His gloved fingers grazed her cheek. He wished they were bare so that he could test the softness of her skin. A tantalizing trail of freckles scattered over her nose. His gaze slipped to her lush, pink lips topped by a perfect Cupid’s bow. The urge to cover that mouth with his surged. He allowed his touch to linger, trailing his fingers down her cheek, to the curve of her jaw.
Her lips parted for a moment, as if she searched for words. “Oh. Thank you, Lord Harry. You are most kind.”
Still, he did not withdraw his touch but lingered, staring down at her as a fierce ache settled in his groin. As impossible as it seemed, he wanted this odd woman who dressed as a man and spouted nonsense about the weather. Who spoke with a boldness he had only ever experienced from one woman—Lady Boadicea Harrington, the very woman who had subsequently married his brother.
This was no bloody good.
The jangling of tack and clopping of hooves reached him, reminding him that he stood in the midst of a blizzard and he could not feel his cursed toes. What was he doing lingering in the squall, touching this bizarre creature as though it were his right, standing near enough to her to feel her heat and catch a whiff of orange and bergamot?
He did not even know who she was, beyond her surname. He slid his handkerchief into his jacket pocket and took a step back to restore a proper distance and clear his head of her maddening scent. “Mr. Danvers, it’s deuced frigid out here. I hear my replacement carriage arriving. Won’t you accompany me up to the house?”
Her brows drew together in a frown. “It wouldn’t be proper.”
“Not proper?” Harry didn’t know why goading the female before him was so bloody entertaining, but it was. And he wasn’t ready for it to end just yet. “Why, of course it would be proper, Mr. Danvers. You are a guest of my brother’s. I wouldn’t dream of allowing you to linger out here all alone to catch your death. Come along, then. It will be just two chaps getting to know each other.”
She stared, and he wondered if she would relent and admit that she was not, in fact, a Mr. Danvers at all. But then she tucked her curious metal tube back into her jacket. “I suppose I ought to return before I am missed.”
“You may continue your observations from within Boswell Manor,” he said then, surprising himself with the need to extend their interaction. But perhaps he had discovered the distraction that would enable him to survive this Christmas with his brother, dragon of a mother, and his sister-in-law, and that would be the only gift he required this Yuletide. “I know just the place.”
