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The realization stole the breath from her lungs. She had not meant to fall in love. She had meant only to steal a few kisses, to hoard a few memories against the long, lonely years ahead. But somewhere in the past days, in the conversations through grates and reflections, in the meetings in moonlit gardens and candlelit halls, in discovering a kindred spirit who shared her love of plants, music, and knowledge … she had tumbled headlong into love.

I love Angelo Scott.

The thought was as horrifying because she knew that this could not last. That reality would intrude eventually, as it always did. That the happiness she felt in this moment was borrowed, stolen, fleeting.

But even as joy consumed her, that small voice in the back of her mind grew louder.

This cannot last. This is borrowed time. Very soon the truth of daylight will destroy everything.

She tried to silence it. She tried to focus only on the sensation of Angelo’s kiss, on the warmth of his arms around her, on the sweetness of his whispered endearments. But the voice persisted, a serpent in her garden of momentary bliss.

He will see. He will know. And when he does, he will leave.

They all left in the end. The few who had ever glimpsed her marks, each had found some way to absent themselves from her presence. A hasty departure. A muttered excuse. Eyes that slid away and never quite returned. The encounters had been rare, but each one had taught her the same immutable lesson. That she was something to be fled from.

Angelo’s breathing had grown unsteady, his kisses more tender. Isolde could feel the tremor in his hands as they cupped her face, as if she were infinitely precious. One of his palms rested on her left cheek, the good cheek, the unmarked cheek, his thumb stroking the smooth skin there with such tenderness that tears stung behind her closed eyelids.

If only the right side were as unblemished. The thought was a knife twisting in her chest. If only I could be whole for him. If only I could be beautiful, truly beautiful, worthy of his whispered endearments and his tender kisses.

She did not realize she had turned her head slightly. Lost in the kiss, heedless of everything else, until his hand slid from her left cheek to cradle her jaw more fully.

And then his thumb brushed across the port-wine stain.

Isolde froze, every muscle in her body going rigid as if she had been turned to stone. Her heart, racing with joy only moments before, seemed to stop entirely, suspended in a moment of pure, crystalline terror.

She waited for him to pull away. She waited for the sharp intake of breath, the stiffening of his spine, the careful extraction of his hands from her face. She waited for the horrified recognition, the hasty apologies, the end of everything.

But Angelo did not pull away.

His kiss continued, unhurried and gentle, as if nothing had changed. His hand remained cupping her face, his thumb tracing idle patterns across the marked skin, over the deep rose and mauve that had driven so many to recoil.

He was touching her marks. Deliberately. Gently. As if they were no different from the unmarked flesh on the other side.

Perhaps he had not realized. Perhaps the darkness still concealed the worst of it, and his thumb had merely encountered what he assumed was a shadow or a trick of the moonlight. Isolde held herself perfectly still, barely daring to breathe, terrified that any movement might draw his attention to what his fingers were touching.

Do not let him notice. Please, please do not let him notice.

Angelo finally broke the kiss, but only to rest his chin on the crown of her head, his breathing harsh and unsteady. She could feel the warmth of his exhalations, could smell the faint scent of wine on his breath from dinner, could hear the rapid beating of his heart as he held her.

“Isolde,” he murmured, and there was such longing in his voice that her own heart clenched painfully. “You undo me completely.”

His hand remained on her face.

Now his fingers were deliberately tracing the edges of the birthmark. Not flinching away. Not pulling back in disgust. Simply … touching her. Exploring her. Learning the geography of her face with his fingertips as if it were a map of uncharted territory, intriguing in its strangeness.

She did not know what to do. She did not know what to think. Every assumption she had made, every certainty she had carried this past ten years, seemed to be crumbling beneath the gentle pressure of his touch.

She did not know how long they stood there, wrapped in each other’s arms, the wind singing its ancient song over the cliffs, the moon casting its silver benediction upon them both. Time seemed to have lost all meaning. There was only Angelo. His warmth, his touch, his breath mingling with hers in the cold night air. Only the impossible miracle of being held by someone who had touched her marks and not recoiled.

When his lips found hers again, Isolde surrendered to the kiss completely. She had spent so many years holding herself apart, containing herself, protecting herself from the pain of rejection. But now she could not seem to stop herself from leaning into his embrace, from opening her heart to him, from hoping with a fervor that would have shocked her mere days ago.

Her fingers came to rest on the collar of his coat. She felt him tremble at her touch. Tremble as if her nearness were as devastating to him as his was to her, and the knowledge sent a thrill of wonder through her veins. She, Isolde Fairfax, the wraith of Grimsfell Hall, the woman marked by the devil, had made this beautiful man tremble.

More, whispered some reckless voice inside her. I want more.

She did not fully understand what “more” entailed. Her novels were romantic, but she had no experience of love to illuminate them. She only knew that her heart ached with a strange, sweet longing, that every thought seemed to be reaching toward Angelo, that she wanted never to be parted from him.

His arms tightened about her, and she gasped at the fierceness of his tenderness. It should have frightened her, perhaps. It should have reminded her of propriety, of virtue, of all the rules she had read about in her books but never expected to have occasion to follow.