As with every invitation and meeting that was not directly concerning Carina, Aurora had hesitated before agreeing. It was not that she objected to time spent with Regulus – in fact, since the kidnapping and his revelation of his birth identity, they had spent more time together, even accompanied by others, than they had spent together collectively over the time she had been Carina's tutor. What her hesitation stemmed from was how she felt about him. Despite everything that spelled caution for her, she was irresistibly drawn to this man and knew what she felt for him was far more now than the initial attraction. What the last days had revealed was a man would would be too easy to love. Perhaps.... perhaps he already was.

And so she had accepted and now found herself being ushered into a tea shop as though this were a 'date'. Her experience with those was as limited as a young teenager's and her stomach was a bundle of knotted anxiety. She cast a look his way and then away, dark lashes sweeping down over her eyes in a look he was likely becoming familiar with, one that indicated she was not wholly at easy with her situation.