He had donned trousers and a shirt to descend belowstairs, but he rather looked like a golden pirate with his bare feet and his disheveled hair. The buttons of his shirt were undone, revealing a swath of his chest and the initials he had inked upon his flesh.
She summoned a smile. “Perfect.”
He laid the tray on the bed and joined her, sitting opposite Felicity. “Whatever my lady desires, I shall provide.”
His gallant air made her heart give another pang. Each second that passed took her closer to dawn and the inevitable moment when they would part and this would be nothing but a memory. “Thank you for braving the darkened halls and rummaging through the kitchens on my behalf.”
“Anything for you, love.” He busied himself with pouring the wine.
She reached for a biscuit to distract herself from the turbulent thoughts running through her mind. The first bite was buttery and delicious. It appeased her stomach but not her need to think of anything other than their inevitable parting of ways.
“Are the biscuits that dreadful, then?” he asked, his tone turning teasing. “You are frowning at me as if I have given you a raw rasher of bacon.”
She accepted the wine he offered to her, their fingers brushing. Heat slid up her arm and settled between her thighs with that lone, innocent touch. “It is not the biscuits that are causing me to frown.”
Rather, it was the number of hours in the night, steadily dwindling.
“Tell me something that makes you smile,” he suggested lightly.
No one had ever made such a request of her. She thought for a moment. “Sunshine makes me smile. Flowers, good books, sketching, my sisters Esme and Cassandra, the sound of birds singing in the summer, the seaside, and Miss Wilhelmina.”
Also, rakish charmers from the rookeries who kissed like an angel, had a reputation as wicked as the devil’s, learned to dance for her, and brought her biscuits and wine at half past three in the morning.
She kept the last to herself, quite wisely. Blade Winter was not the sort of man with whom one fell in love. Especially when one faced a marriage of duty forthwith.
“Sketching,” he said, taking a sip from his wine, watching her in that most unnerving fashion he had. “What do you draw?”
“I enjoy sketching portraits,” she admitted, “though I am not terribly adept at it. I enjoy the patience it requires, the way it forces me to study a face and grow deeply acquainted with every slash and curve.”
A drop of wine lingered on his lower lip, and his tongue caught it. “Have you any sketches here?”
“Of course.” She brought her supplies with her wherever she went, lest the urge to create should strike.
And of course, it had. She had been sketchinghim.
“I would love to see them,” he said, taking up a biscuit.
Her face went hot, which was perhaps terrifically silly given she had just been as intimate with this man as she could be. He had seen, kissed, touched, and tasted almost every part of her. Somehow, the admission he had been on her mind and heart seemed too much.
“Mayhap.” She took another sip of her wine to hide her discomfiture.
“Mayhap?” He raised a brow. “After I have just fetched you biscuits, my lady?”
Her lips twitched as he pressed a hand over his heart as if he had been terrifically wounded. “A lady is entitled to her privacy. I already told you, I am not a skilled artist. I merely dabble.”
“Hmm.” He cocked his head, eying her consideringly. “Do you know what I think, love?”
There he went again, seeing too much. Knowing too much. Finding his way deeper inside her heart, where he did not belong but was already lodged.
She took an extra-long sip of her wine before answering. “What is it you think?”
He gave her his smug grin, the one that never failed to turn everything inside her molten. “I think you drew a sketch of me, and that is why you are keeping it a secret.”
Even her ears went hot. “Of course not.”
But her denial was futile, and it sounded less than convincing.
“Why so embarrassed, love? Did you draw me naked?”
