He had the blackest sense of humor she’d ever experienced. She resented it because she actually quite liked it. Probably for the reason a razor likes a strop.
“I’m just...” She did not feel safe completing that sentence in front of him.Embarrassed. And frightened. And exhausted. I can’t shoot darts at you from my eyes, so tears will have to do.
She swiped the back of her hand at her eye.
He sighed heavily. “Here.” His voice was quietly gruff. She glanced up to find him holding a handkerchief. “No need to weep on your fingers like a... like a peasant.”
This surprised a laugh out of her but she bit it back. Because she could just imagine how unbearable he would be if he thought he could charm her.
She took his handkerchief.
The driver politely cleared his throat. “Sir?”
Marchand’s arm shot straight up. “One moment, if you would, my friend.”
The driver leaned over and plucked what appeared to be a shilling from Marchand’s fingers.
A very faint scent, perhaps bergamot, clung to Marchand’s handkerchief, which was brightly clean and very soft. For some reason this small, elegant comfort made her eyes well again. She kept her head down, sniffed, and gamely undertook her usual methods for gathering her wits: squaring her shoulders, taking deep breaths.
Marchand remained quiet. He was probably watching her the way he would watch a gambler sitting across from him: for tells, for sudden moves, for information he could use as ammunition.
She realized she was dragging her fingertip over the initials embroidered on the edge of his handkerchief. She tried and failed to ascertain what the letter in the middle might be.
“Embroidered. Interesting. I find it’s much more rewarding when you can feel the letters as well as see them,” she quoted, ironically.
He huffed a soft sound that might have been a laugh. “It’s a funny thing. I told myself that when I made my first one hundred pounds, I’d buy only the finest handkerchiefs I could find, with my initials stitched into them. And I swore I’d never be without a clean handkerchief again. That was a decade ago.”
She slowly lifted her head. She studied him in wary surprise.
The new-fallen night was interrupted only by the lamps on the hack, but his eyes still seemed almost beacon bright in this light. She didn’t know why she found this reassuring instead of unsettling. He would be easy to find in the dark.
“I suppose that sounds a bit stupid,” he added.
She studied him.
“Very,” she agreed, gravely.
His smile began slowly, but it soon took over his whole face. His entire overwhelming self—the innocent boy he must have once been, the intimidating man he was now—seemed distilled in the wry tilt at the corner of his fine mouth. His eyes had nearly vanished in amusement. He was all unguarded warmth.
It knocked the breath from her and wrung her heart like a rag.
Holy mother of God. No man had ever possessed a weapon as dangerous as that smile.
But then she realized she was smiling, too, which made her wonder whether she might have been the one to do it first.
She wiped the smile off her face and thrust the handkerchief back at him.
He took it.
“Thank you,” she said again.
He nodded and tucked it away.
“By the way, a small folding knife tucked in your bodice or garter would be more practical than a knitting needle,” he said pragmatically. “But you shouldn’t carry a weapon unless you’re fully prepared to use it. Because you’re right-handed, you reallyought to keep the needle in your other sleeve, so you can slide it down into your dominant hand and really get a bloke in the gullet.” He pantomimed a thrust upward and she winced. “Or just shriek like a bird of prey if someone seizes you the way I did a moment ago. That ought to terrify them into dropping you.”
No man had ever said “bodice” or “garter” to her in conversation before, let alone “gullet,” and she wasn’t certain she wanted to get used to it. A dose of Francis Balfort’s cautious, genteel admiration would be soothing right about now.
“I didn’t shriek like a bird of prey.” She said this as a matter of rote, because she probably had. She actually found this vivid assessment funny. “And I don’t think I’ve ever used the word ‘gullet’ in a conversation before.”
