Page 34 of Guilty Pleasures

She ignored that. “It belongs to me, and you have no right to destroy anything of mine.”

“Miss Wade, I do not ever want to see this garment again unless you are working. Please,” he added as he tossed the two pieces of her now dismantled apron toward a corner of the room.

She was not fooled into thinking that word made it a request, but she did not argue. She hoped they could just get on with the business at hand, but he did not seem inclined to do so. Instead, he reached out and jerked off her spectacles.

Daphne gave a cry of outraged protest, but of course, he ignored it. He folded the glasses and put them in the pocket of his jacket, then took another look at her face. “Much better.”

“Give them back.”

“Miss Wade,” he interrupted, “you have beautiful eyes. To distort them behind a pair of thick glass lenses is a shame at any time. When you are with a gentleman, it is unpardonable.”

How many times had she wished he would notice something, anything, about her? She was fully aware that any compliments he gave her now were empty ones. He wanted her time, and if compliments would get him more of it, he would tell her she was as alluring and captivating as Cleopatra had ever been. Daphne held out her hand. “Give me back my spectacles.”

“Do not the rules of please and thank you apply to you as well as to me? I just paid you a compliment, Miss Wade.”

“Thank you. I want my spectacles back, if you please.”

“You are not going to be wearing them to Covington’s ball. I promise I shall give them back to you when we are finished here.” He lifted his hands to her neck.

Daphne gasped as his fingertips brushed against her skin, too startled to continue arguing with him. “Now what are you doing?” She reached up to pull his hands away, but her efforts were futile.

“That bun is almost as hideous as the apron,” he answered as he began removing pins from her hair, the pads of his thumbs brushing against the sides of her neck. “Since we are alone and there is no one here to stop me, I am ridding you of it. I have wanted to do this for days.”

As her hair came down, Daphne felt her sense of control unraveling. She could have pulled away, but that would imply that she was affected by what he was doing, and she forced herself to remain still. “And you always get what you want, of course.”

“Not always. If I did, you would be staying. Hold these.”

Daphne looked down and took the pins from him. She could not believe she was letting him do this, but the feel of his hands in her hair was so delicious, she could not bring herself to pull away. No man had ever touched her so intimately before. “How do you know how to dress a woman’s hair?” she asked, trying to distract herself from those dangerous feelings.

“I don’t.” He raked his hands upward through her hair, twisting her tresses into a pile atop her head. Holding her hair in place with one hand, he took a pin from her with the other and pushed it into place. “I am making this up as I go along.”

“But if it isn’t pinned right, it could come tumbling back down.”

He looked at her between his upraised arms and gave her a wicked grin. “God, I hope so.”

Her heart slammed against her ribs, and she spoke again. “I cannot imagine why you are concerning yourself with something as trivial as my hair.”

“To a man, a woman’s hair is never trivial. Imagining a woman with her hair down, imagining how it looks loose around her shoulders, how it feels in his hands or spread across his pillows, can become a man’s obsession.” He paused to look at her, curling a loose tendril of hair at her ear around his finger, his knuckles brushing her cheek. “I know it has been mine on occasion.”

Waves of heat flooded through her body at his words and his touch as the image of her hair spread across his pillows flashed across her mind, followed immediately by horror at the very thought of such a thing. She reminded herself of his contempt and her pain, throwing the chilling water of reality on the hot, inexplicable hunger flaring inside her, a hunger she could see reflected in the intensity of his gaze.

Daphne forced herself not to look away. “The outside of a woman is your first priority, then?” she asked as if they were discussing the weather. “Are all men concerned only with the package rather than the goods within?”

He took another pin from her hand and continued his task. “In thinking about women, men are not very deep.”

She gave what she hoped was a disdainful sniff. “You do not seem to have a very high opinion of the character of your own sex.”

“Men have no character when it comes to women. Love turns us into complete idiots or dishonorable villains. Usually both.”

“Why do you always speak of love in such a derogatory manner?”

“Do I?” He paused again, and his lips compressed briefly into a thin line. “That is an irony, for the truth is that I am in utter awe of love. It scares the bloody hell out of me. That is why I have never allowed myself to fall into that state.”

This was a man who walked the earth as if he owned it—all of it. She could not imagine him afraid of anything. “Why does love frighten you?”

“Forgive me for my choice of language,” he said, his gaze skating away from hers. “It is not proper for a man to curse in front of a woman,” he went on as he resumed his task, “and I apologize. Discussions of this sort bring out the worst in me.”

“You did not answer my question. Why should love be a frightening thing?”

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