“You drank the port I gave you.”
“You poured us both glasses from the same bottle and you drank first.”
“All right,” she said with resignation, stripped a piece of meat from the chicken, and ate half of it. She held out the other half to him.
“Thank you, but I’ve eaten.”
“It’s awfully good,” she said, holding the chicken in front of his face. “The very best I’ve ever eaten. Mmmmm.”
He gave a bit of a smile and snapped at the chicken, but she jerked it away from him, laughing.
He lunged at her, then caught her around the waist, pushed her to the ground, and caught the chicken and her fingers in his mouth.
At first she was laughing, but then, abruptly, she became aware of his body on hers and her fingers inside the warmth of his mouth. She stopped laughing and looked at him. She did not take her fingers from inside his mouth.
“ ’Ring,” she whispered.
For a moment she thought he was feeling the same as she was, but the moment passed and he caught her wrist and pulled her hand from his mouth. “Chicken, yes, but human fingers, no.”
It seemed that he’d refused her at every opportunity she had given him. It was difficult not to throw the entire bag of chicken at him and go back to her own tent. Instead, she reminded herself that she had to be nice to him for Laurel’s sake. If she was to meet one of the kidnappers after her performance the following day, she had to have Captain Montgomery’s trust.
She forced herself to smile at him. “If you are through trying to smash me with your oversized body, I’d like to get up.”
“Sure,” he said cheerfully, rolling away from her. “I guess the chicken is safe, but I want you to take a bite of each piece before I do.”
“Really, Captain, you’d think I was a master poisoner.”
“A Lucrezia Borgia?”
“Who’s that?”
He looked at her over a chunk of chicken. “How many languages do you speak?”
“Including the American ones?” She was pleased to see his eyes widen at that.
“Including the language that uses such terms as sleep-insider and mess captain. What is a mess captain, by the way?”
He was really, truly, the most observant man she’d ever encountered. She doubted if her pulse rate was unknown to him. “Mess captain is a trapping term and means the leader, or an experienced trapper. I told you I’ve had some contact with mountain men.”
“Ah, yes, in Lanconia. Have you ever even been to Lanconia?”
“How is your chicken? Would you like a tomato?”
He accepted the tomato and took a bite of it. “It seems odd to me that you know so much about music and languages yet know next to nothing about history. And as far as I can tell, you know as little about arithmetic as anyone on earth.”
“I came all the way up this hill to bring you food, and here you sit, insulting me. I don’t know why I bother being friendly to you.”
“I don’t either. I’m sure you had a reason for coming up here, but it wasn’t merely to bring me chicken. What was waiting for you in the tent when we returned?”
She looked away, unable to meet his eyes.
“Someday, Miss Worth, I hope that you will realize that you can trust me.”
“My father told me that people have to earn trust.”
“And we know that whatever Daddy says is the law.”
“Just what is that supposed to mean?”