“Very well, then.” She accepted his answer looking almost angelic as she raised her fork to her mouth. Her expression wasperfectly balanced between a smile and a sigh, and she managed to convey a sense of peace without even trying.
The food on the tines was the last piece of sea bass, and as he watched her take that delicate morsel, raw desire tugged deep in his gut. Beneath the table, her knees bracketed his. The connection was unexpected, but not entirely unwelcome.
Time stood still, and nothing outside that room mattered—not the past, not the future.
Using the corner of her napkin, she dabbed at her mouth, and then met his gaze from beneath those thick golden lashes. A lightning bolt of lust coursed through his veins.
Bloody hell, he wanted her. In his bed. Beneath him. Or on top. It didn’t really matter.
Extremely inconvenient, actually.
Having his way with Lady Amelia was definitelynotpart of his mission.
Leopold jerked his legs back and although she looked up questioningly, she didn’t comment.
The chasm between this woman and himself couldn’t be any wider. He was darkness, she was light. No matter he’d aligned himself with a few titled fellows with righteous intentions, his soul was tainted beyond repair.
If Leopold dared to act on this…Winterhope would challenge him to a duel. Which would be a conundrum in and of itself because duels were acts of honor, and Leopold didn’t play by those rules.
Leopold would have to kill him. Which would, therefore, cause even more of a mess.
All the while Lady Amelia sat quietly eating her meal, like a fresh little flower growing in the middle of a highway.
“I have never, ever, eaten this much at one sitting,” she said, despite more than half the food on her plate being untouched.Then she laughed, a delicate sound which reminded him of charming little silver bells.
“Have your fill,” Leopold said, his voice gruffer than usual.
Leopold poured more wine for himself.
She was just pushing her food around on her plate now, her thoughts obviously elsewhere as she weighed her next words. “I shouldn’t say,” she murmured, shaking her head with just the slightest of movements. “It’s not proper conversation. But seeing as you mentioned it already…”
Leopold exhaled loudly. She must, by now, know his thoughts regarding propriety.
She glanced around the room as though someone would be listening for her to speak out of turn. And then, leaning forward, she whispered, “I have more room.”
“More room? In your chamber?”
“Going without stays—without the corset. I have more room.” Her cheeks glowed pink in the warm glow. “For the food.”
Both Leopold’s brows shot up. “Ah…”
“A corset is meant to make a person smaller, in the literal sense. But going without them… I feel… incredible. I can bend properly. I feel more comfortable sitting. I can…” She grimaced. “I can breathe, despite having eaten so much food.”
Well…
Thank the stars.
Perhaps he wasn’t saving her from Crossings so much as he was saving her from everyone else.
YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ME
“Only half a day’s drive today,” Leopold announced after walking Lady Amelia to the carriage the next morning. Once they arrived at Smuggler’s Manor, he would tell her about Crossings and her father, and explain why he’d gone to the trouble of nabbing her.
As far as her father’s business was concerned, she hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know.
His fault, he supposed, having become entirely too distracted at dinner the night before.
“Are we going to your home?” she asked. Intuitively, he doubted she’d always been this way. Her questions might be borne from simple curiosity, but Leopold thought it more likely that they at least partially were a result of being away from her restrictive family.
