“Notsoon enough.” He ran his hand through his wet hair, digging trenches into it just the perfect size for a curious woman’s hand.
“The roof is fixed. Now things will move much more quickly.”
Rain pattered like bullets against the windows.None broken in here!
He stood and circled the room, his long steps prowling, and his arm tensed with muscle as it extended to touch this, linger over that. He seemed tight and withdrawn, cheeks hollow and eyes dark.
“Have you ever lived here? Before you lived with your grandfather? Or visited or—”
“Yes.”
“Does it pain you to see it so deteriorated?”
“No.” He’d made a full circle of the room and sat back down, down his tea in three big gulps.
She didn’t believe him. Something about this house bothered him. Andthatbothered her. She’d not asked for this. She’d wanted a nice, convenient, oblivious husband with a house he didn’t have any feelings for at all. Mrs. Dove-Lyon had failed.
Perhaps Caroline could get her funds back. If only she could trade Felix in for a different sort of husband, the uncaring sort. Unfortunately, men were not horses. They should be. What British society truly needed was a Tattersalls for husbands. That idea cheered her. A bit.
She lobbed a small chuck of cheese at him, and it bounced off his chest.
Scowling, he plucked the cheese from his lap and popped it into his mouth, chewed, swallowed. “A direct attack, Caro? You want me gone that badly?”
“I want you to be less broody.” He was making her miserable with all his practicality. She’d been so optimistic. Now she was less so. Irritating man.
“No chance. Your turn.”
“What?” Her turn?
A bit of cheese flew through the air.Oh!Memory flickered to life. She caught the cheese with her mouth, grinned as she chewed. After she’d swallowed, she said, “Do you remember doing this as children?”
He nodded. “Try me again. I wasn’t ready last time.” He steadied himself in his chair, opened his mouth, his eyes gleaming with determination.
She hid a laugh and lobbed a bit of cheese. It hit him in the nose.
“Damn,” he muttered. “Again.” He caught the next one. “Ready yourself, Lady Foxton.”
She sat up straighter, opened her mouth, somehow not feeling as silly as she should. “Ready.”
He popped the cheese up in the air, and it descended in a curve toward her. She leaned forward and snapped it up easily.
He whistled, sinking lower into his chair. “I must concede to the master of cheese catching.” He paused. “Perhaps it’s that I’m the master of cheese lobbing. I make it easier to catch, whereas you only hit my nose.”
“Try once more.” She ignored that jibe and pinched a corner of cheese off the block. “You’ll do better this time.”
“Very well,” Felix grumbled, but he opened his mouth.
And Caroline could not remember what she was supposed to be doing. His lips were red, his tongue, too, and the gentle, mischievous face of the boy she’d once known had somehowappeared like a ghost on top of the chiseled visage of the grown man.
“Come on, then, Caro,” he said, those lips shaping words she wanted to… taste? “Aim and fire.”
“Oh! Oh yes.” It had become terribly hot. She tossed the cheese up, and he caught it handily. As he chewed, she couldn’t quite look away from the muscles working in his jaw.
Perhaps men and women should not eat together.It was too… stimulating.
Yet he appeared happier than he had mere moments ago, as if play had helped him shrug off whatever shadow had taken hold of him.
Not that she had any interest in making him comfortable here. In fact, her time was better spent inventing a plan to run him off. She could complete renovations with him here. It was not yet time to invite women in need of escape within these walls. But what sort of mischief would her body manage before those renovations were complete?
