Page 31 of Winter's Waltz
Blast him.
“I am going to see Jasper Sutton,” she elaborated reluctantly. “Don’t think you are going to be a welcome face there, Marquess.”
“My debts to Sutton have been settled, and I am not accompanying you there to play at the tables. I am coming as your escort, should you need protection.”
“I don’t need protection.” She frowned at him. “I have two blades in my coat and another in my boot.”
“I would check your boot, were I you. I believe the scamp may have relieved you of that one following your chastisement over the first.”
Her frown heightened even as her fingers reached for her boot. “Impossible. I would have felt…” But her fingers found only an empty sheath. She looked around for Davy, but he had already slyly disappeared. “The cadger! It will be chamber pots for him for a bloody month after this.”
“You do realize he could cause you any number of problems, should he begin thieving from the ladies at your club,” the marquess pointed out.
“Course I do.” But she also had a soft spot for the lad. Generally, he was harmless enough. “I’ll be keeping him as far away from the ladies as possible. Trust me.”
“I have a pistol,” Sundenbury announced, patting his coat. “Small enough to tuck into a pocket your scamp could not reach.”
It was embarrassing to think she would have been less prepared than the marquess. And that Davy had stolen the blade from her damned boot without her notice, all whilst the smug, handsome man at her side watched. But she was not about to admit any of that aloud to the marquess.
“Trying to prove your worth, are you?” she asked, setting the curricle into motion.
“I thought I did that yesterday.”
She shot him a glance, but all she saw was his profile, strong jaw, the aristocratic blade of his nose, and those full, sensual lips. He did not look like a wastrel. He looked like a fine lord. One quite above her station. One she should not be longing for in this moment as he rode with her to confront Jasper Sutton.
Or ever.
“No more talk of the kiss, or I’ll reacquaint my fist with your beak,” she warned, before turning her attention back to the road.
“I was not speaking of the kiss,” he said. “I was talking about my timely intervention with the fire. But I would be more than happy to discuss the kisses we shared yesterday if you like.”
Heat flooded her cheeks. She was grateful for the brim of her own hat, shading her face.
“No,” she bit out. “The contrary, Dunderhead.”
Silence descended as she navigated the road, nothing but the familiar, jangling of tack and plodding of hooves and rolling wheels.
“Ah,” he said after a bit.
Ah?
She sent another look in his direction. “What does that mean?”
“It means I have begun to understand how to translate you, empress.” He tilted his head to the side, giving her a rakish grin.
“Translate me?” She jerked her gaze back to the road, grip on the reins tightening. “I am not a strange language to be deciphered.”
“That is where you are wrong, my dear. You most certainly are. But I have been more than pleased to study you.”
He made the act sound as if it were an amorous one. As if he had been studying her in bed. And then she realized he had been in her chamber. He had also seen her bare-arsed naked the night of the fire. And he had kissed her. The memory of his mouth on hers had her shifting on the box to ease the pulsing ache throbbing to life in her core. This was unacceptable.
She had an interview with Sutton to concentrate on. And yet, the man at her side was robbing her of the ability to think.
“You are nattering more than a woman,” she groused at him, unkindly and she knew it.
“When you are flustered, annoyed, or embarrassed, I am Dunderhead and Blunderbury.”
He was correct.
