“You’re trying to shoo me away?”
“You’re distracting me.”
Oh, was he? Fascinating. “You say I must act in every way as if we are married?”
“Mm hm.” She put a flourish under one item and barreled onto the next.
“At all times?”
“Yes.” A sharp poke of the quill point into the paper splashed ink everywhere, and she cursed, dipped the quill into the inkwell, and started a new line.
“I think you’re right.” He leaned low and smelled her hair. The lace cap tickled his nose.
So, he found the dark pin securing it neatly against her curls and gently pulled it free. He put it in his pocket where it nestled against the ribbon he’d purloined from their previous encounter. The cap he let fall to the floor. Her hair uncoiled down her back, a few tendrils falling over her shoulders to swing about her face. She huffed and pushed them back behind her ears.
All concentration.
“I see you have a looking glass, there.” She glanced at the one by the door to the hallway. “Do you think we should procure one for the sitting room? No, perhaps not. But we’ll steal some of the embroidered pillows from the ground floor parlor. No one will notice them missing.”
As she, apparently, did not notice the finger he was trailing over the curve of her ear. He should absolutely not be doing this. But he seemed unable to stop himself.
Bent low over the paper, her nose almost touching as her quill,hisquill, hovered in air beside her ear, she froze. “Wh-what are you doing?”
He drew his finger down the line of her jaw, and when he found the pointed tip of her chin, he nudged it upward.
The quill slipped from her fingertips, and her eyes shuddered closed. He brushed his thumb along her cheek as he continued nudging that fairy chin toward her shoulder, toward him.
“What are you doing?” Her closed lids still and fragile, her lashes, lush and golden.
“Acting as a husband would.”
“Oh. This is… We can’t… I mean… we are alone and should not—”
“Be ever ready. Is that not what you suggested?”
“Yes, but… why?”
“Because I want to. And I think you do, too.”
Her eyes popped open with the tiniest, cutest growl. “Dash it all. We cannot.”
Perhaps she had the right of it. But… “If we could, do you know what I would do right now? To you, feisty Isabella?”
“Kiss me?”
Bold beauty. “No. Tease you. Wait for you to kiss me.”
Her hands, limp across the oak and paper and ink, became fists. “Terribly frustrating.”
“I’d be a patient husband.”
“An annoying one.”
“The more quickly I annoy, the more quickly I get my kiss.”
A sigh carried the words, barely audible. “What would it be like? L-like in the closet? The other day?”
“More than that. Better. When you could no longer stand my teasing, you would whip around and take my lips as yours. Your entire body would thrum with impatience, and mine would riot with victory.”
