Page 24

“So, you see?” he continued silkily, “I do make compromises.”

“You have a very forward manner, sir,” she said at last.

He regarded her solemnly, an air of challenge brightening his gaze. “Because I posed nude earlier or because I say what is on my mind and speak plainly?”

“All of those reasons, I should think.” She reached for her wineglass and lifted it to her lips, taking a hearty sip and then another for good measure.

It wouldn’t do for her to get soused, but she needed to somehow dull her senses. To numb her mind. To drown the desire that was threatening to tear her apart from the inside.

“I’m only being honest. Would you prefer prevarication?”

“It would perhaps be easier,” she admitted quietly.

“Or more difficult.” He lifted his wineglass by the stem, drawing her attention to his long, elegant fingers.

She thought about those fingers on her skin. Of what they might do to her if she but allowed them. And then she had to swallow another gulp of wine.

“I’ve never known a man who was so free with his thoughts,” she said when she had recovered.

His grin reappeared, this one smug with self-assurance, his dimples summoned forth. “Then you’ve known the wrong men, my lady.”

It struck her like a blow. Desire pulsed, fierce and heady, the rush so strong she was nearly dizzied with it.

She wanted to know him.

In the physical sense.

She wanted him to carry her up the stairs as he’d said. For him to strip her out of the layers that were even now threatening to suffocate her. For him to visit every wicked pleasure he knew upon her.

But she couldn’t have that. So, she would have to settle for dinner.

“I begin to think you are right,” she told him softly, and then she turned the full force of her attention to her soup, where it was safest.

By the fifth course of the meal, Apollo had developed a new strategy.

And even if it made him as mad as Ophelia had claimed he was, he intended to hold fast to it. He had begun to suspect there was only one way to win her, and it was to play this game of seduction by her rules.

Which meant getting to know her slowly.

She wouldn’t be persuaded by kisses or touches. Each time he’d made an attempt in that regard, she had run like a startled doe afraid she was about to be slain by the hunter’s arrow. Learning more about Ophelia wasn’t a hardship. He’d thoroughly enjoyed himself thus far, and there was nothing more simultaneously soothing and rousing as listening to her husky voice.

“What do you like to read?” he asked her now, reaching for his glass of wine.

“I haven’t time to read,” she said. “I’m far too busy with…the management of my household.”

He took note of the pause in her explanation and instantly wondered why she had faltered, what she’d intended to say instead. Her children? The little menagerie she kept?

“Tell me something else about yourself, then,” he suggested.

“I’m afraid I’m frightfully uninteresting.”

She was also excellent at self-deprecation. He wondered if that stemmed from her marriage to Corbett, and the notion set his teeth on edge.

“I find you endlessly intriguing,” he countered.

“Then you are easily intrigued,” she said lightly, trying to steer the conversation as he’d noted she tended to do.

“I can assure you I’m not. Indeed, I fear I’m quite jaded.” He allowed himself the luxury of studying her in the glow of the lamplight.