She did notmiss certain parts of marriage—but shewasjealous. And lonely. It hurt, sometimes, to see happy couples milling about and to know that that sort of happiness would never find her. It wasn’t that she had ever wanted to risk another disastrous marriage, but that she didn’t want to look back forty years from now and wonder where all of her time had gone and what she had to show for it.
It would not belove. It would not befamily. She had surrendered all possibility of those things long ago, along with her name and her nationality. And it was a lonely thing indeed, to be no one—to be only a pretty bit of fiction.
Which he had somehow known.
Because you are interesting.
Dear God, she had never wanted to beinteresting.Interestinginvited speculation.Interestingcould get her hanged, if she were not careful.
“Is he attractive, your Mr. Knight?” Harriet asked, and there was a merry light in her eyes, suggesting she thought that Jenny had protested her lack of interest in an affair just a bit too much to be believed.
“I…suppose.” She hadn’t thought of it, truly. He had distracted her so thoroughly in one manner or another that she had simply not had the time to considerattractionwhen she had otherwise been engaged in fending off his bold pronouncements. But he had the sort of sharp, square jawline that men envied and women sighed over, and if his hair was something less than perfectly combed and styled, then its rakish dishevelment still somehow suited his face.
He cared even less for dress than he did for his hair, given his generally untidy clothes, but that also had not detracted from his appearance. He would never be a dandy, but instead of looking like a slob, he looked like a man who simply had many better things to do with his time than to fuss about with his wardrobe. Therewassomething undeniably attractive about a man who simply did not seem to care for anyone else’s opinion of his appearance. Those rumpled, gold-blond locks had fallen over his forehead as if he had just rolled out of bed, and Jenny—quite liked it.
Perhaps a bit too much. Unsettled, she set her tea aside. “Well,” she said. “I’m off to bed—and I amnotgoing to have an affair, besides.”
But by the titters that followed her out the door, she did not think she had been much believed.
Chapter Three
“Mr. Knight,” Jenny said, her voice dry, as Sebastian fell into step beside her the next morning as she came out of the bakery at last. “To what do I owe the dubious pleasure of your presence?”
“To yourself,” he said. “Is it Antoinette, then?”
“It’sJenny.” She picked a bit of the crisp crust from the top of her profiterole, popping it into her mouth. “You may call meMadame Laurent.”
“I would rather call you Jenny, even if it isn’t your name.”
“I say it is!”
“Then you are lying.” He didn’t know why she had bothered; what her name was didn’t matter—he only wished toknowit. “Many people change their names for many reasons. I don’t hold it against you.” The sun had begun to rise, lifting London from the dismal grey in which it had been mired for the past several days, and it streaked the sky in hues of pink and purple. He risked a glance at her, down some inches, owing to the slightness of her frame. “You don’t wish to speak of the weather, do you?”
For some reason, that startled a laugh from her, airy and light. “No. No, I don’t wish to speak of the weather,” she said.
“Good. People prattle on about it a great deal, which is utterly baffling when one considers that to remark upon it to someone else, they must both be in the midst of it. Seems quite a senseless thing to speak of, given the context.”
“It’s called polite conversation,” she said, her voice sweet as sugar. “Perhaps you ought to attempt it sometime.”
“I have. It’s dreadful.” It was the only sort of talking people did at balls and soirées; social occasions he avoided like the plague, since they were at best irritating, and at worst, utterly overwhelming. The roar of so many voices tended to flood his head until it was impossible to think over them, until his skin crawled with anxiety and it was all he could do not to jam his hands over his ears and seek out a quiet, dark place to clear his mind and calm his shredded nerves. He clasped his hands behind his back, doing his damnedest to match her steps, which was a bit difficult as her strides were much shorter than his own. “I don’t suppose you have reconsidered?”
“Since yesterday?” Her nose wrinkled; a charming little motion that made her look younger than her years, which he would have guessed to be around thirty. “You are…persistent, Mr. Knight, I’ll grant you, but I cannot say that you improve upon further acquaintance.”
And that—that wasalsoa lie. For her, at least. In all honesty, Sebastian could say he didnottend to improve upon further acquaintance. People found him either odd or terribly boring, but she—she wasamusedby him, at least presently. Which was far better than either indifference, which he had expected, or annoyance, which he had feared. “I think you like me more than you’d care to admit,” he said.
She gave a little huff, but did not deny the charge he had laid against her. She said, “One would think you would at least have offered me some flattery along with so indelicate a proposition.”
“Why? You must already know that you are beautiful; you have no need for me to tell you as much. I can appreciate beauty as well as any man, but it does not impress me. A pretty face is simply an accident of birth, and every one of those faces can be reduced down to mathematical constants—a certain symmetry of features which aligns itself with Euclid’s extreme and mean ratio. The aesthetics of beauty are a mystery long solved, and they do not interest me greatly.” He thought back, retraced the disjointed dance of yesterday’s conversation in his mind. “I did flatter you, though.”
“Did you?” There was a flicker of laughter hiding in her cheek, revealed by the dimple that had tucked itself away there.
“I told you that you were interesting. That is flattery, to my mind. Moreover, it ishonestflattery, which is something of a rarity, so I am given to understand.” She would certainly understand that much; that he was at least anhonestman. Principled, which was more than could be said for many.
“And yet there are doubtless plentiful other women who might be had for less than honest flattery,” she said. “So you need not waste your time with me, Mr. Knight.”
“I don’t consider it to be time wasted,” he said. “I quite enjoy speaking with you, which I did not expect.”
Again he had amused her—perhaps. The smile that graced her lips had a certain sharpness to it. “You did not expect to enjoy speaking with me, and yet you held no qualms over issuing a proposition?”
