“I thank you for your high praise,” he said.
“It wasn’t meant to praise.”
“Neither is getting clobbered senseless by a candlestick.”
A smile tugged at her lips.
He shifted, drumming his fingers on the side of the tub. “Red hair, in my opinion is dangerous.”
Juliet dried a knife overlong, rubbing the towel up and down the blade. “Marked by the fires of Hell and like the Scythians, prone to convert the skulls of their enemies into drinking cups.”
“Do I have much to fear?”
With the tip of her finger she touched the sharp point. “Do not test me.”
Water splashed. “My, what a sour temperament. With what remaining time I have, why should I long for such shrewish companionship?”
Her breath burned in her throat. “I am not slow to understand.” She jammed the tip of the blade into the cutting block, the knife vibrating. If he wanted a challenge, she would give it to him. “I have been chased around the dining room table by Master Horace countless times, warding off his advances, and I refuse to be bullied by an ill-bred colonial and sink to his level of lewdness.”
“The endeavor could be illuminating.” His voice dropped lower, aloof and confident.
Juliet shivered at the rich, masculine tone of his depraved proposal. The intimation swept over her like a caress. Outrageous. “There are some things best not learned.”
She tripped on his clothes. Plates clanking, she scrambled to right them, kicking his garments free from her feet. “You don’t have lice, do you?”
She placed the clean platters in the sideboard, and then darted a glance at him. She widened her eyes in admiration of his male beauty. He was like the warrior, Achilles, whose nymph mother dipped him into the River Styx to make him invulnerable to battle. Broad shoulders and chest, muscles rippled to a narrow waist. The tub hugged his long legs and muscular thighs and farther…
“Nothing but trouble there—” A faint note of cynical amusement rose in his voice.
With fire in her cheeks, she snapped her gaze to his face. Oh, the infuriating man.
“And following her, fawning, went both gray wolves and fierce-eyed lions, bears and swift leopards insatiable for deer.”
His voice lowered, pleasant, potent, tempered and muted by his English accent. For a moment, Juliet was back in her cozy cottage in England, set against downy pillows and reading her favorite ancient Greek verses. “Seeing them, she rejoiced inwardly in her heart, and in their breasts, she threw desire, and they all lay down together in pairs in their shady dwellings.”
Juliet pressed her hands to her face. Damn him. She had finished the most salacious part of the Homeric hymn to Aphrodite.
He leaned over to retrieve the letter that had fallen out of a pocket of his clothing and placed it on the table beside him. So casual, in control, but not as cavalier as he attempted to appear. What was he hiding?
When she traversed the room he grabbed her hand, pulling her back to meet his roguish regard. Juliet truly wished he’d go away, his presence wreaking havoc on the peace she so desperately desired. Sleet smacked against the windows, drops as big as farthings.
“You have the universal power of Aphrodite, over all living beings, divine and human, who live on land, in the sea, and in the air, and most of all me.”
She kept her gaze averted to the naked man in the tub and tugged her fingers loose. Had he referred to her as the goddess of seduction and lovemaking? She would have none of it. “Carry your charms elsewhere, Mr. Hansford. I have no need for empty flatterers.”
“Here, scrub my back—” He tossed her the sponge, and it plopped at her feet, soaking the frayed hems of her skirts. She glared at him and just stood there, mouth pinched, hands on her hips.
“Orpha ordered you to attend me.”
Of course, he’d remind her of Orpha’s crude commands and underneath, she had an inkling he was diverting himself with her. But just in case he wasn’t, she’d be at risk for a beating if she refused.
Her eyes dipped to the lean muscles of his back. “Impossible—” she faltered.
“Impossible?”
She dumped a bucket of ice-cold water over his head leaving him sputtering, and then huffed from the room in the wake of his echoing laughter.
Chapter Six
