He said this remarkable thing as though it was nothing at all. And yet he was always saying remarkable things.
She looked up at him with a short, stunned laugh. She could not stop a tremulous smile from forming.
She had not lied to him before.
She liked him so terribly much.
He remained there at the threshold.
He sighed. “Angelique. Are we still friends?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“May I sit down beside you, then? I shall dispense wisdom and solace. I suspect you need some.”
“While I don’t question that you may have some philosophy to impart, Lucien, the sitting beside you bit strikes me as inadvisable.”
He shrugged with one shoulder, then settled himself indolently into the little chair across from her, stretching his long legs with a sigh. He lowered his coat and lay his hat atop it.
He was destined to look magnificent in firelight the whole of his life, she thought.
She wished very much she didn’t know what his neck smelled like, because what she wanted right now was to bury her face in it and breathe in. To feel his breath shuddering against her skin. And the weight of his hands on her waist, sliding down to cup her arse.
“Our new guest is pleasant,” he began.
Throwing a bath of icy water over her sexual reverie.
She couldn’t move for a moment from dread.
She lifted her head and studied him carefully. “Mrs. Locksley.”
It wasn’t a question. Oddly she’d made the name sound like an accusation.
“Fetching creature,” Lucien said at once, with great warmth.
“Oh, yes. That does seem to be the consensus. Everyone here has trotted out the word, as if their brains have taken a great blow and it’s the only word they know now. I’m certain it’s what her mother said when she emerged from the womb. Behold this fetching creature! And don’t you think her eyes are a beautiful shade of blue, Lucien? Like bluebells.”
She said this last benign-sounding thing so acidly he blinked.
Interesting, but confusing. He paused.
“Thetemerityof her to go about with blue eyes.”
She flicked her eyes up at him then, briefly. Wryly.
But the way she held her body suggested some profound and possibly dramatic misery and it made him as restless as her beauty.
Another little silence fell.
“Has Mrs. Locksley committed a transgression? Tell me, has she a sailor’s vocabulary? Oh God, please let it be so. That would be funnier than Delacorte pretending to be a good loser in chess.”
She performed that almost-smile again. “You should be kinder to Mr. Delacorte.”
“I am as kind to him as I am to anyone. He is a man, you know, and a sturdy one, with worth and intelligence and pride. He is not a bird with a broken wing. He doesn’t need you to protect him from me. He can survive without the coddling.”
“Yes, but he likes it, and we like caring for him.”
He studied her.