“I am so tired,” she said and yawned.
“Ye have to eat something.”
“Yes,” she said and laid her head back on the pillows and looked at him through her half-mast lashes.
A slow dawning.
“Is this flirtation?” he said.
Arabella sighed. “Not yet. I am flirting with you but it only becomes flirtation when you flirt back.”
“And I would flirt back by ...?”
“Perhaps by offering to feed me.”
“Feed ye?”
“Yes, because I am so tired, you would feed me. Like I’m a baby bird in a nest.”
“Have ye ever had other men feed ye?”
“Alasdair!” She sat bolt upright. “I would never!” He could tell she was furious.
“But,” he said weakly, “ye said ye were good at flirting. How did ye become good at it if ye didn’t practice it?”
She tossed her head. “Some things come to some people naturally.”
“I see.” He could not think of a single thing that came to him naturally. Hadn’t he put his head down and worked hard at everything his whole life?
“Like kissing. You are a natural kisser, Alasdair. Even your first kiss yesterday ... Oh, it was wonderful.”
He colored. “I, uh, I think ye are only saying that because I am now yer husband.”
She smiled. “That’s it. Very good. That’s flirtation.”
“I see,” he said. But he didn’t really. Had she been sincere about his kissing? “Shall I feed ye now?”
“Yes, please. You’ll see. It will be fun.”
It was fun. It made him laugh. It made her laugh. He and Arabella on a bed. His spooning up bites for her to eat and having a reason to fixate on her pink lips. Her insistence that he take a bite for every bite that she took.
They had eaten the the soup, the cake, the beef, one of the tarts and he was tearing bites of pheasant off the carcass for her to eat from his fingers.
“So what was the right answer?” he said. “Ye never told me. For flirtation. Doctor’s orders or husband’s orders?”
She stared at him.
“Do you really not know?”
“Nae, I dinnae.” He tore off a small piece of pheasant and put it in her mouth and thrilled to the sensation of her taking his hand in her two small ones and carefully licking the juices from his fingers.
“The right answer,” she licked his thumb, “is,” she licked his index finger, “either one,” and she licked his middle finger.
He could hear his own breathing become heavy.
She released his hand now. “If you had said husband’s orders, then we could have had a delightful exchange about how you weren’t really my husband but maybe,” she gave him a sidelong look, “you wanted to be and what you might do to me if you were. And if you had said doctor’s orders, then we could have had you examine me. Maybe. Under the nightdress.”
He was very hard now.
