exactly the opposite of the room where they’d had their last conversation, when she had told Nick, for the second time, that she could no longer marry him, and then insulted him to make sure he got the message. In her memory, everything in that room, one of her father’s cold, cavernous drawing rooms, was white — white walls, white upholstery, white hothouse flowers, her white gloves clenched in the lap of her white dress, Nick’s white face as his blood leached away while she cut into him. Only Nick’s flowers had been red, as though it was his heart he’d flung at her instead of his roses.
She shivered. This was not that room. She was twenty-nine, not nineteen — and her father wasn’t here to remind her of propriety and bloodlines. She walked straight toward the row of decanters on a shelf in the corner, not waiting for Nick to follow. She would rather have wine, but she hadn’t thought to send her butler for a bottle, and she wasn’t of a mind to wait. “Brandy or whisky?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Whisky.” He locked the door. The sound was a warning shot. Her hand shook as she tilted the decanter toward a glass, and she splashed liquor on the tray beneath it. She bit the inside of her cheek, hard, striving for control.
She poured a generous amount of whisky into his glass, then poured herself the same amount. Turning, she discovered that he was closer than she thought he was — close enough to reach out and take the glass from her hand. His eyes were hooded under his brows. She couldn’t read the expression there.
She used to be able to read every expression on his face. The fact that she couldn’t now, even though she shouldn’t have expected to, hurt. She thought she had felt every pain over him that it was possible for one to feel, but she discovered a new one — the pain of realizing that she no longer knew him quite so well as she thought she did.
It felt like a death. Ellie raised her glass to him, silent, one hand still holding the shelf behind her as though it could keep her upright.
He raised his glass as well. “To old friends,” he said.
“To old friends,” she echoed. Perhaps he felt what she did — the shock of knowing that ten years had passed, even though when their eyes connected over the rims of their glasses, it felt like nothing at all had come between them.
She sipped her whisky, welcoming the burn of alcohol as it slid over her tongue. It no longer made her cough. He raised an eyebrow. “I never thought to see you drink whisky so easily, Ellie.”
“There are many things I do easily now,” she said, pushing off from the shelf and sliding past him to her chaise. “I’m no longer nineteen.”
“No, you’re not,” Nick said, turning to watch as she took her seat. She regretted it immediately — alone, she would have lounged against the sensuously curved arm. She couldn’t relax like that in front of him, though. And the chaise was backless, which meant she would have to sit ramrod straight, as though she awaited his favor.
He felt no such constraint about his posture. He flung himself down into one of her chairs, facing her, his long legs spread out in front of him like he was at his club rather than in a gently-bred woman’s home.
Then again, he probably didn’t have a club. No club would have had him before he left, when he had obscene wealth but refused to bow to all the indigent lords who thought themselves above him. He hadn’t been back long enough to use his title to gain entrance. And he was in his own house, not hers.
Ellie sipped her whisky again, too quickly. Her thoughts kept scattering, bouncing between present and past. She tried to anchor herself to the present and the question of why he was home.
Nick didn’t say a word. In her dainty chair, sipping whisky out of her delicate tumbler, he still managed to look like a predatory animal. He watched her, though, as though considering what to do with her — whether to toy with her or kill her swiftly, perhaps?
She inhaled sharply and told herself to stop being dramatic. She couldn’t let him unnerve her again, or she might never regain control.
After three minutes of silence, three minutes of him staring at her and her