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“Now you’ve got my attention, princess. Teach me some more words to use for wooing.”
“You should purchase a volume of Shakespeare’s works. He was a master of ingenuity when it came to wordplay. I have a fascination with archaic words, ones that we no longer use in conversation or in our written texts. I have lists and lists of them. I’d like to bring some back into circulation.”
“Such as . . .” He wanted to keep her talking, if only to watch her eyes blaze and her lissome bosom heave.
“We used to embellish our speech withflosculations, and condemn deceitfulfallaciloquence. If the moon slipped behind a cloud, we were leftmurklinsand a slothful person was filled withpigritude. A prickly lady such as myself might have been referred to assenticous, and a rogue like you ascockalorum. And after a night at the pub you might becrapulous.”
He quirked his head to one side. “That doesn’t sound very pleasant.”
“It’s from the Latin for intoxication and from the Greek word meaning the headache one gets from drinking.”
He grinned. “I’ve definitely felt crapulous upon occasion.”
“It’s a delightfully descriptive word. It just sounds so unpleasant. I do love words that make their meaning known with only a few short syllables. Like disaster. The hard ‘d’ and the expansive, merciless ‘a.’ Did you know that disaster originates from the Latin for ‘ill star’? And then there’s tintinnabulation. What a word! Why you can hear the bells ringing within it!”
He’d bet he could teach her a few new words. He’d acquired quite a colorful vocabulary living on a ship full of sailors.
Enough words. There would be no unleashing of passions this afternoon. He’d received his answer about the duke’s whereabouts, and it was time to leave. He hadn’t liked the answer, but there wasnothing he could do about it. His orders from the Admiralty would come through any day now, and he’d sail at their pleasure, on a ship of their choosing. If he didn’t have a chance to speak with the duke before setting sail, he’d have to find another safe way to give him the evidence of embezzlement that he’d uncovered.
Dallying with the duke’s precious, cosseted sister wouldn’t help his case.
It was past time for him to leave.
The lady, whether she was aware of it or not, was attracted to him—he knew it as surely as he knew the sun would rise tomorrow and his arms would ache from all that pounding and timber framing.
He might have believed she was unmoved by his presence and only passionate about the words, if it weren’t for the way she swayed toward him, unconsciously reaching her hands close to his. The little surreptitious glances she kept darting at his open shirt collar. The pink flush across her high cheekbones, a lovely contrast to the mass of curly copper hair piled into a messy bun with tendrils framing her oval face.
There was no harm in just a little more teasing banter. “You make words come alive in a unique way, but I can think of hundreds of things more pleasurable thanlogophilia. Kissing, for one.”
“You meanosculation, the place where two curves or surfaces come into contact?”
“I mean kissing.” He dropped his gaze to her full pink lips. “What happens when lips meet, and converse, and learn a few things about each other.Wouldn’t you agree that kissing might be slightly more pleasurable than archaic words?”
She lifted her straight little nose so that her spectacles reflected his face. “I would not.”
“Spoken like a lady who’s never been kissed, or not properly kissed, at least.”
“Osculation could never be as thrilling as discovering a new word.”
“Is that a challenge, Your Ladyship?”
“It’s a certainty.”
At least Beatrice was fairly certain that it was true. She had vast experience with the discovery of new words, and none whatsoever with kissing.
Certainly, if she were going to gain such experience, she might very well consider Mr. Wright as a prime candidate for osculatory experimentation.
He was obviously very confident in his abilities. And the smoldering light in his azuline eyes was disconcertingly effective, if one was to judge by the weakening of knees and the persistent flutterings in one’s stomach.
Don’t let it go to your head. It’s not for you.
Beatrice was quite certain that he stared at every young woman with the exact same smolder in order to inspire feelings of adulation. She was nothing special to him, only an unmarried female to flirt with; a game he played every day.
But he played it so well, so masterfully.
She wanted to join in the game. Trade ripostes for sallies, become one of the vivacious and coquettish heroines of the Gothic romances she loved to read.
If her name were Amaranthine, and she were a violet-eyed beauty imprisoned on the windswept moors by this enigmatic and darkly handsome man, she would be in danger of a thorough kissing.
