Some place inside him responded to her smile.
And he understood.
He couldn’t pack her and her boxes into a hackney cab and end this day.
He thoroughly wracked his brain until a simple, perfect solution came to him. “Shall we have tea?”
“Tea?” Her brow crinkled, and her smile faltered. She looked as if she didn’t know how to interpret the suggestion. “With you?”
“Why not with me?”
“Well, you’re a…”
“A lord?”
“Well…” She shrugged one shoulder.
“Please don’t hold that against me,” he said, trying for lightness, but underneath sincerely earnest. “I promise I don’t bite.”
Unless you ask, he didn’t say.
Didn’t even know where that came from.
Well, that wasn’t precisely true.
It had come from the rake that, plainly, wouldn’t mind having his way with the delectable bit of sweet that was this Miss Birdwell. He’d become decently skilled at suppressing his inner rake this last year. But here he was, suddenly desperate for a private hour with this woman—even fifteen minutes would do in a pinch.
Head tipped to the side, Miss Birdwell considered him with her little smile. “And where do you propose we take tea?”
“Mivart’s, of course.”
Her eyebrows made a break for Burlington Arcade’s vaulted glass ceiling. “Mivart’s?”
“It’s no more than a few streets away.”
“You’re all right to carry them boxes all that way?”
“Bracing exercise.”
She gave a little shrug and started walking, but almost as quickly stopped in her tracks before a mullioned window. “Oh.”
“What is it?”
“It’s vacant.”
“Was this shop a favorite of yours?”
She shook her head and waved his question away. “Wouldn’t it be something to have a shop in the Burlington Arcade?”
Rhys understood there were a great many unanswered questions floating around in the ether that he’d never once pondered—and this was one of them. “Hmm.”
Miss Birdwell hardly noticed his response—or lack thereof. “It’s the perfect location for a shop for ladies.”
“Why for ladies?” he asked, wondering if he’d missed something—likely. “Don’t ladies shop everywhere?”
Incredulous blue eyes rounded on him. “For ladies.”
As if that cleared anything up.
