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“You haven’t a brandy hangover, surely? If you do, I have an infallible cure.”
“No, no,” Tony replied faintly, “I have a helluva hard head for liquor.”
Savage’s naked torso wrapped in the towel was stunning in its male beauty. Her imagination hadn’t done him justice. For the rest of her life, whenever she pictured a naked man, it would be Adam Savage with a towel skimming his hips. To her horror she found herself fantasizing about what was beneath that towel.
The black pelt she had imagined was very real. Its path ran down beneath the towel in a narrowing line drawing the eyes and the senses to his secret male center. She could not picture it, but it had such a forbidden quality, it filled her imagination with wicked thoughts.
When he turned around she saw clearly that his dark tan line ended at his tapered waist. She actually saw the shallow cleft where his bottom cheeks began and it dawned on her for the first time that a man’s posterior was shaped entirely differently from a woman’s. His bottom cheeks were small and flat and taut. She was drawn after him like one who had been hypnotized.
The sun streamed in through the glass skylight, sending a myriad of tiny rainbows dancing across every surface. Because of the wall of Venetian mirrors, the room seemed double in size. The water in the bathing pool shimmered with such a sparkling blue-green, Tony had to narrow her eyes against its brilliant reflection.
“Look at these painted miniatures. They’re exquisite,” Savage enthused.
Blue herons, ibis, snowy egrets, terns, and wood ducks nesting in reeds were placed at random about the walls and inlaid in the floor. Tony saw a black swan and her dream, full blown, came flooding back to her. To cover her embarrassment she said, “The artist is Maximilian Robin in Shepherds Market.”
“Nomen est omen,the name is the destiny,” Adam remarked.
Tony could not help applying those words to him. The name Savage described this man’s appearance perfectly. Was it also an indication of his nature? She watched as the ebony-handled razor sliced smoothly down his jaw. His keen eyes were on her as he asked sardonically, “Don’t you shave yet?”
“S-sometimes,” she lied. “I don’t really need to,” she added lamely.
“You never will unless you get started.”
She could hear a trace of disgust in his voice.
“When I was your age I grew a beard.” He opened a tooled-leather case and extracted a pearl-handled razor. “Here’s a present for you. Put it to good use.”
Tony took it, thinking it would come in handy for slitting Savage’s throat. Reluctantly she took up the shaving soap and began to make a lather. He watched her openly until she wanted to scream at him. She had a terrible fear that if she shaved she would sprout whiskers.
She wore men’s clothes, she had cut her waist-length hair, she even smoked, but she was damned if she was going to encourage a five-o’clock shadow! She dawdled, playing for time, hoping he would leave so she could rinse the lather from her face. Savage, however, was waiting to see how she handled the steel blade.
Reluctantly she picked it up and pulled the skin of her cheek taut as she had seen him do. The moment the sharp blade touched her skin, she cut herself.
“Shit!” she murmured.
Savage rolled his eyes in disbelief. “When you’re finished, wipe your ears … you’re still wet behind them,” he mocked.
When he left, she pulled a hideous face after him. Just once she would like to wipe the contempt from his face when he looked at her.
John Bull had washed and starched Tony’s shirt and cravat. Never had she seen linen so finely laundered. She thanked and complimented him.
“Excellency has such high standards. Edenwood needs many servants; a cook, a laundress.”
“I doubt if you will find any who can equal your own skills, John Bull.”
“Ah, we shall see. Today I must employ many maidens.”
“Maids,” Tony supplied.
“Maiden, maid, what is the difference, please?”
Savage strolled in. “A maid is a female servant. A maiden is a female with her virginity intact,” he explained matter-of-factly.
John Bull held up his hands. “Maids will take me all day to find, maidens would take forever.”
Adam Savage smiled at John Bull’s attempt at humor and cast Tony a sideways glance.
Damn him to hellfire! She knew he was amused because he suspected Lord Lamb was still a virgin.
