She kicked her feet beneath the covers, a wild, childish tantrum in the privacy of her own room.
Finally, her anger spent, she turned over with a long, shuddering groan and stared up. The moonlight was just bright enough to trace the faded threads.
"Just like that night," she whispered. "He also talked to me sweetly at that ball."
The memory of his face, so serious and so close in the dim hallway, flashed in her mind. He was so cold now. So distant. He looked at her as if she were a complicated puzzle he had no interest in solving.
He wasn't always this way.
Her mind drifted, pulling her back, away from the embarrassing encounter in the library, back two years. To the night he and Rowan had returned from the war.
It was a ball. Of course, it was a ball. A massive, glittering, suffocating affair to "welcome home the heroes." The ballroom was sweltering, packed with sweating, laughing, shouting members of the ton.
