“Not for long,” he growled. “You were just leaving.”
But when he moved as if he intended to throw her over his shoulder once more, she danced away. “You cannot remove me, Mr. Winter. I want to speak with you, and speak with you I shall.”
“Damn it, wrap the counterpane around you.”
Why was he so insistent about the dratted blanket? She had not seen herself in the looking glass—the shiner, as he had called it—but she was reasonably certain she looked the same as she always did. Blonde hair, upturned nose, mouth too wide. Her night rail was quite modest.
“No,” she said, deciding two could play at his game.
His response was another growl.
“Theo.” She tried the name again, rather liking the way it felt, the way it sounded. Yes, it suited him far better than Devil. “Do try to be reasonable. We have another week here, and I shall suffer from terrible ennui if you do not give me the lessons you promised you would.”
His expression was all hard angles and planes. He looked furious.
“Which lessons?” His voice, however, was silky and smooth.
Something wicked unfurled inside her. “You know which lessons.”
He remained implacable. “You teach me to read, and in return, I teach you how to whittle.”
“I had in mind a different sort of lesson from you,” she admitted.
Because it had occurred to her over the past two days that she was engaged to be married to a gentleman who had a mistress. A gentleman who had never once inspired in her a modicum of the feelings this man made her feel. If she could not have a love like Romeo and Juliet’s, then mayhap she could have a passion like theirs instead.
Mayhap she could have Theo Winter, if only just for the next sennight.
They could not have each other forever, much like in Shakespeare’s tragedy. However, they could have now.
“Not going to happen, milady,” he said, dashing her hopes. “I ain’t a nib, and I don’t poach.”
Drat him, why did he insist upon being so firm? He was not as impervious as he pretended, she swore. His kisses had suggested quite the opposite.
“Why not?” she asked, summoning all her daring.
“That’s like asking why the stars and the sun don’t shine at once,” he said, his tone gentling. “We are not the same sorts, milady. Not of the same world. And you will be marrying your Lord Dullerton soon enough.”
Evie did not bother to correct his confusion of Lord Denton’s name this time. She was still quite furious with him for Mrs. Hale.
“I suppose I shall have to find someone else willing to engage in lessons with me, then,” she said, trying a different tactic. “Mayhap one of the footmen will do. The tall one with the blond hair is rather handsome.”
“You will do nothing of the sort.”
She shrugged and then spun to leave.
A hand caught her elbow, staying her retreat.
She glanced back at him to find his jaw tense, his eyes blazing with blue fire. “How do you propose to stop me?”
“Damn it, Evie.”
At last, he had called her Evie as she had asked him to the day when she had been wounded and he had been tending to her injury. Her name in his deep baritone, even edged as it was with a combination of irritation and anger, made warmth pool low in her belly.
“Yes?”
He had the counterpane in hand once more, and he draped it over her shoulders without relinquishing his hold on her elbow. “Do not tempt the devil.”
“You are not the devil, Theo,” she told him softly, hating the manner in which he seemed to view himself, as if he were a bad man or somehow inherently wicked.
