She tasted like spiced honey. Sweetness and heat. He cupped the back of her head in his hand, let himself fall into the kiss. He drew her against him—she was soft, strong, curving. Perfect. He had never felt such tenderness—never even quite known what people meant when they spoke of it, for it had formed no part of his feelings for Grace. Pity and need, yes, but this—this overwhelming mix of passion, admiration, adoration, and desire—was something he had never felt before, and he realized with some wonder that it felt so new, so different, that he had not at first known to label it correctly. He had thought it was not love precisely because it was.

He loved Cordelia; no, he was in love with her. He had been pushing the thought back all day, knowing he could not let himself fully realize it until the danger was over—until he was alone with Daisy, until he could tell her—

She broke away, breathless. Her lips and cheeks were bright red, her hair tousled. “James—James—we must stop.”

Stopping was the last thing he wanted to do. He wanted to kiss her so hard it lifted her off her feet. He wanted to tangle his hands in her thick, smooth hair, and tell her that the curve of her collarbone made him want to write sonnets. He wanted to taste the notch at the base of her throat. He wanted to ask her to marry him again, properly this time.

“Why?” he said instead. It was not his most eloquent moment, he knew, but it was all he could manage.

“I… appreciate what you have said about how we will face this together.” Her brow furrowed; she looked enchantingly puzzled. “I know you would do anything to help your friends. But I cannot rely on you so completely, cannot behave as if this is a real marriage. It is not. We both must remember that.”

“It is real,” he said roughly. “What we have is—is a marriage.”

She looked at him squarely. “Can you say you feel about me as you have felt about her? About Grace?”

He felt a twisting inside himself. Anger. Revulsion. He thought of the bracelet, the two broken pieces of it in his pocket. “No,” he said, almost savagely. “I do not feel about you at all as I feel about Grace. How I ever felt about Grace.”

Only when she looked as if he had slapped her did he realize what he had said. How it would sound. She stood up from the couch, looking a little stunned, reaching up automatically to fix the combs in her hair. “I,” she began, “I ought to—”

There was a knock on the front door. The sound echoed through the house. James mentally cursed Effie for most likely being asleep, then cursed doors and people who knocked at them.