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“You look very beautiful this evening,” Ernest said hastily, more to distract himself from his panicked thoughts than anything else.

Gwen nodded. “Thank you.”

“I mean, you look very beautiful every evening,” he amended quickly, desperately worried he had somehow offended. “It is just that this specific evening, you look…specifically beautiful.”

Christ in his heavens, what the hell was his mouth saying?

But Gwen did not appear to care. She did not even respond to his latter remark, simply fixing her eyes somewhere beyond his left shoulder.

It would be so much easier to talk to her if his body were not responding so powerfully. It was all Ernest could do to prevent a fifth leg from joining their dancing, and the turning around the ballroom was not the only reason his head was starting to feel giddy.

It was impossible to retain any semblance of normality around this woman. Ernest could feel himself unraveling, the need to tell her just how much he cared for her starting to make it impossible to concentrate.

I love you. I need you.

Everything is better when I’m with you.

Hang the money—I would rather live in an old, drafty house in need of repair with you than marry anyone else.

Gwen, I love you.

None of these words were actually uttered aloud, though Ernest certainly thought them at the top of his lungs. Instead, they danced in silence, every step bringing them closer, and he sensed her breathing quickening.

Was that the dance? The effort of the steps?

Or was it for a different, a far more powerful reason? A reason that made it impossible for her to breathe just as his own lungs were constricting?

“Gwen,” Ernest said in a half-strangled voice.

And only then did she look up, her sapphire eyes sparkling with an emotion he did not understand as she did so. “My lord.”

Hearing the formality on her lips should have been expected. They were in public; anyone could have heard them.

And yet that did not stop Ernest’s spirits from sinking as he tried to remind himself that she belonged to another.

Oh, the wedding may not yet have happened, but an engagement was an engagement. He was not sure if a contract had been signed, but if so, it would be almost impossible to break. A dissolution of an engagement may have been the lady’s prerogative, but it was most unusual for it to happen at all, and a gentleman certainly could not do such a thing.

Lord Ravenshurst could not release her. It would take Gwen to end things between the two of them, and Ernest knew how greatly she longed for the freedom and family that the gentleman in question could give her.

Just for a moment, Ernest hesitated.

Was he truly content to rip Gwen’s future away?

Her chosen future, the match she had made for herself. Was he so selfish as to demand that she end that commitment merely because they had shared a kiss so potent, Ernest was not sure he would ever be able to stop thinking about it?

The music stopped. Their dance halted. There they stood, arm in arm, as the other couples who had been waltzing around them politely applauded the musicians.

But he and Gwen stood stock still, her slight frame still enclasped in his arms, and Ernest knew in that moment that he had to say something.

Just not here.

“Come with me,” said Ernest quietly.

He had not given her a huge amount of choice. Slipping his hand over hers, he wrenched her forward past the other dancers, past the observers who were chattering over glasses of punch, toward a small door that opened up into—

A room.

No, not a room. A corridor, it appeared, with a staircase before them upon which harassed servants were traipsing up and down with various armloads of items being brought to and from the ballroom.