The room held its breath.
Jonathan looked down slowly. His eyes moved to her hand resting on his thigh with the unhurried calm of a man who has never once in his life been caught off guard.
He looked up to her face. The confident, predatory smile. The half-lidded eyes. The desperate, calculated angle of her posture designed to showcase the curve of her calf through silk.
Then to Reginald, who sat frozen across the table, every muscle locked with the particular tension of a man who knows exactly what his wife is doing and has no idea how this man will react.
Then to Arthur, whose terror had painted his face the particular gray shade of a man watching something he cannot stop.
Jonathan sighed.
It was a small sound. Quiet. The sigh of a man who had walked into a room hoping for a professional conversation and discovered instead that he was sitting in a circus.
He raised his right hand.
Cassandra's pulse jumped. Her breath caught.
