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“The dark ain’t so bad,” he said. “It’s just that the people in it haven’t a choice but to fight for what they need.”
He was the one who had taught her about keyholes, when she was young enough to believe that a closed door was the end of the story.
“Women aren’t allowed the luxury of anger.”
She considered herself a connoisseur of handsomeness. She traded in it.
“You think I would forget your touch? You think I wouldn’t know it in the darkness? I would know it in battle. I would walk through fire for it. I would know it on the road to hell. I would know it in hell, which is where I’ve been, aching for it, every day since you left.”
It didn’t matter who did the kissing. Only that the kiss happened. Only that it had transformed them both in the way firsts did, making itself memory that could never be lost.
He’d known it was her from the moment she’d stepped into the ballroom, in a dress that fell in lush emerald waves to the floor, despite the mask covering everything but her beautiful kohled eyes and the dark wine color staining her lips, and the wig that stole her flame-colored curls from him. He presumed she was trying for disguise, as though he’d ever not sense her. Not feel her. As though there would ever come a time when she walked into a room and his whole body did not draw tight like a spring.
But disguise required something more than Grace would ever have—an ability to be unnoticed. And Grace would always be the first thing he noticed in any room, ever.
She turned slightly—just enough to meet his eyes. “Masks are dangerous. One never knows quite who one is when wearing one.” He did not hesitate. “Or, they make it easier for one to show his truth.”
What was it with aristocratic women and Marie Antoinette—had they all forgotten that she’d misjudged her power and ended up without a head?
“We don’t have to wreck you,” his quiet brother, who’d suffered so much at his hands, said. “She’ll do the wrecking. And you won’t for a minute think you don’t deserve it.”
She was angry, but anger was not indifference. Anger was like passion.
Grace ignored how the exaggerated movements underscored the angle of that jaw. The beauty of it. The fact that a body could draw a straight line with it. She didn’t care. She had a perfectly functional ruler in her office.
There were members of 72 Shelton who requested their consorts in full, elaborate dress simply to watch them take the clothes off and put them back on, and though Grace rarely questioned the desires of her clientele, she had never quite understood the pleasure of watching one’s lover disrobe. But right now, as his strong arms worked and the muscles of his forearms flexed, her mouth dried, and she found she was coming to see its merits. She could watch him work at his trouser buttons for hours.
Men are curious beasts, are they not? They at once wish to keep us out of their spaces and also loathe the idea of us making space for ourselves.”
