Page 47 of A Shadow Amongst the Roses

Thomas stilled.

Her fingers lingered just long enough to register warmth, texture, reality.

She drew her hand back at once. “I’m sorry.”

He caught her wrist gently before she could retreat, his touch light but unmistakable.

“Don’t be.”

Their gazes held, something unspoken pressing forward now, insistent.

Slowly, deliberately, Thomas lifted her hand higher, resting it against his chest. She felt the steady beat beneath her palm, the quiet proof of life, restraint, and choice.

“Eliza,” he murmured.

She took a breath, her resolve wavering just enough to allow truth through. “If we cross this line…”

“We won’t do this blindly,” he said.

Their faces were close now. Close enough that Eliza could feel the warmth of his breath, the steady awareness between them like a current she had only just learned to recognize.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

Thomas’s hand remained over hers, not pressing, not guiding. Simply there. She felt the beat beneath her palm, slower now, as though he had deliberately stilled himself.

Eliza became aware of her own breathing, of how shallow it had gone, of how easily she could correct it and did not.

She lifted her gaze to his.

Something shifted then. Not urgency. Not resolve.

Recognition.

Thomas seemed to feel it too. His fingers loosened fractionally around hers, not releasing them, but giving them space. The kind of space that asked rather than assumed.

Eliza did not step back.

Neither did he.

The hedge enclosed them in quiet, the morning light filtered and pale, as though the world had drawn a breath and paused with them.

They stood like that, suspended, not divided by restraint, not driven by impulse, simply aware, in a way that felt both startling and inevitable.

And if neither of them crossed the last inch between them, it was only because the moment itself had asked to be held.

Chapter Twenty-Two

They remained where they were after the quiet settled.

Eliza did not know at first what held her. Only that something had shifted, and the old rules were no longer doing their usual work. The hedge curved around them, enclosing the narrow path. Damp leaves held the morning’s light in small, trembling beads. Beyond it, the garden opened toward the house, and the house toward the day, and the day toward duties that never paused for anyone’s private reckoning.

But here, under the hedge, time felt briefly suspended. Not in a way that soothed her.

In a way that demanded honesty.

Thomas stood near enough that she could feel his warmth without touching him. His breath was steady. His posture composed in that familiar way of his, as though control was simply part of his bones. Yet his gaze held something different now. Not caution.

Intention.