?!You…” She sputtered.
She couldn’t yet put together a sentence, but now, her feet were firmly on the ground. And, this time,shewas the one who thrusthimaway.
“Whatthe devilareyoudoing in the royal retiring room, Neville?” She repeated his foul language. “And just what do you mean by this…thisoutrage?”
She could think of no stronger word.
Onlyoutragecaptured the internal and external waves of mortification crashing down about her. She crossed her armsprotectively over her chest and held fast in the darkness, just as Neville had held her a moment before.
She was so furious she started shaking.
Furious not just at Neville, but at Willard, at those sorry excuses for gentlemen Willard counted as friends, at an entire world of men who saw women as flowers to be plucked…cut down and then used to adorn men’s fancies, whims, and dreams as just easily as the bud Willard had clipped from the bower. What could a cut flower do but wither?
Willard.
She could practically taste her loathing.
She tore out the silken rose Willard had placed over her ear and cast the vile, fake thing away.
“Outrage?” Neville repeated, sounding as bewildered and angry as Millie felt.
“Yes,” she confirmed.
Having to dance last night with Willard had been Neville’s fault. She wouldn’t have stepped out onto the floor at all had Neville not been striding across it looking as if he was about to throw her over one of his massive shoulders.
She would have hit Neville in one of them if she’d been certain where he stood.
“Outrage,” Neville muttered. “You’reone to talk. I specifically warned you that Willard was dangerous.”
“No,” she refuted, able to think clearly now. “You urged me to have caution. You said Willard was not the kind of man people believed. That isnotthe same thing as saying he’sdangerous.”