“Good God,” he said. “That was dark indeed.” He paused. “Well done.”
She smiled at him, and he smiled back, and when those little crescents about his mouth appeared it felt as though the sun had come out for the first time in days. Though it had, in fact, been a gloriously sunny week. Perfect weather for picnics and so forth.
Her neck muscles forgot how to turn, now that she had his eyes to herself again.
She became aware that the two of them had been looking at each other and not saying anything, but she couldn’t tell for how long, because something odd had happened to time.
Finally he returned his attention to the chess game.
But she noticed that he remained absolutely still for a moment, as if he’d forgotten where he was or what he meant to do. He’d laid his hands flat on the table. Almost as if he didn’t trust them and wanted to watch them.
She stared at them. She imagined so easily feeling the weight of his hand on her waist. That was all it took for heat to fan through her torso, pool between her legs, flush her cheeks.
She had come to understand that what she felt was lust.
She wondered if “lust” was considered a jar word.
The ease with which she was able to call it up to her body by just looking at him was fascinating and more than a little frightening. The consuming intensity was unexpected.
How unnerving it was to suspect that he might feel the same way about her.
Moreover... he knew what to do about it.
According to Lady Hackworth, Lord Kirke was allegedly “good.”
Whatever that meant.
“And we’re all grateful that you were not a toasted chestnut, Lord Kirke,” Angelique soothed.
A scattering of chuckles greeted this.
“What flower is Miss Keating?” Mr. Delacorte asked.
Everyone contemplated her and Catherine held her breath, happily awaiting the verdict.
Lord Kirke looked up. “Clover.” He said this quietly but definitively. Then returned his attention to the chessboard.
Catherine nearly recoiled.
It sounded much like that “Yes” he’d deliveredwhen she’d asked him if he’d ever been in love. The word arrived with a fence built all around it.
Clover. Food for cows and sheep. Nearly as common as dirt. Half of England was carpeted in the stuff. That’s how he thought of her.
She felt scalded breathless.
Because she was a country girl? And could not possibly be a bright, complicated bloom, like Mrs. Pariseau? Or even Delacorte? What kinds of blooms were the other anonymous mythical London women with whom he allegedly had affairs?
He returned his attention to the chess game after having uttered those enigmatic two syllables as if he hadn’t said anything at all.
Perhaps she’d simply been briefly novel for him the way everything in London had been novel for her, and now he was bored of her.
Perhaps he was embarrassed now to meet her gaze.
Perhaps the concerted way he refused to look at her was nothing more than embarrassment that he had danced with a bumpkin.
And yet he seemed helpless to look away when he finally did look.
This frustration and confusion were as new as all of her other sensations. All of them originating with him.