One of Grandfather’s favored adages returned to his mind, a mocking, silent reminder. For he had proven himself in painful dearth of it, both in his interactions with Helena and Lady Beatrice.
Helena cast a slicing look of disapproval in his direction now. “Do not lie to me to spare my feelings, Huntingdon. You have already confessed you considered it.”
“Fair enough.” He inclined his head. “I told you I considered the possibility. However, I decided against it. Either way, last night has decided the matter for the both of us.”
Quite deliciously, too.
Before he could say more, the servants returned, robbing them of their privacy and their soup course both. The next course was laid before them. Partridgerissolesand fried parsley with amacédoineof assorted vegetables, swimming in a mushroom sauce. Ordinarily one of his favorites. But the rich scent wafting to him did not appeal at the moment.
All that did was the woman seated across from him.
He dismissed the servants against the instinct that warned him further intimacy with Helena could only lead to more mayhem and distraction. When they were once more alone, he could not wrest his gaze from her.
She sighed. “You are at it again, my lord.”
Staring at her, she meant. Yes, he could not seem to help himself.
He took a sip of his wine, searching for a suitable response and finding none. He settled upon levity instead. “What am I at, Lady Huntingdon? The dinner table? Indeed, I am, as it is the ordinary place for the evening meal to be served.”
Her lips pursed in a pout he could not help but long to kiss. “You know very well what I am saying. You are staring at me, as if I have dropped soup down my bodice, which I assure you I have not. Having experienced the sensation once before, I can promise, it is unmistakable.”
He could not help but to laugh at the notion of her dripping soup down her bodice. “You are having me on.”
“I am not,” she countered. “It was guinea fowl soup, and it was quite dreadful. I had to spend the entirety of a dinner party with a hunk of celery firmly lodged within my corset. The more I wriggled in an effort to move it into a more comfortable position, the deeper it fell.”
“Being a gentleman, I never considered the unfortunate prospect of such an occurrence.” Gabe envisioned her squirming in her seat through a ten-course dinner. “Did not your fellow diners take note?”
He would have taken note, he thought. Never mind the lump of offending celery. He would not have been able to keep from being enthralled by the sight of her shimmying, those glorious pale mounds of her breasts swaying with her every movement.
“I do hope not, but my mother admonished me quite sternly for my fidgeting on the carriage ride home. I did not have the heart to reveal the cause of my agitation.” Helena grinned, a pink tinge giving her cheeks some lovely color.
He was not entirely certain how they had so far diverged from the original path of their conversation to be discussing lost celery in bosoms, but he was grateful for the distraction. Helena’s humility was refreshing. Lady Beatrice would have perished before she would have ever admitted such a faux pas.
“Are you certain a piece of celery is not now similarly lodged within your bosom, my dear?” he teased. “I would be more than happy to search for it in the name of your comfort.”
Her color heightened, but there was a newfound warmth in her gaze that seeped into his heart and settled there to stay. “There was no celery in the soup course, Huntingdon.”
“Do you think you might call me Gabe when we are alone?” he asked, shocking himself with the question as much as with the desire to hear her husky voice call him by his given name.
Last night, he had been inside her. He had consummated their union. And yet, this request of his somehow seemed more intimate, emerging from a deeper, more profound place. He ought to be alarmed.
“I would be pleased to call you Gabe if you wish.” A shy smile curved her delectable lips. “Is that the reason why you have been staring at me so strangely ever since dinner began?”
Of course it was not. But somehow, broaching the topic of her feelings for him did not feel right in this moment.
“I was staring at you because you are beautiful tonight, Helena,” he told her instead. Because this, too, was true. “And because it is difficult indeed to look anywhere else.”
Her color deepened once more, but the smile she sent him, tentative and sweet, revealing the slight gap between her front teeth, hit him with the force of a fist. “Thank you, Gabe. That is the nicest compliment any gentleman has ever paid me.”
“You are welcome,” he said with matching politeness.
What an arse he was. Had he never told her she was lovely?
He would have to tell her more often.
Every day.
No.He was still angry with her for making him break all his vows to himself, his vows to Grandfather. Was he not?
