Her skirts rustled as she came into the faint ring of light.Swoosh.Swoosh.Swoosh. His male parts responded to the distinctly feminine sound, further disordering his thoughts.
She was dressed, not for the evening, but as she’d been this afternoon. Serviceable, in dark brown. She’d again hidden her mass of red curls, and her cap was, in a word, hideous.
Armor.
Not an auspicious start.
“Do join me...” he suggested.
She set down her candle, parted her lips as if to speak, and then quickly clamped her mouth closed in an oddly enticing mockery of a pout.
She did not usually resort to pouting, he’d wager...nor, for that matter, did she use any intentional means of manipulation. She would fight, if she must, honestly for anything she desired. And if she failed, she would retreat and replan. He knew. He knew because he would do the same.
Kindred understanding.A central ingredient of her allure.
He noted the book in her hand as she set her candle next to his lamp. “...Or have you simply come in search of Volume two?”
Her gaze withered. “I came, as you are aware, at your command.”
Hiscommand? He’d carefully worded his note as asuggestion. He wanted her to agree to his proposal of her own free will, not because she felt compelled to comply.
“Since you’ve made up your mind to be obliging”—he slid to the side to make more room for her to sit—“you might as well heed my other charge.”
His voice had come out harsher than he’d intended, as if unconsciously matching the martial look in her eye. Something had changed since this afternoon, and instinct urged him to take up a position of defense.
She examined him with disconcerting frankness.
“After another penny, are you?” he asked. “I’ll have you know I’m pockets to let right now. Unless I return to my rooms and retrieve my purse.”
“This time,” she said slowly, “Ihad better offeryoumy thoughts.”
He raised a brow. “From the look on your face, I hesitate to ask.”
“I did not come to be obliging. I came to put a stop to this farce before we both do something we cannot help but regret.”
If he’d been in less a state of suspense, he might have seized on his fleeting thought that she, too, was simply scared, that reason had, in the intervening hours since they’d kissed, reordered her thoughts, and then, as reason often did, trampled with glee on the true desires of her heart.
But she’d saidfarce.
She’d compared the third most life-altering experience of his life to staged buffoonery.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to explain.”
She flashed a frown. “An age-old story. Quite unremarkable.Trite, really.”
Each word she uttered dug deeper than the last, punctuated by her increasingly caustic expression.
“Trite.” He over enunciated the word, as if considering its meaning, and then hid his growing anger beneath an insouciant tone. “You’ve my complete attention. Please continue.”
“Well, the story beings when a prince, or the lord of the manor?—”
“Or I presume, theduke?” he said, mimicking her derisive inflection.
“—discovers apressing needto seduce and then abandon the governess.”
“Seduceand then abandonthe governess,” he repeated.
“Well, it needn’t bethe governess.” She either mistook, or did not perceive, his emphasis. “The nursemaid, the cook, the housekeeper—they’re all equally at risk. The story’s most salient elements are an imperious, powerful male on one hand, and a female who displays high competence in some feminine art on the other...”
