A Night I Couldn’t Be Honest - Chapter 2.6

Azelin’s gaze, which had been fixed on his mouth, moved up.

She inhaled.

And just like that, found herself captivated by the Marquis’s gaze, which had not moved from her face at all. They had only been sharing ice cream.

But somehow it felt like a terrible wrong had been committed. They had only traded a spoon, yet the slow movement of his tongue that had traveled up through the metal stayed in her mind, vivid and insistent.

Just as his gaze had in one breath robbed her of air, his eyes moved to her lips. There was no temperature in a look, yet her lips burned. Azelin bit them shut.

A soft laugh escaped him, and the airless heat between them broke apart gently.

“The spring weather is fickle, isn’t it? The wind is cold but the sun is warm. Your face is red, Rozalia.”

His large hand touched her cheek. It was nothing, just checking her temperature, but after holding the ice cream it was unusually cold.

Or maybe he was right, and her cheek was hotter than usual. A sharp tension ran down her spine, and her heart ached.

No, I can’t.

“Rozalia?”

She stood so abruptly the chair nearly tipped, and the Marquis looked up at her with a questioning expression. The name he’d said, Rozalia, struck her fogged mind like cold water.

I’m Azelin. Not the Princess.

Ignoring the clamor in her chest, she said the words in her mind loudly, firmly. The person his relentless gaze was directed at was Rozalia, not her.

“I’d like to go back.”

Without explanation, Azelin turned and left him at the table.

Her cheeks were still pink but her expression had gone stiff. Her head rang with a continuous warning. She didn’t know what the warning was for, exactly, but the alarm was sharp and real. It was instinct, with no reasoning behind it.

“I’ll walk with you. What did I do wrong this time?”

The Marquis caught up in a few steps and wrapped an arm naturally around her waist.

He hadn’t done anything wrong, and both of them knew it, but the apology was his to make, as always. When she forcefully pried herself out of his arms, his hand caught hers gently as the next option.

This had been happening all day. The Rozalia that Azelin was playing, she threw small, unannounced fits, snapped at him, took her mood out on him for no reason.

At first it had been a deliberate choice, mimicking Rozalia’s erratic nature, but at some point the clear goal had gone blurry and only a churning confusion remained.

“Don’t be mad. It was all my fault.”

“I said I’m going back.”

“Just a little longer? Please?”

He smiled prettily and did his best to be winsome.

The man who had no reason to bow to anyone bowed to Rozalia without hesitation, apologized, pleaded. All because their time together might end. Because of something as small as that.

No.

The warning sounded again. Something bad was going to happen, she could feel it blinking at her. She couldn’t wait out the rest of the week. She needed to stamp out whatever was trying to grow right now before it took root. Her sharp instinct pressed her urgently to crush the sprout before it could take root.

Azelin searched the Marquis’s face with something close to desperation. She prayed she would find selfishness there, some casual amusement, anything that would help.

But no matter where she looked, all she found in him was love, love, love without end.

“I don’t understand.”

Azelin murmured it blankly.

She had been afraid of being found out before, but standing in for Rozalia with her various men had never been genuinely difficult. There had even been times she found it a little absurd.

Because in every case before, the feelings between Rozalia and her men were openly, calculatingly mutual. They said all the right things about love and connection, but in the end they always came down to measuring what they could gain and what pleasure they could have.

That was why ending things and turning them away hadn’t been hard. A deal that doesn’t balance simply gets called off.

“Your Highness is, no, I am…”

This was another deal that didn’t balance, another impossible one. Rozalia had already declared she would never accept the Marquis’s feelings, and so as long as Azelin stood in her place she could give him nothing Rozalia refused to give.

“I don’t like you.”

Her throat felt like it was closing. Azelin grimaced and shoved out the words she’d been holding back, desperate now. She should have said them the moment they met, she’d kept putting them off for reasons she couldn’t name, and now here she was, saying them in a panic.

Rozalia, the Princess, will never have feelings for you.

It was the declaration that the deal was finished. So now the Marquis would grieve, or he’d be sharp about it, and he would walk away.

“I know.”

But he smiled gently and didn’t let go of her wrist. He simply closed the distance she had made and lifted her hand, resting his cheek against the back of it.