After Lord Michael inadvertently insults Antigone, a gentleman scholar’s daughter, a heavy dislike is born on her side. For his part, Michael is inelegant at expressing or understanding his sudden attraction to Antigone, and uses private poetry to articulate his confused feelings for her. Soon Antigone begins receiving mysterious poems from another suitor unbeknownst to Michael. When she accepts a proposal from this suitor, Michael leaves on a diplomatic mission, despairing of ever acting on his conflicted feelings for her.
Michael returns several years later, surprised to find a still unwed Antigone visiting his family estate. After an incident where Antigone accidentally stumbles upon Michael bathing in a lake, she begins to see him in a different light and breaks her engagement to another. Their intense connection takes an unexpected turn when it appears that Michael schemed to entrap her but all is not what it seems.
He stared at her, and at his silence, she felt a desire for the ground to open and swallow her up. What a fool she was. She had tried to form a friendship with this man once before only to be rebuked again. Why had she said that?
But he didn’t laugh. Instead, he very slowly raised his hand, stroking it gently down her cheek. For some reason, he wasn’t wearing gloves. She realized that perhaps he did not want to flaunt his social position at the meeting through wearing expensive gloves and had left them off. His fingers, which felt rough yet steady against her skin, cupped her chin and she instinctively tilted her head back. He suddenly felt impossibly close.
This is why kisses exist.
As the thought crossed her mind, shame filled her chest, heavy and uncomfortable. She was affianced to another man, who had written her his heart and soul. How faithless she was to be tempted to even think of kissing this tall, intriguing man before her. Who had strangely become rather dear to her in so short a time. Where had that thought come from? Unable to bear the crushing sense of dishonor warring within her pounding heart, she pulled back suddenly and cleared her throat. These racing thoughts made her feel wild and out of control. So instead of kissing him, she offered up another truth to maintain a solid footing. “Lord Michael?”
She saw him swallow as a pulse beat in his throat. How odd, she could swear she felt desire radiating off of him. But he couldn’t desire her; he thought her silly, didn’t he?
“Antigone.” He pulled back slightly, as if reigning himself in.
“You didn’t ask me why I wanted to attend today.”
He stared at her, and she had a sense of him putting together a puzzle box in his mind, somewhere behind those dark eyes. “I assumed that was for a decision about your inheritance, but there is more, isn’t there?”
She nodded, mesmerized by the darkness of his eyes, the strength and sinew of him as he leaned against a brick building.
He kept staring at her, as if adding and changing pieces of the puzzle box behind his eyes. Then, slowly, he took her hand between the two of his own. Catching her eye, as if asking permission first, he then began to remove her glove. Annie’s pulse beat a tattoo as he pulled back inch by inch, revealing her skin to the air. She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until the glove came off completely, baring her hand to the world. Gently, as if mapping the texture of her fingers with his own, he turned her hand over with his own bare hands, caressing her fingers with his thumb until he found what he was looking for. The guilty ink spot.
“You are writing about them, the mill workers. But I haven’t seen your name—” Realization seemed to dawn on him. “You write anonymously or under a pseudonym.”
Looking down in shame, she nodded. “You were the one who made me aware how much the ton looks down on a woman who thinks.”
“Antigone, I—” he began, but she kept speaking, unable to stop.
“I cannot bring shame to my father,” she went on quickly. “Not after the rumors my first Season. But I feel the worst coward for not putting my name to my work. What is a person if they cannot share their thoughts and feelings with the world? If they are afraid to sign their own name?”
He had that look on his face as if he wanted to speak so badly but something was holding him back again, a look of vulnerability she had rarely seen cross his features. But then his face shifted and his eyes went black again. “There is Mrs. Collins.” His voice was emotionless. “She looks to be finished speaking with her brother. We should return to the carriage.”
As they walked back in silence, Antigone’s mind continued to race with the possibilities of what he’d been going to say. Her mind was so busy racing that she never noticed that he did not return her glove.
