“’Tis a lie,” he repeated and then took in a deep breath, those glittering eyes still hazily focused on her. “It makes me verra angry.”
So . . . shehadheard him correctly. It was just . . .
What . . . what a strange sentence.
Perhaps he was less aware than she had presumed.
“What makes you angry?” she asked.
His eyes closed for a moment, and she nearly thought him asleep again. But his hand wrapped around her wrist didn’t slack.
He shook his head, rocking to and fro on the pillow.
“Ye say the princess is ugly, but that is a lie,” his voice rasped, creaky from days of disuse. “The princess is . . .beautiful.”
He opened his eyes and fixed her with such a . . .look.
Haunted—
No . . .yearning.
“So. Beautiful,” he repeated.
Lottie’s brow drew down, down, down.
The man must be addled still.
“The princess in the story?” He remembered her reading?
“Aye.” His squeezed her wrist where he held her, the delicious weight singeing her nerves and sending shooting darts up her arm. “Ye . . . called me . . . dragon. But ye . . . princess . . .youare beautiful . . . and it makes me angry.”
Lottie nearly laughed in shock, his words startled her so.
Hehadheard her reading. And he thought her to be a princess?
More to the point, Dr. Whitaker considered her beautiful?
That seemed . . . uncharacteristic.
Not that she presumed to know Dr. Whitaker’s preferences on feminine beauty. But he did not seem the sort for tender, soft emotions . . . for flattering a lady and openly admiring her beauty. The very idea sent her thoughts spinning into a knot.
She had assumed he saw beyond her face, that he did not consider her physical charms to be the sum total of her value.
Had she been wrong? Was this proof that Dr. Whitaker was as human as any other man?
Moreover—
“Mybeautymakes you . . . angry?” she managed to stammer.
Why was herattractivenessa source of anger? Was Dr. Whitaker possibly the sort of man who protected his heart by decrying feminine beauty? That seemed equally unlikely, as such an attitude did not conform to the confident, sensible man he appeared to be.
In short, his current words made no sense whatsoever.
“Aye. It’s no’ fair. I cannae stop watching ye. My eyes willnae obey me. They watch and want and Ihateit.” He emphasized the wordhatewith an almost comedic helplessness. “I dinnae want tae find any part of this beautiful.” He stared at her again, eyes slowly blinking, as if sleep sat too heavily on his lids. “I dinnae want to fancy ye. Why cannae ye be whey-faced like the princess is supposed tae be?”
The plaintive note of complaint in his voice—the tangled frustration with being unable to stop staring—startled a laugh out of her.
As far as compliments went, it was absurd and ridiculous, and Lottie loved it more than any other she had ever received.
