Her human carriage faltered imperceptibly. Must be the stairs, she thought. Difficult to manoeuvre.
'Well?'
Orbilio blinked. Truth or dare? He pretended that negotiating the door to the cellar was more difficult than it actually was. Should he tell? Dare he tell? The violence of the moment when he knew for sure that his life had restored hers would remain with him for ever. Then, when she clasped her hands round his neck, so close that he inhaled her fear as well as her relief, he feared he would explode.
For the right woman, I would lay down my life.
Truth or dare.
'Don't you know?' A pain like none he had ever known shot through him.
How could she not realize? That the prospect of spending weeks on end tying up his cousin's felonious affairs on the paradise island of Cressia with her four hundred miles away was too bleak to contemplate. There had, whether she admitted it or not, always been this raw energy between them. Who knows how it might have been harnessed if they spent the summer together under the shimmering sky as terns dived among violet-blue coral and a thousand herbs on the hillside wafted out their enticing scents?
Truth or dare?
He looked down at her in his arms as he carried her along the marble portico. At the hair plastered flat to her face. At the gown so wet it looked like paint on her body.
Truth or dare.
He lowered her gently on to the damask counterpane in her bedroom. Felt a rush of tenderness that threatened to choke him.
'The honest answer — ' He cleared his throat, flexed his shoulders, spiked his fringe out of his face with his fingers. 'The honest answer, Mistress Seferius, is that I knew you'd want to check out Leo's revolutionary method of training the vines.'
Deftly, he ducked the green, narrow-necked vase that whizzed past his ear, but was too slow for the jug and the bolster.
And Claudia thought, I could get used to paradise.