She quickly swallowed her grape. “Good afternoon.” Her voice, at least, was her own, firm and even. Reassuringly steady. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Her last sentence carried commendable hauteur—polite but coolly distant. A trifle censorious. Encouraged, she risked lifting her eyes to his again, only to find the mesmerizing green screened by long dark lashes. She should have been relieved, only she could feel his gaze still on her, still watchful, assessing, in a distinctly predatory way.
He was indeed tall, and large, but his broad shoulders and chest were entirely in proportion with the long, lean lines of his legs. Her brain registered his fashionable, quietly elegant attire—expensive and select—and the aura of leashed power that hung about him even as her gaze, without conscious direction, rapidly scanned his face.
Clean, well-defined angles and planes, his features stamped him as one of her kind, her class, but there was a hardness there she didn’t miss or mistake, a strength in his well-shaped nose and squared chin, and a certain cynicism in the set of his mobile lips.
As her gaze settled on those lips, they lightly curved.
“I fear I have the advantage of you, Miss Malleson.” His lids rose; startled, she met his gaze again. “I’m Deverell.”
The amusement she glimpsed in his distracting eyes was more than enough to prick her temper. She frowned lightly, shifting her gaze from him. “Deverell…” She tapped one fingernail on her book, then quickly looked back at him as he came forward. “You must be Audrey’s nephew.”
He drew near and offered his hand. She glanced at it, sorely tempted to remain seated, but having him towering over her wasn’t worth the minor victory. Surrendering her hand, she rose.
Clasping her fingers firmly, he assisted her to her feet, then bowed, the action smooth and graceful. “Indeed. I’m Paignton.”
She bobbed the obligatory curtsy; far too conscious of his largeness, the strangely overwhelming—strangely impressive—wall of masculinity a mere foot away, she refused to again meet his eyes. “Ah, yes—I heard that you had come into the title.”
Why was he there disrupting her peace? Intending to dismiss him, she glanced pointedly at the shelves. “Were you after a book?”
“No.”
He hadn’t let go of her hand. Forced to it, steeling herself, she lifted her gaze and met his eyes. Now much closer, more alluring, even more mesmerizing.
She was staring again.
Into the fascinating emerald depths.
At the edge of her vision, the curve of his lips deepened.
“I came for you.”
It took a moment or three for his words to reach her brain. Even when they did, they made no sense—not when matched with the tenor of his voice. Deep, reverberating, it seemed to suggest…a meaning far more primitive than could possibly be the case.
With an effort, Phoebe harried her brain into action. “Is my aunt asking after me?”
His brows, dark, slightly winged, rose. “Not that I know of.”
She blinked, and glanced through the French doors at the lawns beyond. “I take it it’s time for tea?” She eased her fingers from his firm grip.
Allowing her digits to slide from his clasp, he glanced over her head at the clock on the mantelpiece beyond the chaise. “Soon, I daresay.”
Phoebe suppressed a frown. If he hadn’t come searching for her because of her aunt, or to summon her for afternoon tea…
Sudden suspicion bloomed. Narrowing her eyes, she fixed them on his. “Why did you come looking for me?”
His light smile was charming; behind it, she sensed, he thought quickly.
“Audrey suggested I do so.”
She frowned, hard, at him. “Audrey?” She hoped she conveyed her disbelief that he was so malleable that his aunt could direct him.
His lips quirked. “Indeed.”
“Why?”
“I gather she believed I would benefit from making your acquaintance.”