The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(14)

Claiming her perch on his bedside, she took her time pressing the side of the fork through the different layers of the decadent dessert. First buttercream frosting the color of a speckled robin’s egg. Then the moist dense cake, yellow starch and sugar held together by lard and butter. The center delighted the palette with a layer of chilled raspberry preserves, only to reverse the order on the way down. Yellow cake. More frosting.

Balancing the fork over the plate so as not to spill crumbs on him, she slid the confection toward his awaiting lips. Oh, she couldn’t wait for him to taste it. Could only imagine the joy on his—

Gently, but decisively, the plate and fork were plucked from her hands. “I can feed myself.”

“Oh.” Ridiculous emotion stung the back of her nose. “Right. Of course you can.” She smiled through the threatening tears, as was her habit, though her lashes lowered to hide her reaction.

Why did this dismay her so? she wondered as she studied the edge of the blanket, and the dusky flesh of his ribs above it.

It wasn’t as though she desired him to remain an invalid.

She just wanted him to … remain. Here. With her.

Dr. Holcomb had reported that he’d limped around a bit on the cast, and was able to put weight on his ankle. In a few days, they’d cut the cast off.

What if … what if he didn’t need her anymore? What if he left Southbourne Grove in search of his missing past?

The prick of tears became a burn.

“It is very good.” He lowered his head to his shoulder, as though to bring it into her line of sight, rather than require her to lift her gaze.

Glancing up, she found his jaw flexing and working. Movements made when the fare needn’t be chewed, merely rolled and processed by an enterprising and appreciative tongue.

She swallowed when he did, her mouth watering as though she’d taken the bite.

“I can’t ever remember having better.” His next bite was not so dainty as the one she’d cut for him. Indeed, it was almost half the slice of cake. As he savored it, his eyes crinkled a bit at the edges. Not a smile, but a resemblance of amusement.

Belatedly, she realized he’d just attempted a joke at his own missing memory’s expense.

A giggle escaped her. Then another.

Before preparing his next bite, he asked, “If you decided today is my birthday, did you also decide how old I am turning?”

Heartened, she rushed to answer him. “Mortimer thinks you cannot be as old as he, and he’s twenty.”

At the mention of her brother, the sparkle in his eye turned into a glint. “What do you think?”

Lorelai blinked. No one had ever asked her that before. A little spark of delight warmed her from behind her ribs. He asked because he wanted to know; she could see the patient curiosity blinking out at her.

His age took up a great deal of her idle speculation. Studying him now, she made her best assessment of him.

Whoever created him had not only been particularly detailed, but disproportionately punitive to the rest of mankind. His features were nothing less than aggressively masculine. Sharp. Broad. With deep lines and hard planes. And yet … if one looked closely, there was a sense of the sensual his sculptor must have tried hard to conceal. His upper lip, for example, was little more than a thin slash, but not so with the one beneath. His crooked nose was patrician enough for Caesar himself to have looked down from as he wrested power from all the world, and resided between rather barbaric cheekbones. His jaw was nothing less than belligerent. Not so square as Mortimer’s but neither was it diminutive.

It was the sort of jaw that, when painted, rendered the subject a villain rather than a hero. A cleft split the middle of his chin. Dimpled and webbed by pink, healing burns scarred his jaw from his left ear, and down his neck to the deep lines created by his collarbone before disappearing into his sleeve.

His jaw, she realized, strong as it was, had required very little shaving in the weeks he’d been at Southbourne Grove. And, as she’d previously tested with her own fingertips … with her lips … his chest remained smooth. Hairless.

Men had hair, didn’t they?

So he was maybe not yet a man … but most certainly not a boy.

His head had been all but shorn a month past. Now, thick layers of ebony tousled every which way, untamed by a comb or pomade.

It suited him, though.

Everything suited him.

Blushing, she remembered that he had a bit of dark hair protecting his … his … Well, never mind what it was called. But Mortimer had intimated that he was of the opinion there wasn’t enough of it for a man grown.

Her gaze wandered lower. She certainly wouldn’t know about such things, and it wasn’t as though she could just ask—

“Lorelai?” Her name was more a plea than a question.

Golly, had she said anything aloud?

He’d stopped eating. Frozen in a thin-eyed calculation of his own.

She cleared her throat with a distinctly unladylike sound. “I—I know you must be older than me, as you have the voice of a man, and most of the boys my age have similar voices to mine.”

“What is your age?” he asked alertly.

“Fourteen.”

He made a sound in his throat, though whether affirmative or negative, she could hardly tell.

“Let us say that you are seventeen today. Younger than twenty, but still almost grown.” He’d a very young—very vigorous—body, but the soul who peered out of those eyes had seen everything one would wish to in a lifetime.