“I refuse to negotiate with objects smaller than myself. It is a principle.”
“Your principle has left me looking as though I have lost a fight with an octopus.”
He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket. It was linen, initialed, freshly pressed, and it was about to meet the same fate as her sleeve, but he held it out to her anyway.
She took it and dabbed at her wrist. She made, he observed, very little progress.
“You have missed one,” he said.
“Where.”
“Your cheek.”
“My cheek.”
“Yes, your cheek.”
She reached up and missed. Her fingers passed half an inch beneath the offending droplet, which sat stubbornly on the angle of her jaw, winking at him in the candlelight with what he could only describe as encouragement.
“Here,” he said. “If you will permit.”
She went still. He had expected that. He had expected her to tell him, with her particular brand of frost, that she could manage her own cheek, thank you, and he had been prepared to step back and let her. He had said“permit”for exactly that reason. It was a word with a door in it.
She did not close the door.
“Permitted,” she said.
He took the handkerchief back from her and lifted it to the small black mark at her jaw. He touched it, very carefully, with the corner of the linen. The droplet came away on the first pass. He did not move the handkerchief.
“It is gone,” she said.
“I am ensuring thoroughness.”
“Your thoroughness is uncharacteristic.”
“I have been accused of many things, Miss Grace. Thoroughness is rarely among them. I am making an effort.”
“An effort.”
“In the slightest measures imaginable. One cheek at a time.”
She was looking at him and he was looking at her. The handkerchief was still against her jaw, and his knuckles werevery close to her skin, and neither of them was breathing in any of the usual rhythms.
“Rhys.”
“Yes.”
“You are no longer removing ink.”
“No.”
“You are largely lingering.”
“I am.”
“Is this what one does in a schoolroom.”
“I have no previous data. I was sent down from Eton before this particular situation arose.”
