The band launched into an upbeat waltz, and Bernard laced his fingers with Hazel’s and pulled her in tight. Slightly too tight. The heavy velvet was causing her chemise to stick to her skin, and Bernard’s hand was unpleasantly sweaty. Maybe she wouldn’t need to fib about feeling faint after all.
Hazel tried to loosen her hand in Bernard’s grip, but he just pulled her in tighter. “How lovely to see you up and out, Cousin,” he said coolly.
Hazel dipped into a shallow curtsy. She tried to recall exactly how rude she had been to Bernard the last time he stopped by Hawthornden. “Bernard, when I saw you the other day—I was sick. I really wasn’t up for company.”
Bernard lifted a gloved hand in forgiveness. “Forgotten,” he said. “Although I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that people are whispering. You haven’t been yourself of late. Missing social functions. You’ve become practically a ghost. Nobody’s seen you for weeks. One might think you’ve been avoiding me,” he said. “Silly, I know.”
“I’ve been sick. That’s all, Bernard.”
Bernard smiled, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. They seemed to be spinning faster than the other dancers around them. “I’ve stopped by Hawthornden quite a few times, you know. To pay a visit. Your carriage was gone.”
“Was it?” Hazel said, hoping her voice was light. “How unusual. And what an unusual thing to notice.”
Without warning, Bernard wrapped his arm around Hazel’s waist and pulled her body against his into a waltz frame. She almost gasped at his presumption. “Visiting another suitor, were you?” he sneered.
Hazel almost laughed in his face. “No,” she said, stumbling as she tried to follow his lead on the dance floor. “I can quite assure you, there is no other suitor.”
Bernard’s eyes were flat and cold. He looked more like his father than Hazel had ever noticed before. “There were boots in your entry hall,” he said through clenched teeth. “A gentleman’s boots. Someone intimate enough to take his boots off in your home, although I can’t imagine who that might be. If it’s someone at the club, I assume I would have heard of it. I swear to God, Hazel”—he clenched Hazel’s hands so hard they ached—“if you’re humiliating me, I…” He released Hazel’s hands in lieu of finishing his thought. His hair, so neatly parted and pomaded, shook slightly with his emotion.
“Bernard,” Hazel said softly, “those were George’s old boots. I swear it. I wear them to walk in the gardens, and down to the stream, to not muddy my own.” She was relieved she could at least tell only part of a lie.
“Oh.” His face softened. “Well, then. Perhaps I can interest you in a stroll out to our winter garden? I assure you, it’s quite lovely in the fall, with the weather mild as it’s been.”
Hazel glanced around. No one was giving them more than a cursory look. Even Miss Hartwick-Ellis, usually so jealously observant of whatever Hazel happened to be doing, was cheerfully flirting with the son of the Danish ambassador, her eyes scarcely leaving the handsome blond for long enough to blink.
“Perhaps we should find a chaperone?” Hazel said.
“Oh, pishposh.” Bernard grabbed Hazel’s arm and guided her toward the door to the servants’ entrance. “You wanted to go to some dreadful surgery in the Old Town alone with me!”
They were standing in the servants’ entrance to the kitchen, a dank little passage with only a few flickering gas lamps. A footman strode by, carrying a tray of pastries, and politely averted his eyes.
Hazel tried to pull away, back toward the party. “Well, we wouldn’t have actually been alone at a surgical demonstration, but—”
Before she could finish her sentence, Bernard pressed his mouth to hers. The wet worm of his tongue slithered along her closed lips until it found purchase and pried her mouth open.
His lips were cold and strange, his tongue clammy. Some part of Hazel’s brain told her to slap him, to yank herself away. A thousand harsh words formulated themselves neatly, but she seemed completely unable to get them past her throat. Her body, likewise, was suffering from a strange paralysis. All she could do was stand there, eyes open like a fish, waiting for Bernard to finally pull away with a self-satisfied smack of his lips. He wiped the lower half of his face with his sleeve and waggled his eyebrows.
Hazel’s stomach flipped over itself, and she tried not to grimace looking at Bernard’s face—the ruddiness of it, the dead flatness in his eyes, his thin lips still glistening with sweat. So that was a kiss. That was the thing she had read about in novels and poems, that had inspired great artists. It was wetter than she had imagined, and colder.