“No?” He slid his thumb under her chin, and tipped her face up to his. “Why not? Why should love not be for you?”
She caught her breath at the soft touch, at the sparks he left in his wake. “I-I don’t know.”
“Ah, but I do.” His eyes were half-closed, sleepy under the weight of his impossibly thick, long lashes. “You, Juliet Templeton, more than any other lady I’ve ever known, are destined for love.”
Dear God, he was so close, his breath a soft, hypnotic drift over her lips. “I… I am?”
“Yes. Because you already carry it inside you. It’s part of who you are.”
“It’s part of all of us, my lord.” She wrapped her fingers around his wrists, because it was terribly important, somehow, that he understand this. “You, Lady Cora, your cousin—all of us.”
“My cousin?” He asked, reaching out to trace her lower lip with his thumb.
They parted under the caress, and his gaze dropped to them at once, his eyes as dark as midnight. “Yes, Lord… Lord Barnaby, my lord.”
“Lord Barnaby. Mycousin, Lord Barnaby. Lord Barnaby and Lady Cora.”
He jerked his hand away from her face and backed away, and just like that, the heat that had built between them cooled, and the moment between them was gone, as quickly as a snap of the fingers, the stomp of a foot, the turn of a page.
There was nothing to do, then, but to ignore her heart’s last dying flutters. “We’ll introduce the game after tea?”
“That’s acceptable, yes.” He cleared his throat, tugged his waistcoat down, and twitched the cuffs of his shirt into perfect alignment with the edges of his coat sleeves. “Until then, Miss Templeton.”
He was gone before she could answer, gone as quickly as the storm clouds rushing across the sky, leaving her alone in the window seat with Shakespeare and his star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet.
ChapterTen
If Miles had realized drawing Juliet’s face would be like touching her, his pencil like his fingers stroking over her soft skin, he would have volunteered to be the timekeeper.
He’d already touched her today—her wrist, her pulse leaping under his fingertips, and the sweet swell of her lower lip, but those simple touches had jolted up his arm as if he’d been struck by lightning.
Then he’d stood far too close to her, close enough her voice vibrated inside him, and he could almost taste the subtle scent that clung to her, like sweet, clotted cream sliding down his throat. He’d longed for a hint of that scent since he’d left London, and had recklessly filled his lungs with it this afternoon.
He glanced down at the paper on the table in front of him, at the face his pencil had traced onto the page without his permission. Juliet Templeton gazed back, her lips parted, the corners turned up in that smile he couldn’t forget, part wickedness, and part innocence.
What had Juliet seen, when she’d gazed so intently athisface?
He’d never laid eyes on the eldest Templeton sister—Euphemia, Juliet had called her—but perhaps Euphemia had always insisted on being the timekeeper because she hadn’t wanted to know how others saw her. Perhaps she hadn’t dared to beseen, any more than he did.
But there was no unseeing Juliet, the arch of her cheekbones, the curve of her chin, the long, graceful neck—there was sensuality in every line of her face, every angle, every bit of shading, his fascination with her as obvious as if he’d written verses to her instead of merely drawing her.
And her eyes… hereyes.
He traced his fingertip around one, the lid and the fringe of dark lashes, the slight upturn at the top corners, and the color, that deep, pure blue, oceans and skies… he covered the face on the page with his hand, but there was no escaping that face in his mind’s eye.
There hadn’t been, from the start.
“Let’s see your sketch, Cross.”
He jerked his head up to find Barnaby standing over him, his own drawing clutched in one hand and the other held out for Miles’s page. “No, it’s, ah… it’s not very good. How did you do, cousin?”
Barnaby hesitated, then shot a glance across the room at Lady Cora, his cheeks coloring when he found her gaze on him. “Oh, well enough, I suppose.”
Ah. That shy little exchange of glances looked so promising, some of Miles’s dark, brooding mood lifted. “Let’s see it, then.”
“I think it looks rather like her.” Barnaby handed over his sketch. “Her eyes and chin, and her… er, her lips.”
Miles folded his own sketch and slipped it into his pocket, then took Barnaby’s and smoothed it out on the table in front of him. His cousin was no artist, any more than he was himself, but anyone could see from his drawing that he’d spent time studying Lady Cora’s face, and more time still trying to capture it.
