Lord Kirke, it was clear, was a conversational fencer: always feinting, disarming, distracting, testing. It was probably a quick and efficient way to uncover liars and fools. Not necessarily the best way to make friends or keep from getting punched. But she found it hopelessly compelling. One wanted to pass his tests.
“How did you know I was born in Northumberland?”
“It haunts your vowels,” was all he said, cryptically.
This was fascinatingly specific, and yet again ranked among the most interesting things ever said to her by a man.
“And you, sir... are Welsh?” She realized this was like saying, “And you, sky, are blue?”
“Ah, indeed I am Welsh, Keating,” he replied indulgently. “All the way from Satan’s Arse Crack, a little town near Cardiff.”
Not even in her wildest dreams had she ever thought she’d hear the words “Satan’s arse crack” so exquisitely enunciated.
She began to wonder if he was a lot drunker than he seemed.
“It sounds lovely,” she decided to say. “And explains a good deal.”
When he smiled, slowly and fully, those charming parentheses deepened about the corners of his mouth and his eyes lit like dark stars. It made him look like Pan, willing to use his unimaginable powers to perpetrate dangerous mischief.
Then he winced and touched a quick finger to the corner of his mouth. She winced along with him.
“I think you’ve stopped bleeding,” she volunteered.
He glanced ruefully down at the handkerchief in his hand. It was pristine, apart from a few drops of blood.
“Keep it. I have another.” She’d always wanted to say something grandly magnanimous like that. She might not have the right dresses, but her new handkerchiefs were unimpeachable.
He arched a brow and tucked it into his coat. “Very generous of you. My thanks.”
This would be the appropriate moment for either of them to discreetly melt away.
She was pleased that neither of them seemed inclined to do it.
“So, Keating. Is that the reason you’re out here alone on a bench in the shadows—nursing hurt feelings about your sleeves?”
“Oh no. Not really. That is, I don’t suppose my feelings are hurt. She doesn’t know me, and they’re just words, aren’t they? I can’t be hurt by someone who doesn’t truly know me.”
“Can’t you?” he remarked neutrally.
“I shouldn’t think it was a comment on my character, was it? It’s just a dress.” She looked up at him worriedly and smoothed the front of it again, then rushed on, because why on earth should a man like him care? “I suppose it has simply given me something to think about. Green things feel a bit like family members, as I’m from the country. And I suppose I’m just a bit... winded.” She brushed her hand against her cheek self-consciously.
He frowned very faintly. “From the dancing?”
She gave a little embarrassed laugh. “From the newness. London and ballrooms and the like. It’s my very first season and it’s quite a lot to take in but I like it very much,” she reassured him earnestly, lesthe think she was insulting his milieu. “The people at The Grand Palace on the Thames are lovely, aren’t they? I love it there. Everyone at this ball looks so beautiful and the music is the finest I’ve ever heard! And some of the dances are a bit unfamiliar to me but I’m excited to become better at them. I shall wade back into the ballroom presently for I’m to dance a reel with Mr. Hargrove. I expect in no time at all I shall learn who the kind people are by what they say and make friends of them.”
For a man clearly possessed of little patience, he’d listened to all this with apparent, even flattering, unblinking attentiveness.
But he said nothing for such a long while that it occurred to her that his thoughts might have simply drifted away toward something he considered more worthy of his attention, fights and speeches and the like, and he hadn’t even realized she’d finished speaking.
Finally, casually, he leaned against the wall and bent a knee, as though he was settling in.
“You’re walking through a jungle on your way to a pressing engagement.” His cadence made it sound like the beginning of a story. “This engagement is a matter of life or death. And blocking your path is a body of water teeming with hungry crocodiles. There’s no bridge, no vines upon which to swing. No trees. You’ve no tools. You’re wearing what you’re wearing now, your allegedly wrong dress. Some crocodiles are sleepier than the others. Some are more vicious. You’re desperate. They’re desperate. How do you get across?”
Somehow it seemed only fitting that this odd conversation would eventually include a riddle. Perhaps they were a tradition in Satan’s Arse Crack.“I suppose I could... wait until they fall asleep, because they have to sleep some time, dash through the shallowest—”
“Wrong. Congratulations, now you’re crocodile food.”
She gave a start.