Page 14 of Winter's Waltz
Gen tugged on her finger until he released it. “I don’t like you at all, Dunderhead. Now if you please, leave me in peace before I have to call for Peter or ask Arthur to bite you.”
“Not until we have our lesson. How am I to be successful if you continue to avoid me and your lessons both?”
Precisely.
“I am a busy woman,” she said simply.
“You asked for my aid,” he countered.
Yes, she had. But that had been before she knew what he looked like. And sounded like. And smelled like.
“Your persistence is bloody annoying,” she told him.
“So I have been told before.” The grin returned. “Sometimes, it has gotten me into trouble. Other times, it has proven a boon.”
“You are not going to leave me in peace, are you?”
Dimples appeared. “Not a chance.”
“Fine.” She scowled at him, trying to ignore the flutter in her belly. “Let us have the lesson, then, so you can be gone.”
“Capital idea. Come with me, empress.”
* * *
Max facedMiss Winter in the blue gaming room, which was the largest of all the hell’s chambers. “Here we are.”
“Where have you taken my tables and chairs?” she demanded curtly.
Of course that was her first reaction. He ought to have expected it. The woman was devoted to her business. She worked hard, from morning until night, and she fretted after those in her employ and the most minute details of the gaming hell.
“Never fear, empress,” he reassured her, “they have been carefully removed to the golden room. They will be returned to their exact positioning when our lesson is at an end.”
Her gaze was withering, her expression skeptical. “You never did say what manner of lesson this is to be. If you send in another Frenchwoman with cases of gowns, I’ll blacken your eye.”
He had no doubt she would.
Max hid his smile, for as much as he enjoyed nettling his prickly hostess, he wanted her to cooperate with him. Push her too far, and she might well flee. Today’s lesson was an important one. Also, it was an excuse to get her in his arms. He would not lie.
“No Frenchwoman,” he assured her. “I vow.”
“What is it then? I fail to see what manner of lesson would require the removal of my damned furniture.”
“You really ought to consider reducing your epithets, my dear,” he counseled, trying to envision the reaction the ladies of his acquaintance would have to a knife-wielding, trousers-wearing woman with the lexicon of a pirate.
“Hmm.”
He ignored her glare. “Today’s lesson is dancing.”
“Dancing?” she spat the word as if it, too, were another of her favored curses.
“Correct.”
“No.” She crossed her arms over her chest as she had done earlier in the kitchens, glaring. “I’ll have no need to do something so foolish here. I was right, you are a Bedlamite.”
He had anticipated this response. He was ready for her.
“Dancing is about movement, grace, elegance. It will help you to move with poise. To be a lady.”
