The cool, matter-of-fact tone had her pressing her lips together. Yes, he would have hated himself. She’d been a fool not to understand that. He had suffered. She no longer had to ask how. “And now?”

“I could say I’m relieved to know it’s not so, but it would make no difference. Even honor suffers.”

Honor. With him it would be as vital as the blood in his veins. She had the power to make him compromise it. She had enough love to see that he didn’t. She rose then, but even with her hands still folded, looked anything but meek. “I can’t take that as flattery, Alexander.”

“It wasn’t meant to flatter. I could tell you that you’re beautiful.” His gaze roamed over her face. “More beautiful to me than any other woman. I could tell you that your face haunts my dreams and troubles my days, and that yearning for you empties me. None of it would be meant to flatter.”

At each word her heartbeat accelerated, until now it echoed in her ears. With an effort she stayed where she was, when her heart urged her to open her arms and offer everything. Equal ground, she reminded herself. Honor for both. There was no talk of love.

“Maybe it’s best if you said nothing.” She managed to smile, and even tilted her head. “Except to tell me why you’ve come.”

“I need you.”

The words rocked her no less than they rocked him. There was silence while the air seemed to absorb them. He saw it in her eyes, the astonishment, the softening, the acceptance. Moonlight shot through the glass at her back, so that she looked as though she might be a part of it—and still out of reach.

Then she held out her hand.

Their fingers met, steadied, then curled into one another. Contact was made, and the time for words was over.

Her eyes on his, she lifted his hand and touched her lips where their fingers joined. Silence.

His gaze remained locked on hers as he turned their joined hands over and pressed his lips to her palm. Still no words.

With her fingertips she traced the line of his jaw, touching now what she’d never felt she’d had the right to touch. His skin was warm, warmer than the breeze that stirred at the curtains. There was no need to speak.

He used his knuckles to trace the curve of her cheek to her temple, then his fingers spread to comb through her hair, lingering—lingering over it as he had once dreamed of doing. The clock struck the hour. It was midnight.

No words, but feelings nurtured in secret for so long bloomed at last in the first moments of the new day. Desires, refused, denied, were now accepted in the shadowed moonlight of a day just ended.