LITMIR.BIZ

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a power so deep and so vast it stretched back centuries and more to the point, infused the very stones in the ceilings and the walls.

      If a person really listened, they could hear all that might and glory in the lush quiet, even sitting still in the foyer, as directed.

      Amelia unbuttoned her coat, letting the heavier flaps fall to her sides. She’d learned a long time ago that there was no point competing in places or situations like this. She was always so obviously and irrevocably American, for one thing. That she would therefore be considered gauche and inappropriate by a certain set of Europeans was understood. And no matter what she wore or how she comported herself, or even if she adopted excruciatingly correct manners, she would always be seen through the lens of her mother. So she’d learned long time ago that she might as well stop trying to convince anyone otherwise.

      Things that couldn’t be changed, Amelia had found, could often be fashioned into weapons.

      From far off, she heard the sounds of approaching footsteps, and braced herself. She held her breath—

      But it was only the butler again. He appeared before her, gazing at her with suspicion, as if he expected to find her cutting the paintings out of their frames and stuffing them down the back of her jeans. Amelia smiled. Widely.

      If anything, that seemed to horrify him more. She could tell by the way his chin seemed to recede into his neck.

      “If you will follow me,” he said, every syllable dripping with disapproval. “The Duke is a very important man. He is excessively busy. You will do well to bear in mind the compliment it is that he has chosen to carve out a few moments to entertain this untoward and wholly discourteous appearance of yours.”

      “I’ll be sure to thank him,” Amelia said, rising to her feet. The butler only stared back at her. “Profusely.”

      But the added word didn’t seem to help. The butler turned on his heel and stalked off. Amelia followed, impressed against her will at the sheer umbrage he managed to carry in his shoulders.

      He led her through the great hall, then off into the long gallery that connected the main part of the house to some of its seemingly haphazard wings. It was thick with portraits of black-eyed, haughty-looking men in a variety of historical outfits. She had been in the same gallery before, as an obsessed sixteen-year-old, tracking the evolution of Teo’s features through ages and ancestors.

      Today she found it wasn’t Teo’s features she was thinking of, or not entirely. She was trying to imagine all these fierce old aristocrats combined with her, and coming away with nothing much besides a wholly unwelcome stab of guilt. She did her best to swallow that down as they left the gallery and moved farther into the labyrinth of the grand house.

      All the rooms they passed were the same. Everything gleamed, a beacon of understated, exceptional taste. There were no knickknacks. No personal items. No shoes kicked beneath a couch or empty mugs on a table. Each room was arranged around a color scheme, or a view, or some other unifying notion. There were no antiques in the general sense. If she recalled correctly, every item in this house was priceless. Literally without price because any value attached would be too exorbitant. The house was filled with hand-selected, finely wrought pieces of art that had been presented to the family at one point or another by grateful, obsequious artisans and vassals and would-be allies.

      The butler stopped, eventually, with the click of his heels and tilt of his head—both of which he managed to make an insult—before a door. Calculating quickly, Amelia figured that this must be the Duke’s study. Ten years ago, Teo’s father had spent his days here, conducting his business when he was at home. She’d had absolutely no occasion to venture to this part of the house, and after an initial introductory tour, hadn’t.

      It was only now, as the butler opened the door and ushered her inside, that she acknowledged the flutter in her belly. Not only acknowledged it, but accepted that she couldn’t quite tell if it was anticipation, fear or a spicy little mix of both.

      The door closed behind her with a quiet click that she felt was as passive-aggressive as the rest. But she had other things to think about.

      Because this room, like every other room in this palace, exuded magnificence, wealth and quiet elegance. It was its own little library, and “little” only in comparison with the grand one across the house. There was a fire in the hearth and gleaming bookshelves packed tight with books—and not in matching volumes, with gold-lettered spines, suggesting no one touched them. This was a working library. A personal collection, clearly. There were even photographs in frames on the shelves, almost as if a regular human lived here and collected memories as well as priceless objects. There was a surprising amount of light coming in from the winter day outside, through the glass dome atop the ceiling and more, through the glass doors that opened up over the gardens.

      Amelia took all of that in, and then, slowly and carefully—as if it might hurt her, because she was terribly afraid it might—she let her eyes rest on the man who waited there. He leaned against the vast expanse of a very old, very beautiful antique desk that somehow managed to connote brooding masculinity and centuries of power in its lines.

      Or maybe that was the man himself.

      He was like a song that sang in her, that called the dawn, that changed the world.

      Teo de Luz, once upon a time her stepbrother and now a far greater problem in her life, waited there as if he was one of the statues she’d seen in the hallways, crafted by old masters with decidedly famous and inspired hands. And this was not one of the few, very rare photographs of him that a person could find if they deep-dived online. This was not the man she’d found at the Masquerade last September—masked, hidden and diluted in some way, she’d assured herself, even if his touch had not felt diluted in any way. This was not even the stepbrother she remembered from ten years ago.

      Teo was older now. He was beautiful and he was ferocious, and it was truly awful, how a single man could seem as imposing and great as the ancient house they stood in.

      And suddenly, Amelia was all too aware of every choice she’d made that had brought her here to stand before him. She felt as fatigued and threadbare as her jeans.

      She ordered herself to speak, but when she lifted her chin to do so, she found herself…caught.

      Because even here, in his own private library with the weak winter light pouring in and a fire crackling in a fireplace—all things which should have made this scene domestic and soft—Teo was something more than merely a man.

      He was always bigger than she remembered. Taller, more solid. His shoulders were wide and the rest of him was long, lean, and she knew, now, that he was made entirely of muscle. Everywhere. His black eyes simmered, like his ancestors’ out there in the long gallery, but she had somehow dimmed the effect of them in her mind. In person, he was electric. His hair was still inky black, close cropped, and she saw no hint of gray at his temples. He had those unfair cheekbones that might have seemed pretty were it not for the masculine heft of his nose, and then, below, that sensuous, impossible mouth that made her feel flushed.

      Especially because now she knew what he could do with it.

      And she hadn’t seen him clearly that night in September. That had been the point. She had been bold and daring, and he had responded with that brooding, overwhelming passion that had literally swept her off her feet. Into his arms, against a wall. And then, in a private salon, still dressed in their finery, with fabric pushed aside in haste and need.

      Too much haste and need, it turned out.

      Even though she had watched him roll on protection.

      But now, he wore nothing to cover his face. And he wasn’t smiling slightly, the way he had then. Those dark eyes of his weren’t lit up with that particular knowing gleam that had turned her molten and soft.

      On the contrary, his look was frigid. Stern and disapproving.

      It made her remember—too late, always too late—that he wasn’t simply a man. He was all the men who had come before him, too. He was the Duke, and the weight of

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