“Well, let’s look at it another way,” he said, sounding deceptively reasonable. “Why did you noticeme, Lillias? Wouldn’t I normally be beneath your notice? I’m practically a pagan from the wilds of America, after all. No title. No pedigree. My family tree has big bald patches. And yet you noticed me. And continue to notice me, as they say. Because that’s as good a word as any. ‘Notice.’”
The word, the way he said it, sounded like another world altogether, one that ought to have been worth one hundred pounds inserted into the epithet jar should it ever have been uttered aloud in the sitting room of The Grand Palace on the Thames.
She felt the heat on the back of her arms. “You’re impossible not to notice,” she said stiffly. “You take up a good deal of space in the little sitting room at night.”
“And in your mind when you’re in bed, I imagine.” He said this casually, almost sympathetically.
He was ruthless. But she stopped breathing. He was like someone cornering a magician into revealing her secrets.
He looked away for a moment. He pressed his lips together in thought. She took that opportunity to gulp him in like she’d gulped in the London view. Saw that dimple embedded like a crescentmoon at the corner of his mouth, and the finest of lines about his eyes, and that little arcing scar he’d gotten from a bear because he always took care of his own.
Her own heart turned over hard.
He turned to her again.
“Lillias...” She’d never heard her name said in such a way. It had facets; it fairly shimmered with shades of emotion. Wit and exasperation and tenderness and frustration. The long pause that followed it betrayed just how much was going on in Mr. Cassidy’s head.
“I don’t dislike you.” His voice was solemn.
He moved slowly across the room, to close that distance between them.
“Yes,” she said wearily, dryly. “You might bestir yourself to do something if I were on fire, as it’s your duty to look out for the safety of women, and so forth.”
“Well, let me think. If you were on fire,” he said thoughtfully, “I would likely spring upon you, and perhaps roll you in a carpet. Give the carpet a good patting to make sure you were completely doused, lest you ignite the rest of The Grand Palace on the Thames, a place of which I’ve grown quite fond.”
She gave a short laugh. “Would you indeed spring upon me? Isn’t springing on a bear how you got that little—” And as if of its own accord, her hand reached toward him to touch his scar.
She went still. Stunned.
His hand was clamped around her wrist.
She hadn’t even seen him move. He’d captured her wrist mid-reach. It must have literally happened while she’d blinked.
She gave an experimental, minute tug.
His strength was reminiscent of an anchor thrown overboard.
He let her simmer in astonishment and a pure primal thrill of being held like that for a moment.
Then he spoke.
“In America,” he said, his voice low and calm, “we learn at a young age not to touch things when we can’t foresee the consequences. A lesson learned by a friend of mine who inserted his hand into a log and lost it to a badger.”
“That is a very colorful story.” Her voice emerged after a delay, because it had needed to traverse through a thicket of sensations. “You moved very quickly.”
There was a pause, during which the realization that his skin was touching her skin was slowly seeping in and mesmerizing both of them.
“I once snatched an arrow out of the air, shot at me by an irritated Indian.” He said this softly.
She managed a tense smile. “You are lying.”
He half smiled, too. “Am I hurting you?”
“No.”
He wasn’t. He was scarcely even touching her.
His fingers had loosened, and now circled her wrist in something perilously close to a caress.