“You know what she said?” Isla looked back, her tone hard.
“I know how she uses words.”
That did not answer my question.
Isla lifted her chin. “She called my people barbarians.”
“I imagined as much.”
He sat with a sigh, crossing his legs. Isla felt that she was standing before a foreign prince, a potentate who expected his subjects to stand before him while he lounged. It brought heat to her cheeks.
“I did ask you to sit,” Edward said wryly as though reading her mind.
“Am I that obvious?” she asked, walking to a chair beside the fire and turning it to face him.
It left a comfortable gap between them, a Persian rug of red and gold separating them.
“I’m afraid so. Your cheeks go red when you are angry,” Edward said. “So do your ears.”
“You’ve been observing me closely. One might say spying.”
His gaze sharpened. “No.”
Heat skittered along her skin that had nothing to do with the fire.
“Not spying. Is that such an insult?” Isla asked, sensing an opening in Edward’s infuriating self possession.
“To a man of honor and a man of the Service. Yes,” Edward snapped before exhaling sharply through his nose and rising.
He moved with efficient grace, across the room to a half-full decanter and poured some into a glass. Isla caught a whiff of whiskey. Her nose twitched.
“Scotch?” she asked.
Edward sipped and nodded. “Don’t tell me you know about whisky as well as horses?”
Isla crossed her legs demurely, straightened her skirts and folded her hands primly on her knees. The agony from the restrictive dress of such a posture was acute but she smiled prettily and batted her eyelashes.
“I learned whisky from the farmers on my father’s land. I learned working horses from them and racing from my father’s stable manager. Do English ladies not drink whisky?” she said with a smile too innocent to be plausible.
Edward laughed, a short, appreciative bark and Isla found herself grinning in return.
“This is an acquired taste,” he said, holding up the tumbler of dark liquid.
“May I?” Isla put out her hand.
Edward looked at her for a long moment, then crossed the room to her and handed her the tumbler. This close she became aware of his scent, a combination of spice, leather, tobacco and the smoky tang of the whisky. It was intolerably male, winding fingers through her hair, teasing the feminine heart of her. She wafted the tumbler under her nose and then sipped.
“I should say an Islay malt. Bowmore but … it is not quite. Close though.”
“It is called Laphroaig,” Edward said, “a new distillery. But you are right, it is located on the Isle of Islay. Impressive.”
He took the glass, his fingers resting briefly on hers. It sent a charge through her, a heat that defied the peaty whisky carving a path of fire down her throat. At the touch their eyes met also. Woodland green met ice blue.
“Would you like a glass of your own?” he asked, the contact broken after a second that felt like an hour.
“Yes, I very much would,” Isla said.
She wanted to ask about the scars she had seen on his back but didn’t want to admit to watching him undress. It would send the wrong message.
