“Oh,those,” she said so offhandedly he bit back a smile. “That’s not love, is it? Possessiveness. Posturing. A whim of mood. It’s all, ‘Oh, your hair looks wonderful by candlelight, now I’m in love.’ Of course, should the day come when I rise to the top of my profession... I shall have anyone I choose.” She paused. “Or no one at all, if I choose.”
This bit sounded like bravado. The thing she told herself to dull any lingering wistfulness.
But then, she’d had the presence of mind to cast off a lover who wasn’t right for her.
“No doubt,” he said shortly.
He dropped his eyes to the foolscap. “Have we looked at all of your sentences?”
“Yes,” she said hurriedly, just as he said, “I see there’s one left.”
She reached for the foolscap to pull it back.
But he’d already silently read:
Il duca ha gli occhi marroni.
“The duke has brown eyes,” he said.
The unadorned nature of the sentence was striking amidst all her others.
In the English version she’d written, a longer word had been hatched out; “brown” was its replacement. The word she’d originally chosen also appeared to start with a “b.” He was also certain he could detect an insufficiently scratched-out “l” at the end of it.
“I was wondering if I’d make an appearance in your sentences. Why have you not dressed me, perhaps, in a green coat and yellow trousers?”
Startlingly, she did not reply. She seemed to have gone mute.
He looked up. “What did it used to say?”
She appeared to give it some thought.
“Seventeen,” she replied.
“It used to say, ‘The duke has seventeen eyes.’”
She inspected his face. “Yes.”
He smiled slightly. “What did it used to say?” he repeated pleasantly and evenly, as if he hadn’t asked the question the first time at all.
She met his eyes, but she was distinctly, curiously uncomfortable. Her cheeks had gone a hot pink.
“Refuse,” she said.
His eyebrows began to dip as he prepared a frown. Immediately, he schooled his features to careful stillness and regarded her in silence.
He was fairly certain he knew what the original word was.
He hadn’t the faintest idea what to do about it.
He knew a twinge of irritation, mainly because he’d been taken by surprise, which had happened perhaps twice before in the last decade.
All at once, with a disconcerting epiphany, it occurred to him that she was not so much hesitating in the doorway of the anteroom before she entered... as taking that moment to look at him.
Precisely the way he took that moment to look at her.
He was utterly still.
And then, in order to look at anything else at the moment, he glanced at the clock and noted three minutes were remaining.
