Bronzed by both sun and burnished firelight, hard, sinewy, corded with muscle, and coated with golden-brown hair, like the hair on his head.
She stared, feeling a bit like a spy now.
He furrowed his brow when he read. As though he was responsible for the welfare of all the characters in the book, and was contemplating whether to order them about or to have them shot for desertion.
This, for some reason, made her smile, albeit somewhat ruefully. That man did absolutely nothing by halves, she had come to understand. When it came to reading, when it came to shooting, when it came to winning battles, when it came to getting the wife he wanted, when it came to disposing of said wife for faithlessness.
She supposed one couldn’t equivocate in battle, and he’d never lost the habit.
She distinctly remembered a moment on that day when he’d worked to free her ribbon: he had not so much looked at her asintoher, and she’d simultaneously felt imperiled in a way she hadn’t fully understood, and protected in such a way that made her realize it had been years since she had felt safe, such had been the caprices of her life. But she supposed a castle on a hill might inspire similar feelings. Castles were meant to be a refuge. And they were meant to inspire fear.
She supposed his absolute certainty aboutthings contributed to that feeling. One got the sense there was nothing he couldn’t manage.
She gave a start when he looked up and caught her still wearing that rueful smile.
He offered her a polite, tentative smile in return.
He held up his book. “It’sRobinson Crusoe.Captain Hardy loaned it to me. He says it’s very good, but he can never find the time to finish it. I read it some years ago.”
She ventured out of the room and gingerly sat down on the long settee at a polite distance from his bronzed, hairy arms.
There was a somewhat weighty but almost elegiac peace between them now. They knew where they stood with each other. Paradoxically, deciding to be apart had made it easier to be together.
An undercurrent of tension remained, but it was less seething and fraught. Tension always took a little while to dissipate in the aftermath of a new truce.
She knew they would both do their best to get through the next few days of events, before she left for New York.
“My brother lovesRobinson Crusoe,” she told him. “Boys always seem to love it. All the fighting and adventure, I suppose. Perhaps I should read it as a sort of guide for surviving exile.”
It was quite a dry, black little jest, as jests went. A little risky.
But she wasn’t surprised when he quirked the corner of his mouth and nodded, ceding her a point.
“I think we all vicariously enjoy a story of survival. There’s nothing more satisfying than thriving despite the odds. Than exercising our resourcefulness. And besides, Robinson Crusoe is not alone in exile. There are cannibals.”
This surprised her into a short laugh.
He smiled, too. Then it faded. “Ah. I should have considered... well, forgive me. I hope you don’t mind.” He gestured to his casual torso.
“Of course not,” she said, politely. “You’re paying for the suite, after all.”
This statement was light, too, but edged in challenge.
He eyed her steadily, and chose to ignore the edge.
And besides, “mind” wasn’t precisely the word she would have used. She had just discovered that his shirt was open at the throat, too, revealing more firelight-burnished skin and a peek of curling dark hair. This suddenly seemed an unutterably fascinating, acutely intimate thing.
Her eyes may have lingered a little too long there.
When they returned to his, she discovered he’d been watching her. But his face was entirely unreadable.
She hoped the light was dim enough to disguise her blush.
“Well, I’ve been reading the novels of Miss Jane Austen lately,” she told him. “The story calledPride and Prejudiceis about the Bennett family, who are a bit poor and chaotic. But the hero, Mr. Darcy, is a clever, imperious, wealthy, bossy sort of man.”
He shook his head and clucked. “Those are the worst kind of men.”
They smiled at each other.
