late for retreat. Neither of them could turn away from this.
He knew that Alice’s attention was all fixed on Hawick. As if she had not even noticed Razeby. As if she were cutting him every bit as much as he were cutting her. And he should be glad of it. Truly he should. But it was not gladness that he felt as the little group strolled towards him and his party through the sunshine.
Every step brought her nearer.
Five feet… She was so close now that he could hear the soft breathiness of her laughter at Hawick’s joke.
Four feet… Everything sharpened. Everything focused. The hushed ripple of grass blades in the breeze. The sweep of her eyelashes, soft as a butterfly’s wing.
Three feet… The sound of his breath. Alice.
Two feet. The beat of his heart… and of hers. Alice.
One foot… Razeby turned his gaze to Alice. And in that very last moment, that second in which all of time seemed to slow and stop, she raised her eyes to meet his.
The jolt hit his stomach and rippled right through his body. It was as if they were the only two people in the park. As if all of the past six months flashed between them in stark vivid clarity. As if the dark blue depths of her eyes swallowed him up and submersed the whole of him in this moment and this woman and all that was beating through him.
Their gazes locked and held. And he could not look away, not if all of the future depended on it, which in a way it did.
And then the moment was past.
She was past.
Walking on with Hawick and the others. Walking away from him.
His steps never faltered. He kept on walking. As if nothing had just happened.
No one else noticed. Everything else went on just the same. Miss Pritchard’s fingers still lay upon his arm. Mrs Pritchard was still selling the family pedigree behind him, her younger daughter chipping in smart little comments here and there.
But Razeby was not the same.
Something had just happened and the force of it shook him more than he wanted to admit. Something had just happened, something which Razeby did not understand.
Alice did not hear what it was that Hawick had been saying to her, all she could hear was the rush of her own blood too loud in her ears and all she could feel was the tremor that vibrated through her body. She deliberately kept her gaze low as if playing coy with Hawick, when in truth, it was to hide the storm of emotion suddenly raging within her.
She had seen Razeby and his party, the rich, beautiful young woman clinging so possessively to his arm, and the women who could only be her mother and sister walking so proudly behind, the minute she had rounded the corner. And she had prepared herself. Knowing that he had no choice but to cut her. Knowing she had no choice but to not give a damn. To cut him right back.
And she had almost done it. Would have done it, despite the pound and throb of her heart, and the raw rush of air that rasped in her lungs, and the tight knot that worked itself ever tighter in her stomach, except for that last moment, when it felt like his voice had whispered her name, calling her. The sound of it stroking right down her spine. Tingling against her skin. And she had answered without pausing to think. Yielded to it instinctively.
And when she looked, those liquid brown eyes had been on hers, not looking away, not cutting her, only holding her as intensely as they ever had done, perhaps even more so. As if all that had gone between them had not ended, but grown only stronger. Her heart was still beating nineteen to the dozen.
By her side Hawick shifted infinitesimally closer.
‘So you will come, Miss Sweetly?’ he was saying.
She calmed herself, hid the shock of what had just passed between her and Razeby. By the time she raised her eyes to meet Hawick’s she had herself under control again.
She smiled at him, although she had not the slightest idea of what he had just invited her to. ‘If I’m free,’ she said. ‘I’ll need to check my diary.’ Truly the consummate professional. Venetia, her teacher, would have been proud of her.
Hawick smiled, too, with a particular interest in his eyes that made her want to shiver in the warmth of the spring sunshine. She hid the urge, along with all the others.
The party walked on through the park.
Hawick began another story, but Alice was not listening to Hawick or his story. She was thinking of Razeby and why, despite everything, it felt just like it had done when she had seen him for the very first time.
Razeby dreamed that night that Alice was with him in the bed, that they were still together and all was as it had been.
‘Razeby,’ she had whispered in her soft Celtic lilt and stroked her fingers against his cheek. ‘Razeby.’
Alice. In the dream he had whispered her name through the darkness. ‘Alice,’ the word murmured aloud on his lips as he held her to him, so glad she had found him, to save him from the terrible thing that was coming, although in the dream he could not remember the nature of the dawning threat, no matter how hard he tried.
The early morning sunlight danced across his eyes, waking him from sleep, dragging him back from his dream world to reality. His body was primed and hard, his erection throbbing for release, but Alice was not in his arms.
He was alone.
And he knew the terrible dark thing that was coming.
The warm comfort of the dream world fell away, leaving in its place the hard coldness of reality and a sinking feeling in his gut. His arousal deflated.
The sunlight that had crept through the crack in his curtains dimmed behind the greyness of cloud. Razeby threw aside the covers and sat up, swinging his legs round to sit on the edge of the bed, relishing the sting of the cool morning air against the nakedness of his skin. It helped clear his mind of Alice and the bittersweet echo of the dream.
The clock chimed nine just before his valet knocked on the door and entered, followed by a maid bearing a pitcher of hot water and his secretary carrying a diary that Razeby knew was crammed full of appointments. He pushed aside the dream as surely as he had pushed aside what had happened yesterday in Hyde Park. Guilt, lust, desire—whatever it was. He could not name it otherwise. He would not name it otherwise.
Not Miss Pritchard, he thought. But tonight there was dinner at Mrs Padstow’s at which twenty young respectable women would be present. And tomorrow afternoon, a débutante picnic organised by Lady Jersey. Then there was Almack’s, and Lady Routledge’s matchmaking ball. And he would find a wife at one of those.
He raked a hand through his hair and, taking a deep breath, rose to face the day.
Alice came offstage to rapturous applause that night. Three curtain calls and still the audience were whistling and calling for more. Her dressing room was so crammed with flowers there was scarcely room for the
