They Mocked Her When Her Groom Arrived In A Farmer's Cart — He Was The Duke In Disguise
Chapter 20
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
She looked up at him, and for the length of that dance, the ballroom truly did vanish: the whispers, the laughter, Violet's silver silk, and Victor's smirk—all of it dissolved into nothing beside the steady warmth of his eyes holding hers.When the music ended, he did not release her hand at once. Instead, he led her through a side door onto a moonlit terrace, where the cold night air and the sudden quiet after the crowded ballroom felt like stepping into an entirely different world."Callum," she said softly, searching his face in the pale light. "Who are you, truly?"He raised a hand to her cheek, his thumb tracing a slow, gentle line along her jaw, his eyes dark with something restrained and aching that made her breath catch in her throat."Someone," he said quietly, "who has wanted to kiss you since the moment you climbed into that cart without a single complaint."The distance between them had already narrowed to almost nothing. Matilda felt her heart hammering against her ribs, felt the warmth of his breath against her lips, felt every nerve in her body straining toward the closeness she had denied herself since that first rainstorm beneath his coat.The cold night air no longer registered at all, replaced entirely by the warmth radiating from him, by the low, unsteady sound of his breathing, by the aching, patient want in his eyes that asked rather than demanded, and left the final choice entirely, deliberately, in her hands.Their lips met in the moonlight: soft at first, questioning, and then deepening into something far more certain—a slow, searching kiss that spoke every unspoken word of the past weeks in a single, unhurried moment.His hand slid to cup her jaw; hers rose to rest against the solid warmth of his chest. And for that suspended breath of time, neither the mystery of his hidden truth nor the mockery of the ballroom behind them mattered in the slightest.When they finally drew apart, foreheads resting together, both breathing unsteadily, Callum's voice was rough with restraint. "Whatever you learn of me," he said, "know that this—every moment of it—was never a lie."Matilda did not yet understand what he meant. She would understand it, and feel its full weight, before that same night had ended.They returned to the ballroom only long enough to collect their cloaks. And it was there, near the entrance hall, that Matilda's gloved hand brushed against an envelope resting on a side table among the evening's collected invitations and correspondence, set aside, evidently, for a guest who had not yet claimed it.She recognized Callum's handwriting on a note tucked beneath it, and beside it, in a clerk's formal hand, an address that stopped her breath entirely: