“Lord Blakely,” Jenny asked, “do you have any idea what an apology is?”
He raised one haughty eyebrow at her. “I have some small acquaintance with the concept,” he said in his most freezing tone. And then, he rather ruined the proud expression by adding, “I asked White.”
Jenny’s head spun. “Who?”
“My man of business.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest, guarding against her laugh. “I’m not expecting anything in response.”
But his gaze arrested on her lips and gave the lie to his statement. “Besides, I’m supposed to meet Ned at eight sharp, and so I can’t stay. I just wanted to tell you.” He looked away. “And now I have.”
That look, Jenny thought, would be her undoing. “Do you have five minutes?” she heard herself ask. “I’ve just put on the teakettle.” Jenny nearly bit her tongue. Tea was normal. Mundane. Mortal. One didn’t ask the Marquess of Blakely in for a cup of tea.
He looked at her with guarded wariness. And then, wonder of wonders, he nodded.
A minute later, Lord Blakely was seated at the table in her back room with a clay mug in front of him. He’d looked speculatively around her stripped-down front room, her rickety wood tables freed from their heavy black shrouds. But he hadn’t asked any questions. And when she’d led him down the short hall into her living space in the back room, he hadn’t so much as wrinkled his nose at the close quarters. He’d sat in a squeaking chair at the table where Jenny ate her meals. He’d waited quietly while she readied the leaves. After she poured, he picked up the cup and turned it around in his hands. Jenny imagined him cataloging every imperfection in its surface, every chip at its edge.
“I don’t have any sugar to offer you,” she eventually essayed.
“Sugar.” Lord Blakely’s nostrils flared. “I do not take sugar,” he said in a voice of disdain.
It was the same tone of loathing Jenny imagined a bloodthirsty pirate would have employed to say, “I do not take prisoners.”
Lord Blakely did not, in fact, take prisoners. What he took instead was a cautious sip of tea.
“White,” he said rather stiffly, “says that an apology given to a woman needs to be accompanied by at a minimum, flowers. He also told me you would ask what I was sorry for. And that I would not have a good answer to the question.” He glanced up at her, swiftly, and then returned to contemplation of his cup. “White is very competent. It is disconcerting to discover that he is not correct in every particular.”
“So you talked to White?”
He took another sip of tea. “Yes. I talked to White. I had a very long conversation with White.” He flashed another glance at her.
“And did you enjoy it?”
“I—well.” He looked down into his mug and swirled the liquid around. “I think so. Probably. Yes.” Miracles doubled, and another smile played across his lips.
“Three,” said Jenny in pleasure.
“Three?” He set the cup down. Tea sloshed over the edge and seeped into the wood of the table. “Three what?”
“Three points.”
He shook his head in befuddlement. “Points? What points?”
“I get a point every time you smile,” she explained. “I’ve decided to award myself five if I can ever make you laugh.”
He drew himself up in that manner he employed just before he said something cruel. He looked offended. But he bit his lip. He paused, almost as if counting. What finally came out of his mouth was: “How do I get points?”
Jenny tried to mask her shock. He wasn’t trying to cut her down with arrogant drivel. Maybe the tea had turned his mind. She was going to have to make a note of the leaves: bohea, good for taming arrogant lords. But his temporary lapse was no reason to give up her advantage. She pursed her lips and put her head to one side. “You don’t.”
“Why not?”
“You like numbers. I need points. Lots of points. It’s protection, you see.”
He glowered at her. “If you collect points, I have to get something. It’s inequitable otherwise.”
She shrugged. “Well, I don’t like numbers. So you can’t have points.”
His fingers drummed against the table. The liquid in his cup sloshed. “That makes an odd sort of sense, in a world devoid of all logic. White warned me about that, too.” He sighed. “What do you like?”
“And I thought you didn’t care.” The bitter words spilled from her before she could call them back.
“Ah.” Lord Blakely’s voice was all steel blade again, like a cold knife against Jenny’s throat. “Madame Esmerelda—Meg—whatever your name is.” He swallowed and placed his hands flat on the table.
“I have a confession to make,” he said, in that voice forged from hard, cold metal. “It will come as no surprise. But it seems that every time I do care, I find myself saying something harsh in response. As if I could sever any emotion that attaches me to anyone else.”
That flat, unemotional tone took her aback. She’d heard it from him so many times before. She was learning not to trust his tone. His eyes glimmered, and he stared at the wall behind her. He was not a dispassionate man, Jenny was beginning to realize. He was just very, very uncomfortable letting his emotions show.
“I care,” he said flatly. “And I am trying to stop responding the way I do. I told you I was sorry. I meant it.”
Jenny’s heart trembled. It did more than tremble. It flipped over, exposing its tender underbelly. She had no idea how to take this side of Lord Blakely. He apologized in the same arrogant tone of voice he’d used to cut her to shreds the other night. And yet she suspected the tone he used was as ingrained in him as his intellect.
“Now,” he continued in a businesslike tone. “About those points of yours. What do you like?”
If she were a lady, Jenny would own that violets were her favorite flower. If she were a courtesan, she would confess a desire for emeralds. But she was Jenny Keeble, and she didn’t want gifts from this man.
Her brow furrowed in mock concentration. “Would you know,” she said softly. “I find that I am partial to…”
He leaned forward, intent on her answer.
“Elephants,” Jenny finished.
Lord Blakely raised his chin. “You’re trying to make me laugh,” he accused. “It shan’t work. Citation to a mere mammal is not worth five points.”
He was every bit as arrogant as he had been before. But there was something warmer about the cast of his features. Something that hadn’t been there before tonight. And so Jenny laughed. She couldn’t help herself, and she wouldn’t have, even if she wanted to. When she did, he smiled along with her, his face lighting up. Their eyes met. Locked.
He shoved his mug of tea across the table and stood up.
“Damnation,” he said.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, before she remembered he was supposed to meet Ned, and he would undoubtedly have to take his leave.
“I’m going to have to apologize to you again.”
Jenny brushed her skirts into place and looked away. “I understand. You have to go—”
He stepped toward her. “That,” he said brusquely, “is not what I have to do.” He was so close she could smell his soap and the earthy, masculine scent of bay rum.
“You see,” he whispered, “when you laugh, it’s as if this light spreads all around you. I can’t figure out how to respond. I’m not sure if I should scurry from it, like a cockroach, or fly closer, like a moth. I’ve tried scurrying. It didn’t work. So I have a control in the experiment. Shall I modify a variable?”
It took Jenny a second to realize he was talking about kissing again. By that time, he had raised his hand to her cheek. Two warm fingers slid against her jawbone.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, “and I’ll stop. Tell me to leave, and I’ll leave. But I would prefer you didn’t tell me to leave.”
“Kiss me.” The words were from her mouth before she had a chance to think them over.
His finger
rubbed her lips, as if to capture her acquiescence. His hand stroked down the side of her face. Then his lips came down on hers.
His kiss drove all thought of elephants and points, arrogance and loneliness, from Jenny’s mind. The world receded until there was nobody present but the two of them. Until only the liquid sounds of the mating of their mouths filled her ears. His taste—tea mixed with sweet mint—enveloped her. His hands whispered down the simple muslin of her dress.
She brought her palm up against his chest, ran it down fine linen. He exhaled and his chest pressed against her fingers. And then he, too, explored her, his hands tracing her shoulder blades, down each vertebra to the small of her back. His fingers traveled up again, gilding her spine with their heat. Then her shoulders. The nape of her neck. And his mouth, always his mouth, hot on hers. She gasped, and he drank in the sound of her desire.
He pulled away from her, and she blinked dizzily. But he only moved to sit. Wood creaked as he distributed his weight. And then he pulled her atop him to straddle his thighs. Her skirt rucked up to her knees, and she let herself sink against his hard muscles. His body’s arousal pressed, hot and rigid, between her thighs. Her own excitement pooled in response.
He kissed her again, tongue and lips hot against hers.