She had an even greater respect for the dangers impressed upon women now. One taste of this and a weaker woman might see ruin as a perfectly reasonable risk.
Henry had kissed her the day he’d proposed. Time and again over the years she had conjured the feeling of his lips against hers.
But his kiss had not made her feel... combustible. Or as though a dozen different dungeon doors hidden inside her had just been flung open.
She’d never once thought of Henry in terms of danger at all. And still he had destroyed her.
She could not, would not now imagine the Earl of Athelboro kissing her.
Lorcan might well be a former criminal from St. Giles. They were indeed different species. He was alarming and fierce both inside and outside of his clothes.
But that kiss had hardly been inevitable. She was not naturally coy. She’d had the option at any point to remove herself from the risk. She realized she had stayed awake tonight, deliberately waiting.
She’d simply wanted to be kissed by him.
And so seldom did she take what she wanted that she’d scarcely noticed that this was precisely what she’d been doing.
He had brought her an orange and an astrolabe. And he’d gently, absently, tucked her night rail over her bare toes.
Somehow this last thing seemed far more dangerous than the kiss.
The following morning, almost without thinking, Daphne spooned a little sugar into Lorcan’s cup and poured his coffee.
“Thank you,” he said. He silently gestured with a little knife that apparently practically was one of his appendages, so easily was he able to access it, and she nodded, and he cut her scone into little pieces so she could see its fluffy insides.
His scone vanished apace while hers was carefully enjoyed. Perhaps more slowly than usual, because he’d come to the table with his sleeves rolled. She was riveted by the dark hairs curling at the wrists. The glint of copper in them.
She recalled his fingers sliding along her jaw, lacing through her hair. She had to force herselfnot to brush her own fingers against her cheek, to relive the sensation.
They’d each had an evening to more or less soberly reflect upon the advisability of kissing each other. The answer was, of course: not advisable at all.
And because she wanted to be brave, she met his eyes, to see what she might discover there.
His gaze kindled and his lips turned up just a little at the corners. His eyes flickered to her mouth, and lingered, and his pupils flared.
He didn’t free her from his gaze until she dropped her eyes.
Heat moved into her cheeks.
And finally she stood and wandered to the window to gaze out at the ceaseless wall of rain.
She didn’t turn when he came to stand behind her. He was very close, but was careful not to touch her at all.
He was in many ways a surprisingly subtle man. As not touching her was perhaps more powerfully seductive than seizing her in his arms.
“Are you concerned about your father?” he asked.
“I suppose I am. He expected me home two days ago. Doubtless he knows the roads are impassable. But I shouldn’t want him to worry. He’s there alone, with just two servants.”
“Only two,” Lorcan mourned. Not entirely unsympathetically. Gently teasing.
By now she knew this. She quirked the corner of her mouth. The way she thought about her father was in the process of uncomfortably, irrevocably transforming. But he was still her father.
“I need to try to go out into that weather again,” he said. “A bit of legal business regarding getting paid for our last ship seized. It might be a long day.”
“Perhaps you’ll be careful about diving into any more bodies of water?”
She found that she meant it.