Juliet found herself alone with Rory.
She shifted on her feet, suddenly unsure where to set her gaze. The tops of her slippers seemed the most logical place.
He cleared his throat, forcing her gaze to lift. “Would you do me the honor of this dance, Miss Windermere?” He held out his hand.
Juliet understood two facts at once.
She couldn’t refuse him. Not after Delilah’s little performance. Too many eyes were upon her and making assumptions—likely correct ones.
But even more… She didn’t want to refuse him.
She wanted him to take her into his arms and sweep her across gleaming Scottish pine and not stop until the slippers had been danced off her feet.
She placed her hand in his. Through silk gloves his masculine warmth slid into her.
She’d never given much thought to the idea of feeling safe in a man’s arms. In truth—and admittedly ungenerous to her own sex—she’d always half-thought the notion silly feminine fiddle-faddle. But when Rory led her the few feet to the dancing floor and placed his other hand on the indent of her waist, she felt secure and sure, like nothing beyond the circle of his arms could touch her.
He pulled her into the swirl of the waltz already begun, and her heart beat in rhythm to the light movements of her feet. Dancing was as close to flying as she would ever come. Her gaze lifted, and she found him staring down at her, lopsided smile tipping at his mouth. “You love to dance, Miss Windermere.”
“I do, Lord Kilmuir.”
“How is it we’ve never danced before now?”
“Simple,” she said. “You never asked.”
A line formed between his eyebrows. “Come to think of it, I don’t recall seeing you at any dances.”
“I was there. But you wouldn’t have noticed me.”
“Why is that?”
She laughed, the buoyant sound chorusing gaily with the laughter from the other waltzing couples. “Because I have a particular ability to blend into a wall when I so choose.”
“No longer,” he rumbled, a smile on his mouth, a seriousness in his eyes. He gathered her closer than was strictly proper and bent his head so his lips touched her ear. “You’ll never be invisible to me, Juliet.”
How his words, hot and humid against her skin, blazed an arrow of longing straight through her, to places only he had ever touched—in her body…in her soul.
She was helpless against such words.
She’d been infatuated with this man for nigh on a decade, but she understood now those had been a girl’s feelings that only saw surfaces. This last week, she’d seen so much more of the man below his appealing surface. What she felt now ran deeper.
These feelings were a woman’s.
“You’ll never be invisible to me, Juliet.”
Until this very moment, she’d been utterly unaware they were words she needed to hear.
They were as fresh droplets of rain upon parched earth.
Chapter Thirteen
Juliet released asigh against Rory’s neck, sending goose bumps cascading down his spine.
It was hard to escape the feeling that he was running out of time with her.
And it wasn’t through his body that he would achieve his desired end.
He needed the words.