“Is that a tally?” She gawped at the large board nailed over the east window, the chalk title reading, “Days Cassian has bested Cecilia.”
Under it was a Roman numeral for one.
Disbelief and aghast, she turned to find Cassian, but the room was empty. Turning back to the sight, she bristled. How could this grown man be so childish?
She called for the butler, and when Andrews stepped in, he looked unflappable. “Your Grace?”
“I need a chair and some chalk,” she ordered. “That board needs a bit of adjusting.”
“Your Grace—”
From his tone, she could tell that he was going to talk her down from playing into Cassian’s game, but she stopped him with a look.
Lips twitching, Andrews bowed, “Give me a moment, Your Grace.”
She gazed at the blackboard, her insides prickling. Vowing to herself to make sure the tally was even by the end of the week, she peered out of the window, trying to see if Cassian was at his precious outbuilding.
Sadly, the angle did not show her the backyard, only a section of the side.
“Here we are, Your Grace,” Andrews announced as he set one of the chairs down and rested a small basket holding a cloth and two sticks of chalk. “May I help you up?”
“Please,” she said, while stepping out of her slippers.
Accepting his hand, she folded her skirts and stepped onto the chair. Taking the cloth, she wiped the title off, then split the board in two. “Thank you. If His Grace is going to join us, please add a pot of coffee to the sideboard.”
“I would prefer to stay with you, Your Grace,” Andrews replied. “Until you successfully descend from this chair.”
“I’ll be fine,” Cecilia reassured, then dismissed him.
As he left the room, she wrote both her and Cassian’s names on the other side, and for a title wrote,Fifty Rounds.“Since he is so fixated on boxing.”
Did shereallythink they would go fifty rounds? They were only here for sixty days, which would mean a battle of wits almost every day.
Gritting her jaw, she wrote out his point but scowled at it as if it was the one that offended her. Casting through her mind, she tried to find an incident—anyincident—in the last weeks or so since the kiss where she’d had a leg over him.
Nothing came to mind.
She glared at the stark white mark, wishing she could wipe it out. Turning, she rocked dangerously on her feet and remembered she was a foot and a half off the ground.
“Glaring at it won’t make it vanish,” Cassian’s teasing tone had her startling—and teetering.
The pattern on the walls was stark and bright before her eyes as she fell through the air. Raw panic caged her throat, and bracing for the short fall, she flung her arms up to protect her head— it was all for naught as strong arms interrupted her crash.
Powerful arms held her, and she was too weak with relief to protest at being held against a muscular slab of his chest like a sack of grain. His cologne, a subtle alchemy of citrus and spice, flooded her nose.
Even with her heart still pounding out of her chest, Cecilia mustered enough courage to say, “You can put me down now.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “What if I put you down and you manage to twist your back reaching for the teacup?”
His mind-boggling arrogance rendered her speechless. She untied the knot in her tongue, “I have not done so before, and I will not do so now. Put me down.”
Silently, he set her on her feet, and she turned to jab a finger into his chest. “What is the meaning of this tally? How old are you?”
“Old enough to find some slivers of enjoyment in these two months,” he shrugged, while side-stepping her to the sideboard. He made a cup of coffee, dropping cubes of sugar and splashes of cream in.
He wore faded charcoal trousers and another loose lawn shirt. Perfectly tailored to his tall, lanky frame. His unruly dark hair was still wild around his head, and she noticed the shadows of a beard on his jaw.
Oddly enough, her breath hitched at the sight of him. Even more disturbing, her breasts brushed against her stays, the tips oddly sensitive and tingling.
