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“After all, a woman might not have noticed that she’d gained a great deal of weight.”
Cleo drew back. “Oh, I’d say that the chances of that are fairly slim.”
“Luckily, in my mother’s case, she had a son willing to point out that she had grown, shall we say, larger?”
“Oh, dear.”
“My first sentence has been reported as, ‘Mama, did you know that your stomach is as big as your bottom?’”
Cleo burst into laughter. “What a dreadful little boy you were!”
“I prefer observant and helpful. I had realized that my mother couldn’t see behind her. Though I hadn’t known she was wearing a bum-roll under her gown, nor did I realize that she was carrying my little sister.”
“Indelicate,” Cleo murmured, tracing his bottom lip with a finger.
He opened his mouth and lapped it with his tongue. “I speak too quickly and bluntly. You might not like that in the long run.”
“I’m truly disinclined to marry.” Their eyes met. “If it means I give up Lewis Commodes. Quimby’s.”
“With me, you keep them all.” He lowered his head, so his breath feathered over her lips. “But if you don’t want to marry me, Cleo, I’ll just keep loving you from across the corridor. Wherever you go: Paris, Moscow—”
She pulled back. “Moscow!”
“I read in the Times yesterday that Russian castles reek of sewage when the wind turns. They need you. And where you go, Cleo, I will go.”
His kiss was demanding and tender at once. His right hand stroked a burning path from her neck to her collarbone . . . and paused, presumably because she was gazing at him. “Cleo?”
“I may not have learned French, but I did learn the Bible. I can recognize a shortened quote from the book of Ruth.”
“Whither thou goest, I will go,” Jake said, his tone growly but solemn. “Where thou lodgest, I will lodge, even if you make me live across the corridor. Thy people will be my people. Thy country will be my country.”
Cleo blinked up at him. “My country?”
“I’ll never be a real Brit, you know that, right?”
“I would never want you to be.”
“I’m not an idiot, Cleo. You didn’t have to travel with your mother. You were already running Lewis Commodes, for goodness’ sake.”
“Someone had to look after her,” Cleo objected.
He kissed her. “You love the country roads of England, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Don’t you love America?”
“Not the same way. Not the way I love you.”
The words trembled in the air between them.
“Oh,” Cleo breathed.
The seriousness in his eyes faded to amusement. “Fair warning: I mean to make you love me too, with all my faults. I have a strategy, a plan.”
“You do?” Cleo whispered.
“I always have a plan.” He lowered his head. “It doesn’t include seducing you, as that would be ungentlemanly. I promise to share all the details, to make it fair.”
She took a deep breath. “Would it . . . would it allow for being seduced?”
