“I have indeed met the man. And if anyone would be inclined to attempt face-licking, it’s Byron.”
She laughed, which tapered into a sigh. “Well. Thankfully my hair isn’t flaxen, as I don’t think anything rhymes with it.”
“Waxen,” he said at once, somewhat absently. “No, it’s amber now, in the lamplight.”
She immediately went mute from an almost violent rush of pleasure at his words.
She fought an urge to touch her hair, as if it was suddenly aglow like a candle flame. She felt, oddly, shyly, as though she’d been crowned. It wasn’t poetry. And yet it was, to her.
It was probably the sort of thing he said all the time. Amber was just a color, after all. Just like flaxen.
They were watching each other, and for a moment doing only that. It seemed a strangely sufficient occupation. Her heart bumped once again almost painfully hard against her ribs, and then resumed its usual pattern at twice its usual speed. Perhaps all along he had been noticing the details of her the way she’d been noticing the details of him.
Clamber, she thought,rhymes withamber.
And “clamber” reminded her of climbing. As in Lady Clayton wanting to climb him.
Suddenly every inch of her skin felt warm.
She was overcome with confusion, and tempted to duck her head. But she refused to do it, lest she miss a second of the way in which he was regarding her: as if he’d never seen anything so worthy of his attention.
Cross herself or lift her skirts, was how Lady Hackworth had put it. One was for protection, the other was surrender. She supposed that they were the reflexive natural responses to anything so powerfully compelling it unnerved, something that one didn’t quite understand... but wanted anyway.
He probably couldn’t help the intensity of his gaze any more than, for instance, a falcon could. It was likely just his nature.
She recalled suddenly, and too vividly, how a small V of his chest had been exposed by hisclawed-away cravat the night he’d moved into the room above her.
Her fingers hummed with the new, shocking, urgent compulsion to know the texture of his skin.
“That’s just as well,” she finally said, a trifle subdued. “As I don’t believe anything about me is waxen.”
“No, you’ve the healthy complexion of someone accustomed to striding about the hills and vales of Upper Sheep’s Teat.”
“Precisely,” she said, with some relief at the jest. “Unlike that pallor you’ve acquired from carrying all that coal up from the mines.”
When he grinned at that, happiness was a strange pressure in her chest, as though her heart had literally puffed up with it.
There was a little silence.
She cleared her throat. “And... and I also think I should like to admire him,” she ventured, somewhat shyly.
His brows dove again. “Admire him. His pearly smile? His bank account? His title? His Richmond estate?”
She flushed. “His character. I should like to admire the way he conducts his life, and the things he believes in, and the way he treats people. His convictions. And his... his accomplishments.”
There was a beat of silence. “Ah.”
She could see at once that he knew why she’d said it, because she hadn’t any practice being the least bit sly or subtle.
And now he was clearly a little wary. Oddly, she thought she saw something like regret or sadness flicker in his eyes. Maybe even pity.
Oh God. She was embarrassed.
“Like my father,” she added hurriedly. “Who is a very fine man.”
“I’m certain he is,” he said gently. Carefully.
A moment or two passed where he seemed to be considering what to say. “I would only advise that even heroes are just men underneath the skin. And awe isn’t what keeps your bed warm at night.”
