She blushed again, thankful for the dim light. What had gotten into her?

He waited for her to pass through the doorway into the foyer before following her with the light. At the foot of the stairs, just before Alex began her ascent, he spoke quietly, “Hold.” She looked back at him curiously as he whispered, “I didn’t accept the chance to properly escort you home tonight, Alex. At least let me offer you a proper companion now.”

He held out his hand, and she took it. They climbed the stairs in silence.

Much later, when Alex was lying in bed, unable to sleep for the pounding of her heart, she imagined she could still feel the warmth of his palm pressed against her own.

Her first kiss. With Gavin. The words tumbled over and over in her head as she replayed the moment, the sound of their breathing, the movement of his hands, the way the firelight caught the gold in his hair as it fell across his forehead when he leaned down to her.

She sighed and whispered his name in the darkness of her bedchamber before turning onto her side and looking out the window at the moonlit treetops beyond. She felt the energy of the evening coursing through her, keeping her from sleep. Her mind was racing; there was so much to think about—so much that had changed. Gavin would never be just a friend again. She would never think of him as a brother again. He would always be the first man she’d kissed.

Now she understood what everyone meant when they talked about romance…this feeling had launched the thousand ships of the Trojan War, this feeling had sent Guinevere into the arms of Lancelot, this feeling had driven Fitzwilliam Darcy to confess his love for Elizabeth Bennett. She giggled in the darkness at her silliness, giddy with excitement. She’d scoffed at it for years…she’d never believed that this kind of wonderful, rapturous romance could exist beyond legend. And yet, that evening, in Gavin’s arms, she’d had a taste of it.

Clutching her pillow to her face, she screamed in excitement, then rolled onto her back with a sigh, imagining Gavin sleeping just a few rooms away. She wondered what tomorrow would bring.

fifteen

So let me see if I fully understand…” Ella was sitting on Alex’s bed, watching as Eliza carefully curled a long strand of Alex’s hair and arranged it atop her head. “Blackmoor arrived home earlier than usual and surprised the intruder, leaving him to run off without actually removing anything from Blackmoor House?”

“Yes. That’s precisely what we think happened.”

The three girls were in Alex’s bedchamber, preparing for the long-awaited Worthington Ball. While, traditionally, they all would have dressed at home and arrived separately, they had agreed that, tonight, they would dress together. Eliza, whom they all adored, had agreed to share her genius for hair and maquillage with them that evening, so Vivi and Ella had arrived, gowns in tow, for tea and were now waiting patiently for her to finish with Alex’s hair and move on to them.

Alex didn’t fool herself into thinking that she hadn’t had an ulterior motive for inviting them this evening, as it had been several days since her kiss with Blackmoor and, while she had seen him a handful of times, the experience had not been repeated. It wasn’t that he’d been standoffish. On the contrary, everything with Blackmoor seemed to be restored to the way it had been for years. He arrived at Worthington House for tea, or supper, or dinner, jested with her brothers, chatted with her parents, and was generally his usual charming self.

But not a mention of the kiss! No attempt to repeat it! No reference to it whatsoever, which both frustrated and confused her, leaving her wondering if she was imagining the kiss meant more than it did—after all, Blackmoor had had a particularly difficult time of it that evening, and perhaps the kiss had been a strange occurrence. She’d been running this possibility over and over in her mind and, finally, had decided it was time to tell her friends. She was tired of her stomach twisting every time he entered the room or she heard his voice, irritated by how surly she was beginning to feel about the whole situation, and she needed a dose of objectivity to regain her sanity.

Of course, she hadn’t told them yet. She wasn’t quite sure how one announced to one’s friends and one’s maid that she’d been kissed. The whole experience made her feel rather like a fish out of water. The idea of simply blurting it out in the middle of conversation was distasteful—she didn’t want to make a scene, especially if it wasn’t an event of import. So, instead, she had told them about the burglary at Blackmoor House, which allowed her to shore up the courage to tell them the rest.

Vivi spoke from her place on the settee on the opposite side of Alex’s dressing table. “My father said the house was thoroughly ransacked. Did you see?”

“No. Though Gavin said that the damage was mostly confined to the study. He seems to think that the intruder wasn’t simply looking for something of value. He was looking for something specific.”

“My father said the same,” Vivi agreed, “but it seems that no one knows what, exactly, someone would be looking for there…so no one can be sure if the item in question was indeed taken.”

“Perhaps it was something that belonged to the former earl?” Ella surmised.

“Perhaps. But wouldn’t Gavin know if there was something of importance that his father possessed?” Alex wondered as Eliza fussed over another curl.

“It’s possible.” Ella ran her hand back and forth over the coverlet. “But the earl’s death was such a surprise, maybe not.”

“Well, what is most important at this point is that Blackmoor is safe. Between my father and Bow Street, someone will get to the bottom of it.” Vivi stood and walked to stand behind Eliza, watching her work as she asked Alex. “Did he sleep at Blackmoor House that night?”