“I actually know very little,” she admitted. “But I wanted his first words to be from his own country. I read as much about Baoulé as I can find, which isn’t much, unfortunately.”
She owed Koffi better than that. For years and years, he’d been her constant companion and best friend, confined to a gilded cage. No one knew her better or had spent more time with her than her parrot. As soon as she inherited, she would take him where he was from. They would both discover everything they’d been missing.
“I take it back,” Mr. Middleton announced. “I like Koffi better than tea.”
“Tea and cake!” Koffi demanded. “Tea and cake!”
“I never said I liked you better than cakes,” Mr. Middleton whispered. “A gentleman must know his weaknesses.”
Priscilla giggled despite herself. She could not believe that the gentleman in her drawing room was spending as much time in conversation with her parrot as with her—or that it was the exact right thing to do. Having him with them was so much better than her and Koffi sitting around alone.
“Can he fly?” Mr. Middleton asked.
She lifted her hand high overhead. “Goodbye, Koffi.”
“Goodbye, my love! ¡Adios, mi amor! Merde!” Koffi squawked as he flew to the curtain rod atop the closest window.
“Forgive me, but…” Mr. Middleton’s brown eyes danced with humor. “How certain are you as to the accuracy of his translations?”
Priscilla widened her eyes. “Are you insinuating my prized parrot is anything less than fully fluent?”
“‘Insinuate?’” he gasped with faux affront. “Dear lady, I swear this truth to you upon my soul. You have been hoodwinked most foully!” He paused and tilted his head. “Fowl-ly?”
She took a step closer. “How can you be so sure?”
“There has never been a surer creature than I,” he assured her, coming nearer until their toes nearly touched. “French is the language of love, my dear, and I am an expert in…”
“Love?” she whispered, as the tips of her fingers brushed his.
“I was going to say ‘conjugating verbs,’” he whispered, “but my second-best marks were always in—”
“Beast.” She gave him a light slap on his chest.
He trapped her hand between his own and the beating of his heart. His head lowered toward hers. “Je veux ce que je n’ose pas avoir.”
She licked her lips. They were too close to his, the temptation too much to bear, but she could not pull away.
“Only my parrot speaks French,” she forced herself to say lightly, breaking the spell.
He smiled, slow and heartbreaking, and dropped her hand. “That’s how the French say, ‘My bear drinks beer in the ballroom.’ A very useful phrase.”
Priscilla pressed her trembling palm to her too-rapid heart and turned her gaze away. That wasn’t what he’d said at all. She’d studied just enough to recognize, I want what I dare not have.
If he’d touched her for a single second longer, she probably would have given everything to him. Her pulse still hadn’t calmed.
To distract them both from how close she’d come to willingly surrendering a kiss, she quickly sought for an innocent new subject. “Were you out at Hyde Park this afternoon?”
“I was not,” he said, relaxing visibly at the much safer topic. “I was far too busy doing very important gentlemanly things to spare a moment for the park.”
She narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
“You were at your club?” she guessed.
“Tavern,” he corrected. “Clubs are for people with fortunes or titles. Ask your parrot.”
“Koffi would never visit a common tavern,” she assured him. “Which one is yours?”
“The Wicked Duke, over on Haymarket,” he said at once. “It’s a barely reputable affair, what with allowing riff-raff like myself, but it is owned by Eastleigh—”
