Garden of Lies(35)

“Slater.” Ursula spoke into his ear, her voice softer and huskier than ever. “I was not expecting this.”

“Is that so?” He raised his head and looked into her sultry, rather dazed eyes. “How odd. I have been waiting for this to happen since the day I met you.”

“I understand.” She was breathless and flustered.

“Do you?”

“You said that during your time on Fever Island you lived a monastic existence and if the gossip is correct you have not formed a romantic liaison with anyone here in London. That is not a normal condition for a man of your obviously virile nature.”

Reality washed over him in an icy wave.

“Let me be sure I comprehend you,” he said evenly. “You think this is happening because I’ve been without a woman for too long?”

She flinched, obviously alarmed, and tried to retreat but she was already up against the barrier of the bookcase.

“It is just that I want you to be certain that your feelings for me are not inspired by your somewhat extended periods of, uh, celibacy.”

He stared at her for a long moment, unable to tell if she was joking.

“You’re forgetting the exotic sexual rituals in the forbidden chamber,” he said finally. “The rites I practice on unsuspecting females.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re teasing me.”

“Am I?”

She made a visible effort to compose herself. “I don’t place any credence in those outlandish stories in the press.”

“Perhaps you should,” he said, making his tone deliberately ominous.

“Nonsense.”

Her stylish little black cap had fallen down over one eye. He took his hands away from the wall, freeing her. Straightening, he angled the cap into its proper position. The process gave him a chance to touch her coppery hair.

She nipped smartly away from the bookcase and turned to face him.

“I am not rebuffing your advances,” she said quickly.

“Thank you for clarifying the matter. So, as a matter of curiosity, how do you act when you actually do rebuff a man’s advances?”

“That is not amusing. I am trying to explain things here.”

“Excellent,” he said. “While we’re on the subject, please do me the courtesy of telling me whether or not you will welcome further advances of an intimate nature from me. Because if you are not interested in that sort of connection I’d rather know now.”

“I am not entirely averse to the possibility of a romantic connection with you, sir,” she said.

He was starting to become amused by her flustered condition and her contradictory statements. He was still as frustrated as hell, nevertheless, there was something rather charming about Ursula Unnerved.

“You give me hope,” he said gravely.

“It is just that I want both of us to be very sure of what we are about,” Ursula said, more earnest than ever.

He held up one hand, palm out. “Don’t say another word, I beg you. You’ll ruin the moment. Small as it was, I wish to treasure it.”

She angled her chin. “You call that embrace we just shared a small moment, sir?”

“I’m assuming you want the truth?”

“Of course.”

“Very well, then, that kiss was not nearly enough to satisfy me, madam. Indeed, it merely whetted my appetite. But apparently it will have to suffice for now.”

“I see.” She looked as if she wanted to say something more but could not summon the words.

“Your turn, Ursula,” he said quietly. “Will a few stolen kisses be enough for you or do you think you will want more at some point in the future?”

To his astonishment her air of alarm increased dramatically.

“Mr. Roxton,” she sputtered. “Must you be so . . . so direct?”

“Forgive me. I believe I explained that in my time away from London I lost some of my conversational skills.”

“I doubt that you forgot anything at all, sir,” she shot back. “You are simply impatient with the polite ways of Society.”

He nodded soberly. “Very true. The thing is, Ursula, you were a married woman. I assumed you understood the nature of intimate relations between two people.”

“Of course I do,” she snapped. “I understand that sort of thing very well. But you are obviously a man of strong passions, sir. If you are sincerely interested in an intimate connection with me—”

“Oh, I am,” he said softly. “I am most definitely interested.”

She cleared her throat. “Then you deserve to know that my own temperament does not run to the extremes.”

He went blank. “The extremes?”

She waved one hand. “I refer to the sort of extreme passions that your mother writes about in her plays.”

“Nobody in his or her right mind acts the way the characters do in my mother’s melodramas. I’m afraid you have gone too deeply into the weeds of polite euphemisms. I am lost. I have no idea what you are talking about.”

She shot him an irritated look.

“I am merely trying to tell you that I may not be the right woman for a man of your passionate nature, sir,” she said. “I’m trying to warn you, as it were.”

He was most certainly enjoying himself now, he decided.