That when he was looking at Ruby, she was looking back. Even when she did not mean to.
“I attend to you merely to ascertain the various scopes and shapes of your deceptions,” she said. But her voice had lost some of its mortar-knife edge—gone blurred, just a bit, beneath the sound of the sea.
He stepped closer. Her eyes traced a path from his throat up to his face, and the flush on her skin deepened beneath the red glow of sunset. Her lips parted.
She was not susceptible to his charm. But he remembered the way she’d gasped, almost silently, when he’d touched her skin in the library. He remembered the way her gaze had caught and dragged on his shoulders when she’d found him outside the kitchen.
He thought, with a hot throb of guilt and lust, that she might be susceptible tothis.
He could distract her this way. If he moved even closer, he might keep her eyes away from the cave.
“The truth is,” he said, low and soft, “I am very fond of swimming.”
Ruby moistened her lips. This time her gaze did not drop. “You do not appear particularly damp.”
“I had not yet begun.” His mouth curled up. His pulse had risen. He felt the way he’d felt in every naval engagement—as if he must plunge forward or die. “I can show you, if you like.”
“I am familiar with the notion of sea bathing.”
“I am certain you are,” he murmured. He took one of her hands in his and set his fingers to her pretty, fussy glove. He could smell the sea, the honeyed scent of campion crushed against her skirts. Her own velvety warmth.
Slowly, slowly, he slipped one pearl button free. Another.
“I could take you to my favorite pool,” he said. He watched her eyes, her mouth. Her throat. “Show you how deep the water goes. How it feels, cool and lapping over your skin.”
She didn’t say anything. She did not move, except for the way her chest rose and fell.
He unfastened the final button and slid the glove from her hand. He let himself enjoy the slow luxurious glide—because it was an act, because he needed this to seem real.
Her breath hitched.
“I’d close my eyes, while you bathed,” he said. His voice sounded thick to his own ears. “Or else swim with you. If you wished it.”
He’d found her other glove. He pushed against the cool smooth surface of the first pearl button. Slid it through the buttonhole. Let his thumb press against the pulse at her wrist, which galloped as quickly and unevenly as his own.
“Tell me,” he murmured. “Say you want me to take you there.”
She moistened her lips again, and her mouth moved into the shape of a word, which Archer thought—hoped beyond all reason—would beyes.
Both of her gloves were off now. His fingers tangled with hers, then slid up her forearm. He could feel the shape of her. The warmth. The tiny surrender of soft flesh.
His blood beat hot. Longing throbbed like a pulse beneath his skin.
It was at this point that Archer realized he’d lost the plot. Somewhere between when he’d begun talking and when he’d ended, his mind had unfolded a vision of cool water and damp skin and bare voluptuous limbs, a pale flurry in the dark. He’d meant to distract her with his words, with his nearness—and now he was the one flushed, heated, imagining—
Things he ought not imagine. Things he’d spent the last four weeks dreaming of, restless and fevered. Things he had resolved each morning to forget.
“You,” she said finally—not yes—“ought to attend to your duties at Pomeroy House. Not spend your afternoons sea bathing.”
He dropped her arm and stepped back, almost stunned by the depth of his disappointment. The air between them was a cold shock—a plunge into the sea.
He’d thought to fluster her with his proximity, with his questions, with his wits. But now he was the one on his back foot. Affected. Painfully, suddenly aroused.
He’d done all this to unsettle her, hadn’t he?
Or had he merely wanted to feel her skin beneath his hands?
Hurt and confusion made his tongue run wild. “I ought to? And what of you, Ruby Ballimore, lady-in-waiting to the Princess Serafina? Is your relentless attention to my activities a royal decree or merely a way to pass the time?”
