Benny bowed to her quickly and fled the room.
“You need to clear up the boy’s misconception.”
“What misconception would that be?” He looked up at her, his blue eyes flashing.
“The lad is under the impression we’ll share a bedchamber.”
Lord Phineas stood up slowly. He crossed the room to stand in front of her and bent down by her ear, where he said softly, “My darling, we are going to share a bedchamber.”
Three
If Miss Thorne drew her bottom lip between her teeth even once more, Finn would feel led to kiss it. She’d been nibbling on that lip for more than an hour, ever since she’d opened the pages of Northanger Abbey. She’d nearly knocked him over in her quest to retrieve it from his library when she saw its shiny, red spine faced out on his overpacked shelves. Mrs. Ross liked to read romantic novels. That was the only reason it was there. He certainly wasn’t going to read it. But Claire looked enraptured. About as enraptured as he was with her.
She was a prickly little thing, all backbone and iron. But spending the day with her sharp tongue and that curl that kept falling from the upsweep of her hair was nearly maddening. She had a retort for every comment he made, and it had become something of a sport to antagonize her.
“He dies at the end,” Finn said without looking up at her.
Her quickly indrawn breath let him know she’d heard him. “He does not,” she cried, her breath catching in her throat. A grin tugged at the corners of his lips. He couldn’t help it. She was too much fun to tease. She picked up one of the many books she’d piled beside her and flung it toward his head. Finn ducked and let it hit the wall behind him.
“That wasn’t very nice,” he replied, making a show of straightening his hair after she’d ruffled it.
“I am not a nice person,” she said, ducking her head back into the pages of her book.
“Would you like to play chess?” He didn’t know why he asked that. It was a foolish question. But he was her host, after all, and he was bored. Not to mention that if he had to look at her silk-clad toes peeping from beneath the hem of her dress for one more moment, he would go completely mad.
She’d lifted her feet to rest on the settee and laid her open book against her bent knees. Her slippers lay beside her where she’d kicked them off her dainty little feet. It was much too comfortable of a pose. His mistress had never even gotten this comfortable in his presence, and he’d very nearly lived with Katherine, for God’s sake.
Miss Thorne made a grunting noise in her throat.
“Was that a yes or a no?” he asked.
“What do you think?” she muttered, not looking up from her book.
“Cards? I could teach you to play vingt-et-un,” he suggested. He tried not to sound hopeful.
She grunted in response.
“You’re such a scintillating conversationalist.”
She snorted. “Don’t even pretend you want to talk to me.”
“Heaven forbid I should want to interact with you.”
“No doubt you’d love to interact with me. You haven’t taken your eyes off me the whole night.” She grinned down at her book. She turned the page.
He wasn’t aware she’d noticed. But she was rather easy on the eyes. And the more comfortable she got, the more he liked looking at her. He could imagine her sitting there in her dressing gown. Or better yet—he could imagine her without her dressing gown. He’d done so more than once that night. He shifted in his chair.
She looked up and arched a brow at him. “Problem?” she asked.
He was getting hard and she chose that moment to look up? Of course, she did. Damn contrary female.
“Aside from the fact that you’re a terrible conversationalist, no.”
She went back to her book.
“How long do you plan to keep me here?” she finally asked, breaking the silence that hung about the room like a heavy blanket.
“Didn’t we already discuss this?”