Mismatched Under the Mistletoe - Jess Michaels Page 0,53

do that. To press her as close as he could because he’d been forced to keep her so far for so long. But tonight he remained gentle. Not quite chaste, but not driven.

Her hands found his forearms, and she clung to him, her groan soft against his lips. When he stepped away at last, her gaze was blurry and dilated with desire.

“Think about it,” he asked again.

She nodded. “I-I will think of nothing but.”

He turned from her and left the room. As he headed for his chamber, his knees shook like a green boy who had just discovered his first object of desire. If he lost her, he knew how broken that would make him. The last decade of unspoken and unrequited love would be nothing compared to that moment of refused love. But at least he had put his cards on the table.

At least he finally had something to hope for. And so hope he would. For as long as she needed to think about what was, what had been and what could be if her heart could open.

Emily dropped both her hands against the back of the chair as Cav left the room, and leaned there with all her weight. She drew in ragged breaths one after another as the tremor of what had just happened ripped through her body and her heart and her every belief.

Cav loved her.

That fact hung like a weight around her neck and she drooped beneath it. “Nine years,” she breathed. “How could I have been so blind for nine years?”

“My lady?” She jolted at the sound of Cringle’s voice behind her and turned to find the butler standing at the doorway. “I am sorry to disturb, Lady Rutledge, but we are running short on wine. Would you like me open a case of madeira?”

For a moment, Emily had the wild desire to laugh. After all, she had just been hit by a lightning bolt, but here the world was…still turning. Wine drunk, jigs danced, servants waited as if the rug hadn’t been pulled straight out from beneath her.

“Would two cases be better?” she asked with a smile for her butler as she crossed to the door and motioned him to follow her into the hall. They walked back toward the ballroom together.

“I think they will be drunk if they are opened,” he said.

“Then do so,” she said. “Thank you.”

He gave a low bow and moved off to fulfill that duty, and Emily stared into the ballroom from the distance. The party was in full swing. And as much as she wished to go hide in her chamber and digest Cav’s confession, this was where she needed to be.

So she drew a long breath and entered the room. She had not made it three steps inside when Lord Allington approached. The earl was very handsome in his dark attire and mask adorned with crow’s feathers.

“There you are, Lady Rutledge,” he said as he sidled up to her. “I was told you were wearing a peacock mask, and it is delightful.”

She smiled up at him. “And you a devious crow.”

“I was inspired by Cavendish’s recital of Jago’s ‘The Blackbirds’ a week back.”

Emily had to fight to keep her smile on her face. Cav’s reading of that poem had led to so much. It said so much about him and how he always stepped up to protect her.

“It was…inspiring,” she managed to croak out.

“Yes, birds of a feather and all. Where is the man, anyway?” Allington looked around, past her toward the hall.

She swallowed. “You are asking me?”

“Well, you two are friends. Wherever one is, the other seems sure to follow,” Allington said.

Emily could not deny that. She didn’t want to deny it. Her friendship with Cav was the most important of her life. Many didn’t understand it. They couldn’t picture a friendship between a man and a woman that didn’t involve something more.

But of course, their friendship always had involved something more. She just had been blind to it until the moment he kissed her.

“Lady Rutledge?”

She blinked as she realized her distraction was causing Allington to look at her far more closely than she wished to be examined. “I did see Cavendish,” she admitted. “He complained of a slight headache and excused himself.”

“Ah.” For a moment Allington shifted and seemed truly troubled by the fact that he could not speak to Cav. But then he flashed her a grin and the worry seemed gone from his countenance…or at least the part she could see.