Help? Saints! He was the last man that could help her and the only man. “It’s… a feminine thing.”
He cocked his head. “I can still help.”
She swallowed hard. His closeness. The smell. His eyes. It was all too much.
“It’s nothing, truly. I was just… processing. That’s what the plants are for, right?”
“They do seem terribly wise.”
She eyed the fern. “More than some men.”
Sebastian leaned back, smile still intact. “Then perhaps I ought to earn my keep and offer some wisdom of my own.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. For instance…” His eyes seemed to blaze. “You are perfect as you are, so never try to strive to be perfect or for a moment to be perfect, a life, a future. Perfect is right now.”
And just like that, her heart was no longer hosting a party. It was hosting a revolution.
A very inconvenient one.
With torches and declarations and possibly even fireworks.
All because of him.
Temptation on legs.
Tall legs.
And the one man who just might see the heroine in her before she saw it in herself.
*
Sebastian tried notto stare at her mouth. He failed. It was the way she’d said it, so offhand, like it meant nothing. And yet somehow, it struck him like a lightning bolt to the chest. A perfectly ordinary, teasing response, delivered in that soft voice of hers, threaded with wit and something he hadn’t quite learned how to name.
She was brilliant.
And entirely unguarded in this moment. Maddie, sitting there with crumbs on her skirt and a fern leaf tangled in her hair, all around her, really, was more captivating than any finely powdered debutante in a Mayfair ballroom. She wasn’t performing, wasn’t posturing. She was simplybeing.
He wanted to reach out and tuck that stray curl behind her ear. Not because it was in the way, but because it wasn’t. Because it was wildly, wonderfully out of place—just like her.
He shifted in his seat, the warmth of the conservatory pressing around him. Her scent drifted over, sweet and something earthy. He doubted she even knew how distracting she was. Which onlymade it worse.
Or better.
Depending on how much longer he could resist touching her.
“I meant what I said,” he murmured. He smiled. “About you not needing to change. Not for anyone. Not even for some idiot who can’t stop staring at you.”
Her eyes widened.
Did he just say that aloud?
Yes, he had.
Too late to take it back now.
“You said something rather intelligent the other day,” Maddie said.
