“I am real, sir,” she assured him. “But downstairs there is a sitting room if you would like to sit in one. And an epithet jar which will judge you if you curse in company. The charge to curse is one pence. But there is a room to smoke in, I’m given to understand, and you may curse there.”
He listened to this in bemusement, bizarrely enchanted.
“I shall look forward to it,” he said somberly.
She smiled again, slowly, wryly, knowing she was being humored.
He frowned a little when she did it, as if to punish himself and her for enjoying her smile more than he wanted his next breath.
“May I ask how you feel, sir?” she asked shyly. Her hands were folded before her now.
“Like an anvil has been dropped upon me from a great height. But I probably feel better than I smell.”
“Oh! You do not smell very ba...”
There was no way for her to finish that sentence that didn’t imply she’d sniffed him.
He shook his head reproachfully. “And I thoughtthishurt.” He pointed to his bandage.
She smiled again, somewhat crookedly, eyes crinkling at the corners. But didn’t apologize.
Which was when he decided he liked her. But somehow he’d known he did and would.
The silence that fell was as textured as music.
The palms of his hands hummed as though they could feel the shape of her face cradled in them.
It was shaped a bit like a heart.
There was scarcely a dip in the center of her top lip, otherwise it would have been a heart, too. Her mouth was the same pale pink shade as those petals bursting from the vase, and it looked as plush as the pillow he’d discovered beneath his head this morning.
And then, as if from a nasty wound, reality seeped in.
What was it Brundage said?
Aurelie’s mouth hadinflamedhim. She had a mouth like Therese d’Artois.
Hawkes went rigid. Wary now.
Perhaps hewasstill dreaming.
Because why the bloody hell would Lady Aurelie Capet feel free to waltz into the room in which he’d apparently been carted after he’d been stabbed?
She didn’t look very much like her miniature. Nevertheless.
He was momentarily breathless with what felt like resentment. Almost despair. He wanted more than anything just to abide in awe for a little while longer, because his life had contained so little of grace.
But this woman was wearing a mauve dress.
The color of half-mourning.
A blue-eyed, brown-haired woman in a mauve dress with a beautiful mouth, a faint French accent, wearing a dress no doubt borrowed from her lady’s maid.
He was beset by a fleeting surge of helpless primitive, possessive fury at the possibility that Brundage had in any way touchedthiswoman.
Or could lay claim to this woman.
Or worse than either of those . . . harmed this woman.