“How do you know such a thing, Miss Madeleine?”
She shrugged and Sebastian’s eyes fell to her deeply cut gown. He was starting to feel warm, and it couldn’t have been from just a sip of his drink. His fever was gone now, but a different heat lingered whenever Maddie was near.
“Well, we make it with beer here. It’s not rum.” He took another sip but he couldn’t stop staring at her cleavage.
“What else goes into the flipping egg?”
Sebastian broke into a laugh. “It’s an egg-flip, not a flipping egg.” He licked his lips. “You are—” He stopped himself just in time before he told her just how sweet she was. “I extracted the juice from the rind of a lemon by rubbing it with sugar and a piece of cinnamon, nutmeg, and voilà. I boiled it gently in the beer and then poured it on the eggs.”
“And how did you make it so creamy?” she asked as she took her first sip.
“A lot of stirring,” Sebastian answered but his voice trailed off when he watched Maddie’s lips lay on the rim of the thick cup. Her perfectly manicured fingers wrapped around the rustic cup, a thumb looped through the handle, she held the drink in her mouth for a while. A long moment that erased all other thoughts from Sebastian’s mind.
When she raised her gaze again and set the cup on her lap, Sebastian’s mouth was dry.
*
The warmth ofthe egg-flip lingered on her tongue, sweet and rich and utterly unexpected. Maddie held the cup in both hands, letting the heat seep into her fingers. Her lips still tingled where the creamy drink had touched them, and as she glanced over the rim of the mug at Sebastian, she caughtthe way he looked at her.
Not politely. Not casually.
But like a man who had forgotten, for just one moment, what he was supposed to do next.
It did strange things to her insides.
She lowered the cup carefully to her lap and fought the impulse to reach for her face—because she could feel it, couldn’t she? A touch of foam on her upper lip. Surely that was why he was staring.
He was trying not to laugh. Or perhaps—no, not laugh. Linger.
“Do I have something on my…” She gestured vaguely toward her mouth.
His gaze dropped, just for a heartbeat, before he set his cup down.
“Hold still,” he said softly.
His voice felt like a thread of silk drawn over bare skin, impossible to ignore. Maddie stilled. Not because she had to, but because something in his tone had rooted her to the spot. The fire popped behind them, but all she could hear was the sound of his breath reaching for hers.
He hesitated. Just for a heartbeat. A flicker of uncertainty—or restraint?—crossed his face. His hand hovered in the air, and she caught the barest tremble in his fingers. From the cold?
For one wild second, she thought he might cup her cheek instead. And she wanted him to. Her skin ached for it. Her whole body leaned ever so slightly forward, a pull she wasn’t even aware of until her balance shifted on the stool.
Then, he brushed the pad of his thumb just beneath her nose.
Not a sweep. Not even a press. Just a whisper of contact, warm and slow. A single pass beneath her nose, deliberate enough to banish the foam, but tender enough to cause her heart to flutter.
The touch ignited something low in her belly. A trembling. A tug. The kind of sensation she imagined poets wrote sonnets about and never quite captured.
She forgot to breathe.
She felt it all the way through her.
His fingers lingered a fraction too long, as if he were memorizing the curve of her lip. And in the firelight, with shadows dancing across his features, he didn’t look like a marquess or a scholar or a guest in someone else’s home.
He looked like a man on the precipice of desire, and terribly afraid to fall.
Her gaze lifted to his. And in that look—unspoken, unrushed—something passed between them. Something ancient and new all at once.
A question.
