“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know how else to make you stop arguing.”

He let me go, still looking confused.

All I could think was that he’d achieved what he’d set out to do; I was left speechless.

But he didn’t make a move to leave, looking as if he was waiting for me to say something, anything. So I willed my mind to stop trying to pinpoint exactly what he smelled like and get back to work.

“I . . . I have to go back inside. I have to see if Valentina’s arrived.”

His eyes went slightly wide, as if he’d forgotten that was the entire point of the evening. “Yes. Yes, of course.” He pulled at his shirt, straightening himself up. “You go ahead, and I’ll follow in a moment.”

And because he looked so very disoriented, I didn’t tell him how I felt about that kiss. I didn’t say that I could still feel it, or that he left me deliciously bewildered. I didn’t tell him that I didn’t mind the dizzying sensation of being the center of Etan Northcott’s attention.

Instead, I swallowed that down and locked it away. I couldn’t think about what I felt or said or even what this could mean, if it meant anything at all. Because when I walked back into the Great Room, it was time to work.

“Please, please, please be there,” I whispered. “I can’t go back outside right now, so please be there.”

I looked down the room, through the throngs of celebrating people, and, finally, mercifully, saw Valentina waiting at the head table.

Twenty-One

THE NIGHT WENT ON SLOWLY, and Valentina and I exchanged glances several times. She kept giving quick shakes of her head that were so small no one else would have noticed them. I tracked my family around the room as I waited, slightly anxious on my own. While their positions changed over and over, two things stayed the same.

First, Julien followed Scarlet like a shadow as she spoke to people, looking like he was working up the courage to say hello again but never quite getting there. And second, Etan was surrounded by a constant cloud of ladies, looking as if he was having the time of his life, taking in their admiration and offering no promises in return.

I supposed he really had just been trying to get me to stop talking.

I slowly wrapped my hand around my waist, surprised to find an aching emptiness of disappointment fluttering in my stomach.

Finally, when a group of dancers came out to perform, Valentina stood and made her way to the window.

She stayed to one side, looking toward the spectacle that I would have been all too quick to bemoan a month ago, and I looked outside, as if I were gazing at the moon.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she began, keeping her goblet in front of her mouth, the same trick she’d used before.