Page 12 of A Deal with the Rebellious Marquess
‘You are very intuitive, Lord Umberton.’ She settled her skirts. ‘You are close. I skipped dinner last night after our lunch together. I woke up ravenous, but I only had time for a sweet bun and coffee and I skipped lunch.’ She waved a hand towards her messy desk in explanation. ‘Too much to do. So, yes, I am hungry.’ She gave him a considering look. ‘I do not know if I find your intuition endearing or downright intrusive.’
‘That makes two of us, then.Yourintuition sent a letter to hunt me down at my club.’ He smiled, eyes warm. ‘We are two people who value their privacy and yet we’ve invaded each other’s on multiple occasions now.’
‘The letter was more deduction than intuition,’ she corrected, reaching to pour the tea. ‘This is a pretty teapot, by the way. What do you intend to do with it after today?’ No time like the present to address that particular elephant in the room. There were others, of course, a veritable herd of them, but she’d start with this one.
He took the cup and added his own cream. Ah, so he liked cream in his teaandhis coffee. ‘I mean to leave it here in case we have tea again.’ His eyes were on her over the rim of his teacup as he took a small sip.
‘Do you think we will have tea again?’ Fleur queried carefully, understanding full well that after two meetings, today was a watershed of sorts, determining how they would go forward.
‘We’ll see. I like to be prepared for eventualities.’ That was no answer at all. He took another sip of his tea and filled his plate with items from the tray. ‘I wasn’t sure what you liked so I ordered a bit of everything.’ He gave a boyish wink as the food piled up on his plate. ‘I’ll tell you a secret. I skipped lunch, too. Today is the day my mother hosts at-homes at the town house and I wanted to make my bow and get out of there as fast as possible. Eating would only have delayed my departure.’
‘What’s wrong with your mother’s at-homes?’ The reporter in her immediately sensed a story, a point of interest, or was that the woman in her who wanted to know more about this man with the quiet manners and powerful personality? Where was the line between the two roles?
‘They’re full of women with daughters who want to marry me.’ It was clear he said it without thinking and they both laughed. ‘I’m sorry, that came out a bit arrogant and unfeeling.’ He gave an abashed smile that was all too endearing.
‘It was honest.’ Fleur reached for a violet crème. ‘Doyou expect to marry this year? If it is not too personal to ask,’ she added, but she suspected it wasn’t and that he would answer since he’d brought it up. Perhaps because it weighed on his mind and he wanted to talk about it—he just needed an opening and perhaps a stranger to tell.
‘Do I expect to marry this year?’ He shook his head. ‘If only it were that simple. I just have to put it on the calendar as if it were another appointment, as if it were as easy as going to Tattersall’s and selecting a horse for this year’s hunt season.’ He gave a self-deprecating chuckle that communicated the opposite—that this was no laughing matter. ‘I can’t seem to bring myself to reduce it to such a common denominator. Perhaps it would all be easier if I did. My mother has a list, you see.’ The spark was back in his eyes.
‘Tell me about the list,’ she prompted out of some type of morbid curiosity. Was she trying to convince herself this fellow was off limits?
‘Well, there’s Lady Claudia Shipman, daughter of the Earl of Coventry. She has a horsey face and fortune and nothing in common with me.’ He devoured a ham triangle in a single bite. ‘Then there’s Aurelia Dunston...’ The list went on with him regaling her with a brief biography of each of his mother’s candidates. He’d make a good news writer, she thought. He had a knack for picking out salient details without going off on a tangent.
He was an entertaining storyteller, too. It had been a long time since she’d enjoyed a conversation this much. Too many of her conversations in the past year had been exercises in verbal fencing, protecting herself against probes into the business and the situation Adam had left her with. She could not afford to give too much away.
She poured the last of the tea, dividing it between their cups. The tea tray was down to a few lavender crèmes and ginger nut crumbs. ‘It seems as though your mother has a certain type of woman in mind for you.’ Obedient, pretty, young, a blank slate for him to write on, to fill with his opinions and purposes. ‘But what do you prefer for yourself?’ It was clear from his tone that those things did not appeal to him. They’d not appealed to Adam either, although she knew very well that those traits were greatly desired by most men.
He reached for one of the remaining lavender crèmes and popped it into his mouth. He made a sour grimace. ‘Yuck.’ He turned aside and spat the morsel into his napkin, taking a swallow of tea to wash away the taste. ‘Do you like these? Truly? They taste like...soap.’
She laughed. ‘I like them. They’re...airy...sweet...floral.’
‘I prefer floral in my flowers, not my sweets,’ he countered, mischief in his eye.
‘Some say if clouds had a taste, lavender crèmes would be it.’
‘No, absolutely not,’ he argued with a laugh. ‘Clouds donottaste like soap.’ He smiled and retrieved the last crème. ‘I guess that means this last one is for you.’ He leaned forward, offering the crème. Her pulse quickened at the realisation. He meant to feed it to her. She answered his smile with a coy smile of her own, leaning towards him to allow the liberty, the flirting, the lingering of his fingers at her lips, sending a jolt of awareness down her spine, his own topaz gaze meltingly warm, less teasing now and more tempting. The atmosphere in the room changing with the electricity conjured at his touch.
She should not have pressed, knowing full well the question served a dual purpose. ‘You haven’t answered me yet. What sort of woman do you prefer?’ In the interim since the asking it had become a loaded question and he pulled the trigger.
‘A woman who knows her own mind, who has her own opinions—well-formed opinions, of course. Anyone can have opinions. Not all are worthy of consideration.’ His voice was quiet with an unmistakable husk to it, proof that he felt it, too, the current of awareness connecting them.
‘Those kinds of women can be difficult. Demanding. Determined. Are you sure you wouldn’t want an easier woman?’ Her own voice was also quiet as if they were exchanging secrets. They were weaving intimacy between them with their words.
‘Your husband didn’t mind such a challenge, why should I want any less?’ It was a bold question with a bold implication—thatshewas the sort of woman he sought. An intimate compliment indeed, with intimate opportunity. He filched a remaining ginger nut hidden among the crumbs and broke it in two, feeding her half.
‘Will you tell me about him?’ He brushed a crumb from her lip with his thumb. ‘We’ve talked about the women who seek to capture me. But what of you? What sort of man was man enough to win you?’ The last was said with a chuckle, but it was asked in earnest. This was no joke.
‘A bold man.’ She smiled, in part because he’d asked. Perhaps he’d sensed that she needed an opportunity to talk about this as much as she’d sensed his need to give voice to his mother’s matchmaking efforts. In part she smiled from memory, recalling Adam’s courtship over eight years ago.
‘We met at Lady Brixton’s first ever literacy fundraiser, which she holds during the Season. Adam was very passionate about literacy and early education for children. He believed no one was too young to learn to read and he was appalled at the conditions of the poor, which prevent any opportunity for education.’ She paused. ‘Lord Brixton is the Duke of Cowden’s son—do you know him?’ Her uncle had once hoped for an alliance there—Brixton for his niece. But Brixton had eyes only for Helena Merrifield and Fleur had been swept off her feet by Adam.
‘I know Cowden, not so much his son, though. I know Brixton only by name as he won a seat in the Commons recently. Our paths have not had a chance to cross yet.’
‘Then we should make a chance. Brixton should be on our list for the dam legislation,’ she digressed from the personal, offering them an opportunity to bring the conversation back to business. But he didn’t allow her to take it. The second half of the ginger nut popped into her mouth.
‘I believe we were talking about you, not Brixton,’ he scolded with a tease, his voice a low, intimate tenor. ‘So, you met your husband at a fundraiser. Then what?’ Was it wrong that she wanted his fingers to stay on her lips? To want those fingers elsewhere—on her neck, in her hair, on her body. God, she was lonelier than she’d ever been.
She gave a small smile, their eyes holding. ‘Then he kissed me and that was it.’ She wet her lips, wanting to stay in the present, not wanting to be dragged into the past. ‘You can tell a lot about a man by the way he kisses.’ She made the conversation an invitation. This was not as much about Adam any more as it was about her loneliness. If Umberton kissed as well as he looked, maybe she could drive away the loneliness for a while. She’d be willing to try.
