Unafraid, but very aware what sort of beast she approached.
He could devour her whole, but she knew he wouldn’t. At least, she was fairly certain.
She didn’t stop until she stood before him, her head tilted back as his bent down to grant her unrestricted access to examine him.
He stood like a statue, like an effigy of some ancient Roman general beneath her gaze, and Felicity was certain he didn’t even breathe.
It became instantly apparent what he’d meant for her to see.
What he feared she would revile.
His face was a monument to violence. Indeed, a map of it. His nose crooked and dented, as if it’d been broken too many times and then cobbled back together. A slash interrupted his bottom lip. Another, his brow. A few more disappeared into his hairline, which was so black it gleamed blue in the candlelight. His left eyelid closed slightly more than his right, granting him an eternally malevolent glare. Some of the skin on his left cheek appeared glossy and tinged just a little pinker than the rest of his weathered, craggy features. Deep grooves bracketed a hard mouth, which was pressed into a hyphen and whitened at the corners.
He was too brutal to be handsome. His jaw square and wide, his chin strong and sharp. The hollows of his cheeks were deep as canyons and the skin beneath his eyes bruised from sleepless nights, creating a starkness about him that threatened to break her heart.
But it was his eyes she couldn’t look away from.
They weren’t dark as she’d first thought, merely set deep into a heavy brow and rife with shadows.
The gaze he affixed onto her was a mercurial silver/grey. The striations within the irises might have held some green and gold if he stood in the sun. Transfixed by their beauty, Felicity found it impossible to identify what she read in those eyes. No word existed in her vocabulary to do so, but it tugged at her with an aching intensity.
His expression could have been cast from marble, and yet it was wary and prepared, as if he expected her to strike him. Or spit upon him.
Or scream and flee.
Perhaps some people had done.
Unexpectedly, her fingers itched to explore his compelling face. To smooth over his brow and draw a thumb over the pinkened skin of the long scar.
What unimaginable pain he had endured.
A strange, dark part of her hoped he’d answered in kind.
That out there, someone else was just as broken.
Dismayed by her uncharacteristic ferocity, Felicity became suddenly aware of how warm his breath felt on her skin, feathering over her cheeks in apple-scented puffs. Indeed, warmth emanated from every part of him, and the recognition struck her with bewildering force that beneath his elegant clothing and inelegant features, Gareth Severand was a man.
An incomparably large man with expanses of flesh and muscle so diametrically opposed to her own, she couldn’t fathom what they must look like. What it must be like to move through the world as he did. A tower of strength and skill and scars.
She almost envied him.
As someone so consistently aware of her own vulnerability, she was struck with awe by his apparent invincibility.
This man fascinated her.
“Look your fill before you make up your mind.” His voice was strung as tight as a bowstring, and his eyes focused on something behind her, as if he could no longer stand to meet her gaze.
“Dear Mr. Severand.” She put a hand on his arm, hoping to convey a modicum of comfort. “Be at ease. My mind was quite made up this afternoon. Your features have nothing to do with it. If anything, I should think you appear as though you wouldn’t hesitate to do your job. I’m more convinced of that than ever.”
He stared at where her hand rested just above his elbow as he quietly said, “There isn’t a force in this city that could go through me to get to you.”
He was being hyperbolic, of course, but for some reason she believed him.
Releasing his arm, she touched her own cheek, both glad and guilty to find nothing there but smooth, unbroken skin.
“Did this all happen whilst you protected someone else?”
“Yes.” His gazed followed her hand with the intensity of a hound begging to be fed.
One of them should have pulled back. There was no reason for him to be standing over her like this. Or for her to tilt her head up a little higher. To step one inch closer. But some spell held her in a strange thrall, blocking out all visceral details that didn’t have to do with him.
If he should press his lip to hers, would she feel the deep groove of the scar there? Did his mouth taste like hers did? Like apples and heat?
The door burst open to admit the efficient whirlwind that was Mrs. Emmaline Winterton, her red hair disheveled, the feather in her smart peach cap drooping, and copper ringlets heavy with rain.
“Please pardon my tardy return, Felicity,” she demanded. “I was detained on the bridge as a cart full of bees— of all the ridiculous creatures— had quite tipped over and bogged everything up! Blighty little beasts went everywhere, and we ran for our lives through rivers of honey. Just look at my hem.” She lifted a hem that did, indeed, appear sticky, baring a lovely ankle boot and a good part of her stockinged calf in the process.
Having hopped away from her scandalous proximity to Mr. Severand, Felicity looked up to ascertain if he’d noted— or appreciated— her companion’s stockings.
Astonishingly enough, his eyes hadn’t left hers yet, and his nostrils flared as if struggling to lift a herculean weight.
Felicity whirled around, aware that her bustle grazed his thighs.
Oh, lord. His thighs. Why did thinking of them make her blush?
Still immersed in the tragedy of her hem, Emmaline forged ahead. “Also, a curiously anxious Billings bade me to inform you that they’re minutes from ringing the dinner gong— I haven’t eaten a thing all day and am famished beyond all— oh, hello.”
Finally, she glanced up to notice that they were not alone.
Felicity rushed to make introductions. “Emmaline, this is Mr. Gareth Severand, whom I’ve engaged as my personal protection. Mr. Severand, allow me to introduce Mrs. Emmaline Winterton, my chaperone and companion.”
Emmaline’s Baltic blue eyes went incredibly owlish as she looked up and up at the stoic Mr. Severand.
This must be the reaction he’d been expecting from Felicity.
Unease and suspicion mixed with curiosity.
Remembering her manners, Emmaline tore her eyes from his face and bobbed a curtsy. “A pleasure, Mr. Severand.”
“Likewise,” he rumbled from behind Felicity, sending shivers and stinging goose pimples thrilling over her flesh. His voice seemed quite two octaves lower than before. If that were possible. Was it because of Mrs. Winterton’s radiance? Her shapely bared calf? Her heavy lashes and brilliant red hair?
Why should it matter if he found Emmaline pretty? She was pretty.
Emmaline retreated toward the door with backward steps, as if she didn’t want to turn her back on the mountainous man behind Felicity.
“Allow me to make myself presentable, and I’ll harass the staff to make sure they set a place for Mr. Severand. Excuse me.”
Felicity turned her chin to her shoulder, glancing behind her. “Shall we pour another drink and go through?” she offered, wary of being left alone with him at the moment. When all of her nerves zinged with a phenomenon both primal and electric.
His lashes shuttered his eyes as he looked away, but not before she caught the heat melting the metal of his gaze.