She could not possibly have spoken if she tried. She merely stared. Her breath lost.
He did not release her gaze. “I thought about it a good deal last night, when I was stretched out on my comfortable blue counterpane.” He delivered that like a spy offering a password to a sentry.
She said nothing.
He turned away.
She watched the slow insertion of the last candle.
And when he was done he went still and turned to her.
The silence now was as alive as the night and hummed a good deal of unspoken things.Are you flirting with me, Lady Derring?
“Doyousnore, Captain Hardy?” she said softly.
She saw the breath leave him. His gray eyes flared to black.
It was the most thrilling, vixenish thing she’d ever done, that subtle question, which was born of real curiosity. But she knew immediately that she was quite in over her head.
She pivoted to leave, and swiftly.
She’d taken two steps when he said, his voice raised only a little, “Lady Derring... something puzzles me.”
She halted.
Closed her eyes.
Took a shuddering breath for courage.
Turned back to him. From the relatively safe distance of three feet, she said, “Surely not. We’ve established you know everything.”
His smile was small and patient. “You seem to excel at so very much here at The Grand Palace on the Thames. Yet you can’t seem to disguise how much you want me.”
One of the thingsTristanexcelled at was ambush.
Her eyes grew enormous as his words sank in.
She looked both stricken and resigned, like a thief nabbed in the act.
Finally she drew in a breath and resettled her shoulders, as though she’d been ruffled by a stiff wind.
“Well, Captain Hardy, I must take issue with your assessment, on the grounds that I’m not trying to disguise it at all.”
Holy—!
His breath left him in a gust.
And as she turned again to walk away his hand shot out.
It was a primal reflex, but not the about-to-fall-off-a-cliff sort. It was somewhere in between a cat with prey or a miser with gold.
He got hold of her forearm.
He held her like that long enough to feel brutish. Three seconds all told, though something had gone wrong with time—it seemed to have stopped—so it was difficult to know.
She ought to slap him.
He ought to let go.