Her gaze suddenly flickered uncertainly in response to something in his expression.
She dropped her eyes to her letter again. He noticed she possessed a veritable little forest of dark lashes.
“Did Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand issue a fresh batch of rules?”
“It’s a marriage proposal.” She didn’t lift her head.
“I see. Get a lot of those, do you?” he said mildly.
She didn’t reply but her flush deepened. The curve of her cheek reminded him of a china cup, smooth and gleaming.
“All those pages to say, ‘Lady Worth, will you be my bride?’ It must be because he uses a thousand words to say what he could say in about ten.”
“Then it will be a match made in heaven, clearly.” She said it dryly. But somewhat abstractedly.
She looked up again, finally.
“It’s a good offer,” she said stiffly. A trifle defensively.
Which suggested that while torrid romance wasn’t precisely underway, she meant to be kind and fair to the person who’d written to her. And as though she wanted to emphasize that, despite the fact that Lorcan essentially collected her from the street like so much flotsam, she did indeed have value to someone.
It both touched him and bothered him quite a lot, and he could not quite say why.
“Oh, well then. And what is marriage if not a business arrangement? Just like ours.”
She fixed him with a look of strained patience. “Have you ever before been wed, Mr. St. Leger, or does your courage extend only to pantomime marriages?”
“I have thus far cleverly avoided becoming leg shackled and anticipate remaining so until the grave.”
“I amallamazement to hear it,” she murmured.
While she returned to reading her letter, he ate one of the scones in two bites. It was delicious.
She glanced up from her letter, looked at his plate, and blinked.
Not a single remaining crumb betrayed a scone had ever sat upon it.
“I only looked away for a second,” she breathed. She was almost comically alarmed.
“You best eat yours now, as I’m inclined to make it disappear as well,” he said. “And it was a right good scone. The best I’ve ever eaten.”
She drew the other scone closer to her, cautiously, as if she wasn’t entirely certain he wouldn’t snatch it away like a wild dog who had gotten loose in the kitchen.
He watched in fascinated silence as she neatly dismantled it with her fingers and then delicately ate the pieces one by one.
She patted her lips with a napkin.
He felt a bit like he was crouching in shrubbery with a spyglass, studying the habits of wild birds.
“Does it have to be in pieces?” he asked.
“It tastes better that way,” she said. “And I like to see the fluffy inside of it. I can’t explain it.”
“Is it everything, or just scones?”
“Mostly fluffy things,” she clarified, after a moment.
“Hmmph.” He was still hungry. Fortunately, they’d be fed a decent breakfast, he’d been told. He’d never really gotten into the habit of eating as an entertainment ritual. He’d learned early on to quickly devour what he could beg, borrow, or steal. At least he’d acquired over the years more-than-acceptable table manners.