“What if the skill I choose is not proper, milady?” he asked.
Heat flared in her belly, between her thighs, telling her she would not mind.
However, she fixed him with her most disapproving stare. “Mr. Winter.”
“Knife fighting?”
She blinked. “I cannot imagine I would require such a skill.”
“Pistol shooting? Fisticuffs?” he carried on.
“Whatever you wish, Mr. Winter,” she relented, because she felt she owed him that much.
“Anything?”
There was a distinctively wicked note in his voice.
Everything, she longed to say.
More heat slid through her. She could not seem to keep her gaze from his lips. They were so full and thick. Tempting.
Nay! What was she thinking?
“Milady?”
His question sliced through her tumultuous thoughts. She forced her eyes away from his mouth. “Any skill you wish to teach me, Mr. Winter, as long as it is suitable for a lady.”
There. He could not misconstrue her words.
Even if she wanted him to.
He nodded. “An even exchange. Whittling. That is what I shall teach you, Lady Evangeline.”
For some reason, she wished he would call her Evie. But she wisely kept that thought to herself. They had crossed enough boundaries as it was this evening.
“Whittling, Mr. Winter?” she asked.
“I can carve almost anything you’d wish from a hunk of wood.”
“A snowflake?” she suggested.
“Aye.” He nodded. “I could make a snowflake with ease, and I can teach you to carve one as well, if you like.”
“Yes. I would like that very much, Mr. Winter.” She smiled at him. “You see? An even exchange.”
He shrugged and maintained his stony silence.
Leaving her with no recourse save to continue reading where she had left off. She took up the volume of Shakespeare once more. “O, I have bought the mansion of a love…”
Chapter Five
Lady Evangeline Saltisford teaching him to read was Devil’s idea of hell.
She hovered at his elbow, her nearness filling his head with fire. The scent of ripe apple would forever give him a cockstand from this moment forward. Her finger traveled slowly over the page, moving beneath the letters he was supposed to be reading.
At the moment, he could not concentrate on a single bloody thing outside the tempting swell of her bosom, hovering perilously near. He was jealous of his own damned elbow, which was the closest portion of his anatomy to her breasts. Terrible travesty, that.
“Say the word with me, Mr. Winter,” she urged softly.
He could not force his attention to the page. Instead, he allowed himself the luxury of studying her profile. Her nose turned up ever so slightly at the end. A smattering of freckles was scattered on the elegant bridge. Her lashes were darker than her burnished curls.
“Romeo,” he guessed. That one appeared often enough on the page.
“Romeo starts with an R, Mr. Winter.” She glanced at him, and he realized her eyes were not brown at all. Rather, they were an exotic blend of gold and mahogany, with flecks of cinnamon.
Fuck.
What was wrong with him?
“Juliet,” he guessed next.
Her lips pursed. It required all the restraint he possessed to keep from kissing her.
“There is no letter J in the word,” she said softly. “If you truly wish to learn to read, you must at least try.”
That was the crux of the matter. He did not want to learn to read. What he wanted to do was hoist her over his shoulder and carry her away to his chamber. Then, he would take those soft lips for his own and get her out of that pale-pink gown.
“Where is your lady’s maid?” he asked.
“Smithson has the afternoon to herself today,” she said.
How the hell was he expected to keep his hands to himself with temptation a hair’s breadth away and no damned lady’s maid presiding over these lessons?
“Isn’t proper,” he growled, irritated with her for continually appearing in his presence, unchaperoned.
She blinked. Then blinked again. Finally, her lips curved into a smile. And then she laughed.
Warmth trickled through his chest. My God, the throaty sound of Lady Evangeline’s laughter stole his breath. And ability to think. Longing slammed into him, fierce and intense.
He swallowed past the steadily rising knot in his throat. “What is so bloody funny?”
“You fretting over propriety.”
“Why shouldn’t I? I’m here to protect you.” Including from himself, which was apparently growing more and more necessary.
She stared at him, her expression turning pensive. “You seem rather stiff today, Mr. Winter.”
She had no bloody idea.
He bit the inside of his lip and said nothing.
“Is something amiss?” she pressed.
He forced himself to look away from her lovely face. To the book that was open on the desk before them. To the word her forefinger still rested beneath. But even then, he could not concentrate on the typeset word, the ink printed upon paper. All he could look at was her.
Even her nails were elegant. Smooth and rounded, with a sheen no woman who worked with her hands could ever manage, the nails long rather than cropped short. They were not roughened and reddened like the hands of the other women he had known.
He should not be thinking of that lone finger trailing down his chest. Or her dainty hand wrapped around his cock. But there was something about Lady Evangeline Saltisford that made him think about everything he should not.
And then think about it some more.
“Are you ashamed?”
Her query startled his attention back to her. She was watching him with an expression that was part curious, part sympathetic.
His lip curled, because he would not be pitied. Not by her. Not by anyone.
He raised a brow, as if he had not a care in the world. “Ought I to be?”
“Of course not.” She paused, seeming to search for the right words, mayhap realizing there were none. “Forgive me, Mr. Winter. I am going about these lessons all wrong, I fear.”
Yes. Yes, she was. For one thing, she needed to be on the opposite end of the room. For another, she needed to wear a gown that buttoned to her chin. She also needed to stop smelling of fresh, ripe fruit. And looking at him with those big, brown-gold eyes. And to never touch him. By God, also to never again utter the word stiff in his presence…
“The lessons are perfectly fine,” he gritted. “The problem is me. My mind. It does not comprehend reading.”
“Give yourself a chance, Mr. Winter.”
He could not stifle his bitter laughter at her optimism. “And why should I give myself a chance when no one else ever has?”
She frowned at him. “I am giving you a chance.”
“Why?”
Lady Evangeline blinked, confusion furrowing her brow. “Why would I not, sir? We are together beneath a shared roof, bound to spend the remainder of this fortnight together. I find you are not as disagreeable as I once supposed you to be. Indeed, you are quite affable when it pleases you to be.”
Affable. A fancy nib’s word, that.
Yet another reminder his world and milady’s could not be further apart, even if they were currently inhabiting the same space. Everything was temporary. When their fortnight of banishment was at an end, he would return to the East End rookery where he belonged. And she would marry her Lord Dullerton.