Page 132 of Faceless

That checked her so completely that for an instant, even her wit gave way. She held him in her gaze a long time.

Then, very softly, “You hide delight abominably.”

“I know.”

She drew her hand free of his and laid it, with maddening deliberation, against the centre of his chest. Her palm was warm. The gesture had curiosity in it, and fondness, and some claim she no longer made shyly. Her hand stayed over his heart, and she tilted her head very slightly.

“Is this where all the admiration was kept? Or was it… somewhere else?” Her hand moved down, over his navel, then lower still.

He let out a breath that was nearly a laugh, and it shook. “You are behaving very ill.”

“No. I am gathering overdue information.” Her hand moved once, the smallest treacherous stroke. “I have discovered that I was not merely tolerated. I should like now to know how much danger I was in.”

He turned onto his side to face her fully. The blankets shifted. Morning cold touched his shoulder and was forgotten immediately.

“You were in considerable danger.”

“Of what?”

“Of being loved far too soon by a man with very little talent for concealing it and still less for confessing it.”

That left her without speech for perhaps three heartbeats, which was as astonishing, in its way, as any silence he had ever known. Then her lashes lowered. She looked, for the first time since waking him, almost shy.

“How soon was ‘too soon’?”

“The second time I ever saw you, I was gone. I should say that was ‘too soon’ by every prudent standard.”

She smiled and leaned a little closer to his mouth. “We have never been particularly obedient to prudent standards.”

“No.” He reached and tucked the loosened strand of hair behind her ear. “You, least of all.”

She leaned into the touch. “I am glad,” she said.

He did not ask to what she referred. He knew.

He kissed her before he could say something inadequate. She kissed him as if she had learned the argument and found it wholly in her favour.

She giggled softly against his mouth, and her hand drifted lower, doing something unseemly.

“Good heavens, woman. I thought here at least I might be safe from your teasing.”

“Then you ought not to have married me. It is too late now.”

“It was too late at Netherfield.”

That silenced her in a different way. Her hand came up to his face, not teasing now, only holding. Her thumb rested at his jaw. He kissed the inside of her wrist, because he could not help it. Her pulse leapt under his mouth. Her eyes darkened.

She came closer of her own accord, the line of her body finding his with that infuriating, perfect rightness that still startled him.

“Tell me something else,” she murmured.

He brushed his mouth to her temple. “I preferred you for being alive where so many others were merely accomplished.” His hand moved over her back, feeling the warm length of her through linen. “You laughed as if the room belonged to you. You looked at people as if rank were useful only so long as it did not interfere with sense. You spoke to me as though I might be worth crossing swords with but not reverencing. Do you know how rare that was for me?”

She shook her head once.

“No one had ever treated me as if I were better employed in earning amusement than in being deferred to.”

A smile touched her mouth then, smaller and infinitely sweeter than the earlier laughter. “Well. I am happy to have been of service.”