Page 18 of The Duke’s Hidden Runaway Bride

She could not see his expression clearly in the dimness, but she felt his attention settle upon her.

“You should take care, Miss Jones.”

“Of what?” She could not keep the challenge from her voice.

“Speaking to a man as though you expect something of him.”

“Does it frighten you?” she asked, curious despite herself.

He was quiet a moment, as though weighing what the truth would cost him.

“Quite dreadfully,” he said at last.

The answer was lightly given, but the truth beneath it was not. Ophelia heard both.

The storm beat against the walls. A little snow had sifted through the cracks and lay in white lines across the earthen floor.

After a time, Adrian said, “May I tell you something else?”

“That is not generally how questions work,” she said, amused.

“I have never had much respect for rules I do not understand.” His voice gentled. “You need not disappear from me.”

The words found a place in her that a question could not have reached.

“Sometimes disappearing is the only choice one has.”

He waited. He did not ask why.

She could have left it there. He had given her that freedom.

“From being a thing other people decided,” she said. “That is where I learned it. When you cannot run or fight or speak, you learn to disappear where you stand. It is the only freedom left, to become so still that they forget you are a person.”

The words fell into the darkness between them.

“That is more than I meant to say,” she whispered finally, a little ashamed of it.

“No one should have required that of you.”

There was no charm in his voice now and no pity. Only a quiet anger that was not aimed at her.

The silence after that was different from the silences before. They had each placed something true and dangerous into the other’s keeping, and neither knew what to do next.

“What was it that you wanted to tell me?” she asked finally, and he half-laughed.

“I have clean forgot. Nothing of great importance, doubtless, so let me tell you something of no importance at all, to pass the time.”

The storm went on. The grey afternoon faded, and the cold drew them nearer by degrees. The careful foot of air narrowed until Ophelia’s shoulder rested against his arm. Neither of them acknowledged when it happened.

The snow whispered at the cracks.

Ophelia looked up to say something light and found his face very near hers.

Adrian had gone utterly still. Desire showed plain in the way he looked at her, but he did not lean closer. He would not take that final inch from her.

The choice was hers.

That was what undid her. No one had ever left a choice of such import entirely in her hands. She wanted to close the space between them, to learn the feel of his mouth against hers. She wanted it more than she had allowed herself to want anything in years.