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Had her sisters been present, they would have fallen down laughing.
“That’s an exceptionally fine diamond,” she said. “If you think a woman wouldn’t lie to have it, you’re catastrophically innocent.”
The arresting green gaze searched her face. In English he said, “I was wrong, completely wrong. I see it now. You’re English.”
She smiled. “What gave me away? The plain speaking?”
“More or less,” he said. “If you were French, we should be debating what truth is. They can’t let anything alone. They must always put it under the microscope of philosophy. It’s rather endearing, but they’re so predictable in that regard. Everything must be anatomized and sorted. Rules. They need rules. They make so many.”
“That wouldn’t be a wise speech, were I a Frenchwoman,” she said.
“But you’re not. We’ve settled it.”
“Have we?”
He nodded.
“You wagered in haste,” she said. “Are you always so rash?”
“Sometimes, yes,” he said. “But you had me at a disadvantage. You’re like no one I’ve ever met before.”
“Yet in some ways I am,” she said. “My parents were English.”
“And a little French?” he said. Humor danced in his green eyes, and her cold, calculating heart gave a little skip in response.
Damn, but he was good.
“A very little,” she said. “One purely French great-grandfather. But he and his sons fancied Englishwomen.”
“One great-grandfather is too little to count,” he said. “I’m stuck all over with French names, but I’m hopelessly English—and typically slow, except to jump to wrong conclusions. Ah, well. Farewell, my little pin.” He brought his hands up to remove it.
He wore gloves, but she knew they didn’t hide calluses or broken nails. His hands would be typical of his class: smooth and neatly manicured. They were larger than was fashionable, though, the fingers long and graceful.
Well, not so graceful at the moment. His valet had placed the pin firmly and precisely among the folds of his neckcloth, and he was struggling with it.
Or seeming to.
“You’d better let me,” she said. “You can’t see what you’re doing.”
She moved his hands away, hers lightly brushing his. Glove against glove, that was all. Yet she felt the shock of contact as though skin had touched skin, and the sensation traveled the length of her body.
She was acutely aware of the broad chest under the expensive layers of neckcloth and waistcoat and shirt. All the same, her hands neither faltered nor trembled. She’d had years of practice. Years of holding cards steady while her heart pounded. Years of bluffing, never letting so much as a flicker of an eye, a twitch of a facial muscle, betray her.
The pin came free, winking in the light. She regarded the snowy linen she’d wrinkled.
“How naked it looks,” she said. “Your neckcloth.”
“What is this?” he said. “Remorse?”
“Never,” she said, and that was pristine truth. “But the empty place offends my aesthetic sensibilities.”
“In that case, I shall hasten to my hotel and have my valet replace it.”
“You’re strangely eager to please,” she said.
“There’s nothing strange about it.”
“Be calm, your grace,” she said. “I have an exquisite solution.”
