Had he just called her ‘Hattie’? He always called her ‘Harriet,’ didn’t he?
She turned, trying to keep him only in her periphery, the warmth of his breath on her neck and tickling her ear. “Elias?” she managed, though she sounded a bit strangled.
He smiled again, though this time, it did not look amused, his teeth glinting in the afternoon light. “You can’t really expect me to let you keep an intimate gift from a Russian prince? Surely, my silent language has told you that much?”
Her jaw dropped, her breath catching in her chest. “It has told me no such thing!” she breathed, still unable to turn and face him directly. “‘Intimate gift,’ indeed! That prince was nearly eighty years old!”
“Oh, indeed?” He sounded surprised. Relieved, even? Pleased!
She ground her teeth. “And much more of a gentleman than you will ever be!”
“Well, I can’t account for your tastes,” he said with a shrug. “The point remains.”
“Elias!” she gasped, turning then only because there was no other choice, and finding him somehow both intense and utterly at ease with what was passing between them. “Release me!”
“Fine,” he said, shrugging and dropping his hand away, leaving a band of ice-cold air around her wrist in its place.
She frowned, somehow even angrier than she’d been a second ago as he backed away, raising his hands in a symbol of surrender and collapsing next to his damned parcels with his elbow propped atop them.
She snatched her wrist up against her chest, rubbing her own hand around it in an effort to restore the warmth he’d taken from her flesh. It was ineffective. She supposed he might just run hotter than she, as a matter of standard.
He watched her, his eyes lingering on her fingers as they rubbed the delicate bones and pale skin there, until she felt so conspicuous that she had no choice but to drop her hands uselessly at her sides.
It was at that moment that she realized she had not used any of the fine speeches she’d penned in her mind this morning, even in outline. She had not spoken a word of that finely wrought prose, and that was why he was sitting there so comfortably, without a single lash mark on his person to sting in reminder of the one tool she had against him.
She opened her mouth and then clamped it shut again at the way he started to smirk.
It was obviously too late now.
And that might have deflated her, on another day. It might have made it all worse.
Instead, she brightened.
“I’ve read you,” she whispered, her eyes widening, her hands coming up to touch her lips. “Elias! I’ve read your silent language! Just now!”
He raised his dark brows, his smirk melting away. “Oh?”
She nodded, bouncing on the balls of her feet, and gave a little squeak of pleasure. “Yes! I… I was going to speak, and then I saw your posture and your face and I knew I oughtn’t because I could feel your mindset! But you said no words! I did it, Elias!”
He was silent for a moment, his countenance shifting from sunlight to something a little darker, something that smelled of nearing rain. He dropped his arm off the parcels and draped both onto his knees, leaning toward her, eyes glittering. “That was not the first time,” he told her firmly. “You knew very well what I was conveying last night.”
She blinked, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “Oh, I suppose that might be true,” she realized with awe. “Though I must have been wrong at that time, considering your actions directly following said interpretation. Yes, I think I was wrong then. But I am not wrong now.”
He watched her again as another tick of the clock passed them, mirrored by a tick in his jaw, a little jumping muscle that conducted the music of silence that was swelling in the air.
“You called me ‘Hattie’ just now,” she told him, allowing the smile to fully form on her face. “You never do that. You never have.”
“What?” he snapped, fully frowning now. “I didn’t.”
She nodded. “You did. I assure you.”
There was another beat of silence. Outside, the clock tower at the nearby church sounded the toll of the hour.
Hattie gave a happy, little sigh. “I did it,” she said quietly, once more, to herself.
“I have things to do,” Elias said abruptly, shoving himself to his feet.
“No, you don’t,” Hattie observed as he stalked past her and exited the room entirely, leaving her smiling countenance in his wake.
