Page 130 of Faceless

“I am aware. You have been poking at my face.”

“I have been studying your face. There is a distinction. I was not permitted to do so for four months, and I am making up for lost time.”

He turned his head on the pillow and opened both eyes, and she had him fully — the dark eyes in the December light — regarding her with the expression she had learned meant he was not going to argue the point and was not entirely displeased about it either.

“Well?”

“You are very good-looking,” she said. “It is extremely inconvenient.”

“I do not see how that would be.”

“It would have been much easier to dislike you if you had not been.” She traced the line of his brow with one finger, from centre to temple, and he went still under her hand. “I told myself you were not. At Netherfield. At Rosings. I was very firm about it.”

“I do not consider myself vain, but even I know that was a lamentable effort of self-delusion. My features are perfectly acceptable.”

“They are far more than ‘acceptable.’” Her finger moved to his cheekbone, then to the jaw. “I have been making decisions about you for a year and a half based on entirely insufficient data. I intend to remedy that.”

He had meant to reply.

That was the first absurdity. He had been spoken to. A reply was required. Some civil thing. Some husband-like thing. Some answer that did not involve staring at his wife as if civilization had only just been invented and he had grave doubts about whether it ought to continue.

Instead, he lay on the pillow and held her in his gaze, and found that speech had become inconvenient, too.

She was propped on one elbow, the first shards of sunrise through the window at her back, and her hair loose over one shoulder. Her finger moved once more over his brow.

“You are frowning.”

“I am thinking.”

“That is generally an alarming sign at this hour.”

“It is not yet a civilized hour.”

“It is Christmas.”

“You have advanced that argument already.”

“And I find it a strong one.” Her mouth altered. “Do you object to being looked at, Fitzwilliam?”

“I was not aware,” he said, “that I had any power to object successfully to anything you have resolved upon.”

“You had once.”

“I doubt it.”

“You are thinking of recent history. I am thinking of Netherfield, where you looked so severely at me across the drawing room that I was obliged to become frivolous in self-defence.”

He almost smiled. “‘Obliged’?”

“Quite obliged. A lady can hardly be expected to endure such lofty disapprobation in silence.”

“If you endured it at all, you disguised the suffering remarkably well.”

“Sir, I laughed at you for my own preservation.” She traced the line of his cheek with the tip of one finger. “Do not tell me now that you admired it. I should consider that extremely unfair.”

His eyes found her properly then — the dark eyes alive already, the expression that meant she had scented the truth and meant to have it.

“I admired it very much.”