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Doesn’t want to touch me, she thought, slowly turning her back to him, continuing on around until she faced him again. “So?”
“So I wanted to see if your backside was as pretty as it felt in my hands. It is.”
As yet she’d been unable to control her instinctive blush at his outrageous words, but she simply ignored the heat that rushed to her face. “Ever the gentleman,” she murmured. “Will your mother be joining us for dinner?”
His eyebrows drew together, his mockery vanishing for the moment. “She’s my stepmother.”
Sophie smiled sweetly. “Oh, yes, I forgot. The two of you are so much alike that it’s easy to make a mistake.”
It should have been an effective blow, but she’d overplayed her hand. He laughed. “I do try to pattern my behavior after hers at all times. But I’m afraid we’ll be dining à deux tonight. You can beguile me with tales of your larcenous father.”
Before she could say anything, Dickens himself appeared in the door. “Madame est servie,” he announced, and Alexander pushed away from the wall, moving toward her with insolent grace and holding out his arm.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SOPHIE DIDN’T WANT TO take his politely proffered arm. She didn’t want to touch him, feel the warmth of his skin beneath the fabric, the strength of his muscles, but refusing would only set her up for more trouble, and she suspected he would insist on the formality simply because it bothered her. She reached up and put her arm on his, as lightly as she could. She hadn’t thought to look for gloves, and of course he wasn’t wearing any, and their hands were skin to skin. She couldn’t control her tiny jerk, but he said nothing, leading her into the dining room.
There were two places set, one at the head of the long table and one to his right. Exactly where she used to sit when there were no guests, at her father’s right hand and Maddy at his left. Bryony had sat at the opposite en
d. That should have made things easier, but as he pulled the chair out for her, she couldn’t rid herself of a strange feeling of unreality. Where were her sisters? Where was her father?
At least Alexander didn’t insist on mealtime conversation. Instead he watched her, and she almost wished he would talk about the weather. In desperation she made a few attempts, but his replies were monosyllabic as his eyes focused on her, and if she hadn’t been so hungry she would have lost her appetite.
Prunella had outdone herself. Course followed course, and each one was exquisite. Sophie might have put a little thyme in the fish bouillon, and the butter molds were not as precise as they could have been, but all in all it was delicious.
Alexander ate sparingly, never taking his eyes away from her, and it became more and more difficult to concentrate on the food. Finally she set her fork down, very carefully, instead of throwing it at him, and met his inimical gaze. “Are you watching to make sure I have acceptable table manners in the unlikely case that I agree to marry you? I assure you, I had a governess until I was sixteen and I spent the next two years at a finishing school in Switzerland. I’m really quite civilized.”
“Are you, indeed?” he said gravely. “In fact, I’m trying to make sense of you. And yes, you will marry me,” he added in a voice that brooked no opposition.
She decided to ignore that part. “Make sense of me?” she echoed. “I’m perfectly average.”
“That, you most decidedly are not. For one thing, you’re quite beautiful and we both know it. There’s no need to be coy and bashful about it.”
She raised one eyebrow. “Have you ever seen me coy or bashful?”
“Point taken. But you’re also very young, younger than I thought. Perhaps it’s your self-important way of carrying yourself, but you seem more like a woman in her late twenties.”
“Ah, just what a woman wants to hear—that she looks old,” Sophie said blithely. “And if anyone is self-important, it’s you.”
He laughed, clearly pleased to have goaded her. “So what makes a very young woman lie her way into a household and continue to come up with the most amazing untruths, no matter how harmful they were? And for that matter, where in the world did you learn to cook? Tonight’s meal was good, but nothing compared to the miracles you’ve created in my kitchen. Most young women don’t have such practical skills. If the men in London had known there was cooking behind that gorgeous face, you wouldn’t have ended the season without a husband.”
The wineglass was close enough that she could have thrown it at him. It was so tempting. “I had a number of very flattering offers,” she said, unable to hide her irritation. “I turned them down.”
“You were right to hold out for marriage.” His voice was dulcet.
She reached for the wineglass, considering it. “Offers of marriage,” she corrected in a tone as sweet as his. “As for my skills, I learned the basics in the kitchens of this very house, and then my finishing school in Switzerland honed my skills. It was felt that anyone who ran a great household—and that’s what we were being groomed to do—should be able to accomplish what she hired other people to do.”
“You went to a school for housekeepers? I didn’t know they even had such things.”
She toyed with the crystal stem, thoughtful. “Finishing school,” she corrected him calmly, not reacting. “And might I be allowed a question?” It was that or fling her wine at him, she thought.
He leaned back, that smile lurking at the corner of his mouth, and she was suddenly drawn to it, remembering the sweet softness of his lips, and then the fierce tug against her breasts, and she felt such an odd, aching warmth fill her that she took the wineglass and drained it. So much for using it as a weapon—she’d simply have to throw the crystal itself instead of the missing wine.
“Of course,” he said. “What is it you’d like to know? Our arrangement should be relatively straightforward. We won’t be living in London—I despise the place. I’m not sure how many nights I’ll require you in my bed—it will depend if I have another arrangement in place. I’ll settle a generous allowance on you as my viscountess, but not generous enough to enable you to leave at any point. And I’ll have people watching, not just Dickens.”
If any of this mattered she’d be furious, but she’d be long gone before he could institute such draconian measures. “No, my lord,” she said. “I was curious about another matter entirely.”
“Call me Alexander,” he said amiably. “Given our previous intimacy I think it’s appropriate.”
