“Perhaps, but I know it was awkward for you as well.”
“Not nearly as awkward as the conversation I had with my valet,” Lucien observed, attempting to lighten her mood. “I’ll have you know that he found no less than three fleas on my coat. I fear he may never recover.”
The corner of her mouth tipped up. God, that smile was like the sunshine after rain. It reached past darkness inside him.
“Merely three fleas?” she said. “You should have passed them on to Neville. He could do with an itchy bite or two.”
He suppressed a smile at the spice in her tone. “Did you love him? Freyne?” The words slipped out, startling Lucien as much as they did her.
“I thought I did,” she said softly, turning back to the flames dancing in the hearth. “After the conversation today, I feel as if I didn’t even know him.” She was so close, he could almost touch her. But before he could do so, she paced back to the dressing table, laughing without mirth. “I seem to have a penchant for becoming engaged to men I don’t really know. It is a trifle alarming, realizing how little I know about you.”
“Judging from some marriages I’ve observed, that might be best.” He’d intended it as a jest, but somehow, he didn’t find it amusing. “What do you wish to know? Ask and I will tell you, if it’s in my power.” Dangerous territory, and yet he found he would risk it to ease her mind.
She fidgeted with the ribbon at the neckline of her nightgown. “I don’t know…What—what is your favorite color?”
“I’ve never taken the time to choose one.”
She regarded him with a curious look in her eye. “What about your favorite book?”
“Treatise on Law.”
“I meant a novel.” That smile peeked out again. “Something that touches your emotions.”
“I don’t read novels.”
Her eyes went wide with something akin to horror. “Never?”
“Being occupied with parliamentary business and running estates, I have never had time for frivolous pursuits.”
“How sad.” She sank down into the chair, a pensive shadow falling over her lovely face.
“Do you have a favorite?” he asked, needing to distance himself from the pity in her eyes.
“Oh, so many! Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall…” Enthusiasm sparked, as if he’d struck flint to tinder. “Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen are delightful. And I just began a remarkable novel by Mr. Charles Dickens.” She gestured to where a book lay, open amidst the neatly turned bedsheets. “From the time I was small, my family would gather at night and read a chapter of some book aloud. We’d sit by the fire, sharing the stories, and when the chapter was done, my brothers and I trying to guess what would happen next. Sometimes,” she said, her eyes lighting with the memory, “I even crept into the room and read ahead on my own. When Papa discovered it, he put the book on a high shelf I couldn’t reach.”
Lucien pictured her as the child he’d known all those years ago, hair ribbons askew and jaw set with determination as she clambered onto a chair to reach the forbidden book, eager as if she were trying to steal sweetmeats. “So your rebellious streak did not begin with thievery in Everdene Hall’s kitchen?”
She actually laughed. “Indeed, no.”
“Well, as my viscountess you may order however many books you like and race through them.”
She favored him with a brighter smile than he’d seen since the debacle at the modiste’s shop.
Unable to resist, he crossed to where she sat, and curved his strong hands over her shoulders. The warmth of her seeped into his palms, the scent of jasmine drifting up from her hair. He meant only to give her a goodnight kiss, something simple to close out their day, but he was surprised by how stiff her shoulders were. “You really have had the devil of a day,” he said, every fiber of his body aware of hers.
“The past week has been more strain than I realized,” she confessed. “My father trying auction me off like a mare at Tattersall’s. My brothers feeling as if I betrayed them. Helen up to her neck in elaborate plans I loathe…And the absence of my mother is like a hole in my heart. I’m buying all of these new clothes, but all I can think about is that nothing about my old life fits.”
“You are so tense your muscles are like iron. After a match at the swordsmanship academy, we knead out the tightness like so.” He pressed his thumbs into her rigid shoulders. “Allow me?”
She nodded and he began to work the knots out. Her skin was creamy velvet, so smooth beneath the pads of his fingers. Her hair streamed over his knuckles like silk ribbons. Slowly, her shoulders relaxed an inch or two. Her head drooped forward to allow him better access and he stared down at the dainty curve of neck, the vulnerable bumps of spine.
“Better?” he asked.
She gave a soft moan. “I’m so very tired of it all…The truth is, I wish this wedding were over.”
“Then I will make it so.”
Her head snapped up. He could see the faint pink marks of his fingers on her skin and wished to hell he still had her beneath his hands. “Would you?”
