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Had she thought the lashes an outrage? Those eye crinkles would be her downfall. “I was thinking you might brush out your hair and tie it back and then touch yourself again.”
“Your Grace!” Tabitha almost fell out the window. “Hush! How dare you lurk and watch me in a vulnerable moment.”
“I did not see.” Unfair deployment of lowered lashes ensued. “I heard. I…scented.”
“Hush, hush!” She covered her face, more appalled at her missish dithering than anything else.
“Must we discuss it in this fashion?”
She dropped her hands to glare down at him. “Would you like an invitation indoors?”
“Why, thank you kindly,” he said. Llewellyn leaped onto the wall, scaled the side of the kitchen, vaulted off its roof, and landed right on her windowsill. Tabitha fell back to sit on the bed. He shook his hair out of his face. “I tire of haunting the periphery.”
“LikeThe Savage Specter of Crowell Mall, by our illustrious visitor.” Thinking of it, that novel also seemed to take the Lowell Pack as its pattern.Crowell Mallwas a terrible name if one considered it too closely.
“One of the equestrian masters used to read aloud to the others, tales of the dead come back to life. I have no way of knowing if any of them were hers. She is quite—” He started to say more but stopped and shook his head.
“She is talented and beautiful.” And possibly perfidious, but did Tabitha think so out of envy? Perhaps she had been wrong in her assumptions about the lady author.
Arms crossed over a chest that seemed to be expanding by the minute. “I hope you are not comparing yourself to her.”
Tabitha curled her toes into the rug beside her bed. “Of course not, she is rather perfect.”
“You sound cross.” Llewellyn settled on his heels, perfectly balanced on the sill.
“I am out of sorts, according to my brother.”
“You were out of sorts with me. After we kissed at the meal.”
They did rather more than kiss. “Yes.”
“Why?” He wrapped his arms around his knees.
She kicked out her legs and shook her head. “I do not know how to do this.”
“Do you not?”
“I know how to do bed things, but not…courtship or, or any of that.” She wiggled in place. What in the world was wrong with her? “I find this awkward. I—I don’t know about proceeding in the usual way. The man and woman way. I had no desire for more than brief liaisons. I mean to say—though it was merely research for my comparative matrix—I chose carefully, I was not profligate, but I did not…”
“Did not?”
“Care.”
He grinned slowly, slid off the sill, and prowled the few steps to stand before her, and said something that was likely saucy in—
“Welsh?” she guessed.
“It is. My language is coming back to me. My senses are restoring themselves. I was so far gone, I did not think I would return. I wanted Georgie to put me down as he did that rogue of Osborn’s, as his father failed to do with Castleton.” He reached out and toyed with the ends of her ribbon. “Now, I wake in the morning and feel the beauty of the world around me as I have not since before Drake’s. I lay that in your lap.”
“It was merely the work of my instincts.” She clutched her hands in that lap lest she reach out and wrap them around his slim hips. “And time. Time heals all wounds.”
“It was more than that, but I will say nothing else on that score, at this stage.” He knelt before her. “As I have said, I am no longer your client.”
“You would be my suitor.” Where had he gotten that coat? It fit him well, and the dark blue made his mane look like wheat ripe for the harvest. Tabitha ran her hand down one of the lapels.
“I would be your lover if you would choose me.” The duke held out his hand, and she placed hers in it. “I do not like to hear you compare yourself to that lady author. I would not like to hear you compare yourself to anyone.” He laid a kiss on her palm. “Your instincts are worth following. They are excellent and exhilarating”—he kissed her hand again—“compelling, alluring”—and again and again.
Kiss by kiss, her envy dissolved, her sulk faded. “I have never been accused of being alluring, of causing exhilaration.”
