She made a face, clearly not thinking much of the comparison. “So, plain and ordinary, in other words.”
“I happen to adore shortbread, I’ll have you know, and so do a lot of other people.”
“Shortbread, indeed.” She made a scoffing sound. “What’s next? A mention of my sweet disposition?”
Despite what his body was enduring, he couldn’t help a grin. “Hardly, since I’ve yet to see it. With me, you’re usually prickly as a chestnut, Clara.”
She sniffed, her round chin jerking a little. “I’ve had some provocation on that score.”
He had no intention of being sidetracked now. “I’m going to tell you exactly what I think of your looks, all right?” He took a profound, shaky breath, knowing what he was about to say was deuced important, and he had to keep his arousal in check or he’d never be able to say it without hauling her onto his lap and kissing her senseless. “I’m going to start with your eyes, because if memory serves, I told you once that you’ve got expressive eyes, and it’s quite true. Unless you’re embarrassed, your face rarely gives you away, so if I want to gauge what you are really thinking, I look in your eyes.”
She ducked her chin, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of him being able to discern what she was thinking, but he wasn’t about to let her get by with that. Touching her right now, however, would be akin to lighting a match in a room full of powder kegs, so he bent down, tilting his head so that she had nowhere else to look but at him. “Eyes like yours are dangerous, Clara. They can slay a man with a look like an arrow through the heart. I should know,” he added, smiling a little, “because I’ve had to dig several arrows out of my chest since we met.”
“Don’t,” she ordered in a fierce whisper, lifting her face to scowl at him. “Don’t tease.”
He wasn’t teasing, not a bit, but he decided not to hammer the point. Safer for him if she didn’t appreciate the power she had to wound him. “You’ve got lovely skin,” he said instead, and because it was suddenly impossible not to touch her, he lifted his hand and allowed himself the torture of sliding his fingertips slowly across her cheek. It was like touching warm silk. “And some pretty freckles, too, I’ve noticed.”
“F... freckles aren’t p... pretty. That’s absurd.”
“Haven’t we already established that your opinion on this topic isn’t to be trusted? Now, where were we? Ah, yes,” he added, pressing the tip of his index finger to the patch of skin between her brows, smoothing out the frown that had appeared at his mention of freckles. “I think we were coming to your nose.”
“What about my nose?” she cried, telling him he was touching on a vulnerable point, and he decided a frank acknowledgement was his best bet.
“Well, it’s tiny, Clara.” He slid his fingertip slowly down the bridge. “It’s the tiniest button nose I’ve ever seen.”
She sighed, her breath a soft huff of acknowledgement against his palm. “It’s a ridiculous nose, I know,” she whispered. “I used to pinch it all the time when I was a girl, hoping it would turn Grecian, but it never did.”
“Good thing, too, because it’s adorable just as it is.” He pulled his hand back a fraction to plant a kiss on the turned-up tip.
She gave a startled gasp at the contact and unfolded her arms, pressing her palms against his chest as if to push him away, impelling him again into speech. “And lastly,” he said, “there’s your mouth.”
Her palms stilled against his chest.
“It’s my favorite part of your face.” He opened his palm to cup her cheek and touched his thumb to her lips, giving in to the inevitable. “It’s because of your smile. When I was giving the Devastated Debutante examples of how she might draw men’s attention, and I put in the part about smiling, I was thinking of you.”
“Me?” The word was a squeak of surprise.
“Yes, you.” He moved his thumb, sliding it back and forth across her mouth. “Surely you know why?”
“Not really,” she confessed in a strangled whisper.
As his thumb grazed her lips, he could feel her breathing quicken, and he knew he ought to stop, for what he was doing was well beyond the pale and no doubt beyond her experience as well. In fact, this might even be the first time in her life she’d been intimately touched by a man.
If he possessed any hope, however vague, that reminders of her virginal innocence would give him the will to call a halt, he discovered at once that the very opposite was true. Her innocence seemed to inflame the wickedest desires within him and make him want her even more. He wasn’t certain how much longer he could keep lust at bay. And yet, he could not pull back.
“You might think I put in that bit to help you overcome your shyness and further your goal of finding a husband,” he went on, “but that wasn’t my reason at all.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No. My reason was purely selfish. You see, you have this stunning, absolutely ripping smile, and I’d really like the pleasure of seeing it more often. Most of the time, you’re so damnably serious. But when you smile...” He paused, his thumb stilling against her parted lips. “Ah, Clara, when you smile, you light up the room. Surely you know that?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head a little, as if she wanted to deny it or she didn’t believe him. “This is not a real courtship,” she said, her lips brushing against his thumb as she spoke, her hands curling into fists against his gray morning coat. “There is no need for you to pay me compliments.”
There was every need, since it was clear she’d received precious few of them in the past, but he didn’t debate the point. “Which doesn’t make what I’ve said any less true.”
“I’m not sure I can trust you to tell the truth about anything,” she mumbled against his thumb.
“What if I stop using words altogether, then, hmm?” He slid his thumb under her chin and pushed gently against her jaw, lifting her face. “Words aren’t necessary anyway.”
