Her eyebrows rose. “I did not,” she protested. “You asked if I was not painting today, and I answered that I might later.”
“You were telling me.” He dipped his head closer to hers.
“You think I was asking you to join me here?” Her voice was full of indignation. Her cheeks had turned pink.
“Were you?” He murmured the words, almost against her mouth.
She frowned. “I do notunderstanddalliance, Lord Ponsonby.”
“But you are d-drawn to it, Mrs. Keeping.”
She drew a deep breath, held it, and looked directly into his eyes. He waited for the denial, mockery in his eyes.
“Yes.”
The whole trouble seemed to be that she did not play by the rules—for the simple reason that she did notknowthe rules, perhaps. What did one do with a female who admitted to being drawn to dalliance?
Dally with her?
It did not help that he wanted her, that there was a niggling element of need in that wanting.
“If I go away,” he asked her, “will you paint any more today?”
She shook her head. “I am distracted. I was distracted even before you came. Even beforeIcame.”
“Then p-put your things away,” he said, “and leave them here. And w-walk with me.”
7
She did everything with deliberate care, washing her brushes, drying them with a threadbare towel, covering her paints, emptying the water onto the grass, stuffing the balled-up sheets of paper into her bag, folding her easel, laying it flat, setting the bag on top of it. Then she stood and looked at him again.
He offered his arm, and she took it. He led her toward the cedar avenue, passing between the trunks of two trees and coming out halfway along the grassy walk. Cedars of Lebanon had none of the erect tidiness of limes or elms. The branches grew in all directions, some close to the ground, some almost meeting overhead. The avenue made one think of Gothic novels—not that he had read many of them. There was a summerhouse positioned centrally at the end of it.
He could smell soap again. Someone should bottle the scent of soap on her skin and make a fortune off it.
“Of what does dalliance consist?” she asked him.
He looked down at the poke of her bonnet and almost laughed.Of this,he almost said.Of precisely this.
“Risqué repartee, s-smoldering glances, kisses, touches,” he said.
“No more than that?”
“Only if the two p-people concerned wish for more,” he said.
“And do we?”
“I c-cannot answer for you, Mrs. Keeping.”
“Doyou?”
He laughed softly.
“I suppose that means yes,” she said. “I do not know any risqué repartee. And I believe I would consider it silly if I did.”
He felt almost suffocated with wanting her. No courtesan could ever be half so clever. Except that this was not deliberate on her part.
They moved in and out of sunlight in the avenue. His eyes were slightly dazzled. So was the rest of him. He felt strangely out of his element.
