Her mouth fell open in affronted disbelief. “I was not—! That is not what I was doing!”
But he was no longer listening. Actually, hewaslistening but not in a way that mattered. He had already made up his mind. He had cast judgment, closed the book, and passed sentence.
“I wasn’t snooping,” she said again, louder now, stepping toward him. “I was trying to be helpful, something I daresay your household doesn’t see very often, judging by the state of your decanters?—”
“Don’t,” he warned in a low growl.
“Oh, I most certainly will!” she shot back, her fists clenched at her sides. “You speak to me as though I’m a thief or a gossip or… or one of those society ladies who pretend to faint just to gain male attention! I’m not interested in rifling through your secrets, Your Grace, no matter how fascinating you seem to think they are!”
“Are you quite finished?” he asked, his tone deceptively soft.
“No!” she snapped. “Because let me make one thing perfectly clear. I don’t care that you’re a duke or that you can glower like a Byronic hero. You cannot tell me what to do!”
He took a step closer. Her breath caught.
“You cannot frighten me,” she said though her voice betrayed a slight tremor. “I am not scared of you.”
His eyes, sharp as flint, locked with hers.
“Perhaps,” he said quietly, “you should be.”
Cordelia stilled. The room suddenly felt too small.
“Perhaps,” he murmured, his voice dropping further still, “an innocent little hare like you should know better than to hop into a fox’s den… and start poking around.”
He was dangerously close now. She could feel the heat of him, the tension coiled beneath his stillness like a drawn bow. Her heart beat unhelpfully fast. Her lungs refused to perform their duties in any consistent rhythm.
And then, his eyes dipped… to her lips which were no doubt trembling in the most humiliatingly obvious manner. Cordelia forgot what she’d been saying. In fact, she forgot what she had meant to say, what language even was.
He was far too tall. Why had she not noticed before howverytall he was? And broad? And why did he smell like pine and cold wind and things she did not trust herself to like?
A treacherous part of herself wanted to kiss him again. But she would rather walk the fiery pits of hell than do that… again. Thankfully, fate appeared in the sound of a knock on the door. Neither of them spoke, but the door opened, nonetheless.
“Your Grace?” Hargrave called out apologetically. “There is a visitor for you.”
Mason’s nostrils flared up. Then, he took a step back and gave her the slightest of bows.
“Until next time, Lady Cordelia.”
When he left, she was able to breathe again, but, she wondered, for how long?
Chapter Six
“You’re late,” came the lazy drawl from the window seat, “and I’ve nearly perished from the trauma of being left alone with your truly repugnant armchair for more than fifteen minutes.”
Mason did not bother to look up as he shut the door behind him.
“I’m amazed you can tell the difference between trauma and inconvenience. You rarely linger long enough in either.”
His cousin, Jasper Everleigh, the Duke of Harrow, turned with a slow, dramatic sigh, sprawling his long legs over the Persian rug like a man entirely at home in another man’s study.
“It wounds me,” he said, pressing a hand, which was adorned with one unnecessarily expensive ring, to his heart. “You’ve become so sharp, cousin. Has the countryside withered your soul entirely?”
Mason finally glanced up from the letters he’d brought with him. “What are you doing here, Jasper?”
“Such warmth,” Jasper replied cheerfully. “Is this how you greet all your guests, or am I uniquely despised?”
Mason tossed the stack of correspondence onto the desk and moved toward the decanter. “You’re not a guest. You never wait to be invited.”
