Strange.
Shouldn’t she be inching toward the door just beside her?
“Better now?” His voice was ever smooth and calming.
“Better,” she found herself repeating.
“In a way, we are so ve-ry luck-y mot-her felt her-self ov-er-come with heat…”
What a sing-song voice he had, a lulling cadence.
“Lucky?” she prompted, when he seemed disinclined to continue.
“I am, I think we can agree, of above average intelligence.” The right corner of his lip quirked up. “But even if had I schemed fordays, I could not have come up with a better plan to be alone with such tempt-ing love-li-ness…”
Heat rose in her cheeks.
“…And in such a romantic place.”
“Ro-man-tic.” She swayed as she recreated the rhythm he’d given the word.
Dullardish, she’d become. Quite odd, indeed. But her sudden transformation only served to widen his smile. Heapproved.
“Let me see what I can do to further enhance your appearance.” He withdrew a long thin bit of ivory from his pocket.
While he kept his eyes on her, not his implement, as he pulled open the mechanism, her gaze was drawn to a slash of polished metal. Gaslamp light winked off the blade. Small etchings along the knife’s scintillating edge suggested recent sharpening.
Her gaze followed the shank up, up as he lifted his arm toward the garland of fake flowers just above their heads. He sliced off a single, white bud. Then, with knife still aloft in one hand, he tucked the bud behind her ear with the other.
Millie kept herself very still.
“Pretty,” he said.
She flushed again. Not, as she first thought, a threat, then, but a sweet deed. Was it not?
She wet her lips. “You’re standing very close, Lord Willard.”
“How kind”—he further crowded her against the wall—“to invite me to come closer still.”
Her mouth fell open. She’d intended to tell him she’d made no such suggestion, but she couldn’t quite form the words.
After her accidental stumble against Neville in the yew maze, she’d been pressed up against him even closer than she was against Willard now. But she wasn’t feeling any of the same sensations. In fact, she felt somewhat uneasy.
But she’d been deeply hurt when Neville had roughly cast her aside with a scold. Uncomfortable as she was, she didn’t want to cause Willard that same embarrassment and pain.
Then again… Her gaze moved back up and to the right, focused entirely on the blade, even as he adjusted the flower in the hair.
“Better now.Everythingis better, now. Don’t you agree?”
Everything is better…?
“Millicent”—he touched beneath her chin and then guided her face—“you must answer me when I ask a question.”
Her brow troubled. “MustI?”
“Only polite,” he added.
That, she supposed was true. “What did you ask me?”