Of truth, too.
To hell with truth. He laid his hands on her legs, his fingers inches from that place he most wanted to play. “I think you should stop saying that, Isabella. Wecould. If we wished to, wecould.”
“Yes. No.” She rubbed her palm over his shoulder and down his arm, stopping only on top of his hand. “I mean the list. We must attend to the list.”
She weaved her fingers with his and squeezed, then ducked under his arm, and slipped away, her skirts falling around her ankles once more. Her arm darted out, grasping at the paper she’d wrinkled under her arse and bolting for the door. Red cheeked and bright eyed, she waved it above her head. “Send Mr. Poppins and a footman to help me.” Her voice husky, lust-roughened.
He nodded, and she slipped out the door, and when it clicked closed behind her, he was surprised to find himself smiling.
Chapter Twelve
The room would have to do because the Barlows had arrived. From her place at the wide windows of Rowan’s sitting room, Isabella watched them leave their coach and look up at the Hestia with awe in the slack lines of their jaws, and she saw them step inside the hotel as Mr. Trent stepped into the newly furnished sitting room from his study.
And sneezed. One, two, three, four times. After the tiny earthquakes, his hair hung wild around his face. Made him look boyish, a bit peevish, and perhaps even a tiny bit adorable. “Why are the curtains open? Every single damn one!”
Cursing should have stomped adorable beneath a heavy boot.
No such luck.
“Why wouldn’t they be?” she asked, flicking at the velvet of one heavy panel.
“Because I do not like it.” He smoothed his hair back into place. The scar around his eye glowed pale in the sunlight.
“I’m sure the preference makes you quite mysterious, and it’s clear you prefer it that way, but the Barlows will not like such performances.”
“It’s not a performance.” He sneezed again.
“Another cold?” She reached up and straightened his cravat. She should have hesitated. But she didn’t. She should pause to consider that. But she wouldn’t.
“I told you before it’s not a cold.”
She hummed and fussed about his shoulders and with the buttons of his waistcoat, tidying every bit of him she could reach, rather… delighting in the tidying, delighting that he let her. He would have let her do so much more, earlier in his study. The very thought made her mouth dry, her core ache. She would have let him.
Impossible to believe when she still knew so little about him. Should terrify her, peering into the dark, bottomless abyss that was Rowan Trent. And it did. The problem was that the parts she could see clearly fascinated her, called to her, and more disastrously, somehow put her at ease.
“There.” She gently patted his cravat and peeked up at him for a mad moment. He smiled. Barely. But the quarter-there, mostly-not nature of the grin unarmed her more than a brilliant sunny smile would have. She almost fainted, almost made an Isabella puddle right there on the rug she’d had carted up and laid out only a few hours ago.
She stepped away from him, quite out of reach so she did not melt right into disastrous decision making.
“I’m allergic to light.”
She laughed. “Impossible.”
“Has made me sneeze all my life. Not all light. Just now, it was dark in my study, and then I stepped in here where the sun seems to have taken up residence.” He sniffed, rubbed his nose with the back of his gloved hand. “Makes me sneeze. Makes it damn difficult to appear serious and intimidating.”
“A sneeze is not going to undo all the hard work of your craggy countenance.” She fluttered away to fuss with the pillows tossed onto the low sofa and chairs arranged by the fireplace. “You are looking quite respectable. And, despite your sneezes, terribly intimidating. Does that make you feel better?”
“Perhaps.”
She spun in a circle, evaluating every change she’d made in the room. “It is not perfect. It does not align with fashionable tastes ininterior decoration, but it looks nice enough, I think. At the very least, it gives the appearance of being lived in, which is impressive considering we threw it together this afternoon.” They’d stolen objects from across the hotel. The pillows with floral designs embroidered on them, the sofa, chairs, and pillar tables, a few oil paintings from one of the guest rooms, a rug from the coffee room. The space between Mr. Trent’s study and his bedchamber no longer echoed, and with dusty sunlight spilling through the windows, it felt much more like a home.
“The room is fine, Isabella. And you as well. You’ve changed out of the maid’s gown.”
She grinned. “I hid the clothes I wore here in the washroom. They’re a bit wrinkled now. And not my best. Had I known the Barlows were arriving, I’d have worn something better. I hate not knowing, not being prepared.” She paced, shaking her hands, trying to flick the irritation away.
Until he stepped in front of her and gathered up her hands, held them steady in the hollow nest of his own. “I’m going to ignore the troubling fact that you have a hiding spot I know nothing about in my hotel.”
“Thank you. It’s perfect, and I do not wish to lose…” When he rubbed his thumb across her knuckles, she quite lost her train of thought. “It.”
