Immediately, the gathered crowd fell silent as every eye in the room trained upon her. Naomi concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other and not falling over herself as she walked inside. The hem of her long, blue ball gown nearly tripped her. She cursed her lack of experience walking in such attire, but then she righted herself and kept going, ignoring the increase of hushed whispers swirling all around her.

What they thought didn’t matter. She wasn’t here for them.

Naomi scanned the crowd, searching for her husband. Now that she was here, her plan seemed far more foolhardy than she’d allowed herself to believe up to that point. She hadn’t seen the man in more than ten years, after all. She might not recognize him. Greyson Cunningham had hardly been more than a boy, and she had most decidedly still been a girl. Her fanciful notions of his appearance could all just be a figment of her imagination, and even if they weren’t, he was certainly a fully grown man by now.

She had all the gossip rags to prove just precisely what sort of a man he was, after all.

Naomi’s worries soon proved unfounded, however. She hadn’t yet located him amongst the mass of bodies when he darted out and took a firm, almost painful hold of her elbow, pulling her unceremoniously out to an alcove near the rose gardens. She stumbled again over her gown, but he didn’t slow at all, half-carrying her when she couldn’t keep up with the pace of his long strides.