She surrendered her orange to him, and she watched, fascinated, as he dragged the glinting point of the knife in a precise, careful pattern across its skin.
And then he slowly pulled it loose.
He handed the curly peel to her, ceremoniously. She held it to her nose and inhaled with her eyes closed.
She opened her eyes to find an interesting expression fleeing from his.
“May I?” he asked.
She handed the spirally peel over to him and he lifted it to his nose and breathed it in.
She watched, riveted, and quite touched, as his eyes closed. This, too, felt like another gift.
He placed the naked fruit on his handkerchief. “Would you like to...”
She separated it neatly into little segments, and he watched, silently. She handed one to him.
“Cheers, Daphne. To your health.” He held out his segment so she could bump it with hers in a toast.
She put it up to her lips. And oh, the heaven of it. The snap of the taut outer skin between her teeth. The squirt of the juice. The squish of the pulp.
She opened her eyes to find him watching her. He seemed absolutely riveted.
Wordlessly, ceremoniously, they ate the whole thing. He honored her by going slowly, savoring it just the same way she’d savored it. As if he truly wanted to understand what she was experiencing. As if in so doing he’d accepted a gift from her, too.
Chapter Fourteen
Afterwards they cleaned their fingers on his handkerchief.
“May I—again?” he asked. He gestured to the spiral of peel. She nodded.
He reached for the peel. The triumph Lorcan felt over the success of his gifts was nearly as unprecedented as the impulse to get them and the odd nerves he’d had about delivering them.
He’d talked Delacorte into selling him the astrolabe.
And while he was out tracking down an orange, he’d taken it upon himself to conduct another effort on her behalf. It was, in truth, more of an inquiry, delivered in a strategic ear, with a request to pass the message on through appropriate channels. Specifically the English Channel. Had she known about what he’d done, she might feel considerably less charitable toward him right now. Or perhaps not.
He didn’t know yet whether he’d been successful in his endeavor. He might never know. But he’d been driven to try.
He held the peel to his nose again and inhaled deeply again. “It helps to have a great large beak with which to sniff,” he told her. “Thank you.”
He handed it back to her.
She accepted it, put it gently down again, and studied him curiously. “Lorcan... have you been laboring under the delusion that symmetry is equal to beauty?”
“Laboring under the delusion that symmetry is equal to beauty,” he repeated slowly. “You do say thefilthiestthings, Miss Worth.”
How she fought it. But it was a joy to watch her lose a battle with a smile. “What Imeanis—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, lass, I know what it means. I always know what you mean. I was just taking a moment to savor that sentence. Every word so precise and glittering and perfectly chosen, like a diamond. And probably capable of flaying lesser men to ribbons. I’ve come to quite like it.”
Daphne gave a stunned little laugh.
“Mind you, it’s an acquired taste. A bit like how blowfish—the Japanese call it fugu—are a delicacy but they can also kill you if you don’t prepare it exactly perfectly.”
“First I’m a diamond, now I’m a blowfish?”
“Only the properly cooked sort.”