Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(36)

“Hmmm.” He didn’t feel like clarifying his feelings, so he set to work on the first piece of toast, which was now evenly brown, as perfectly cooked as the lambs’ tongues he hadn’t brought himself to taste.

“Talking of theft, my mother wrote me a letter accusing me of stealing the emerald necklace and diadem I wore during our betrothal party,” Diana said in a rush. “I didn’t! I only sold my earrings.”

He glanced at her large, vulnerable eyes. “She repeated as much to Aunt Knowe, who finds your mother repellent, and didn’t believe her, any more than I would. Prism returned your jewelry with all items intact, under the care of your maid and one of my father’s grooms.”

He spread butter on her toast, thinking that he’d like to lick butter off her chin. Or at the least, watch her lick it off her lips.

“I did take the matching earrings I was wearing that day,” she said, her voice dropping. “I am a thief, though my mother exaggerated the matter considerably.”

“Did the earrings belong to Mrs. Belgrave?”

“My grandmother gave me the set for my eighteenth birthday, but my mother always acted as if they were hers.”

North dripped honey carefully on the toast, thinking about a vituperative woman with the audacity to accuse her daughter of theft when the jewels in question were a birthday present.

“A gift should stay a gift. I don’t like your mother,” he observed.

“I don’t either.” Her voice was miserable. “I think accusing me of theft is a way of making herself feel better about not supporting me,” Diana said. “She’s not terrible. She wouldn’t want me to be destitute.”

“All evidence to the contrary,” he said gently.

She was silent.

“Eat this.” He handed her a piece of toast, dripping with butter and golden honey.

She took it gingerly. “I know what you’re doing.”

“You do?”

It was lucky that the saffron breeches had already met their maker, because they would be splitting apart, and not in the back. What was it about Diana’s velvety laugh and gray eyes that made him feel like the kind of dissolute rake he had never been?

Like a man who had never heard of rank or title and didn’t give a damn . . . a man closed in a dark room with a warm woman?

“You’re trying to fatten me up, aren’t you?” Diana said, mock scowling at him. “Lady Knowe has probably complained to you. She keeps telling me that I’m overly thin.”

North felt a pulse of alarm. Diana had nothing to lose, from his point of view.

“That’s a ferocious glare you’re leveling at me,” she said mildly. “You and your aunt should go head-to-head.”

“You don’t need to lose weight,” he stated.

“I could say the same to you.” She took a bite from one corner of her toast, and licked her lips afterward.

Honey toast was the food of the gods. Every nerve in North’s body was attuned to Diana’s shining lips.

“Lady Knowe is a worrier,” she said, taking another bite. “I’m no smaller than I was the last time I saw you. All my gowns fit precisely as they used to.” She giggled. “If I was in the habit of wearing breeches, they wouldn’t split!”

Diana in breeches . . . slim legs enclosed in tight silk. Round bum—

He wrenched his mind away. The word “proper” had lost all force, and he knew it. As if it had been a magic spell, and now the magic had worn off and he didn’t give a damn about what was an appropriate subject of conversation, and what was indelicate.

He did give a damn about whether Diana had lost weight, because if she had, she was working too hard while enslaved by the evil lord of the manor: himself.

North propped another slice of bread close to the fire and inspected her face carefully. Her delicate jaw and cheeks weren’t taut.

She smiled at him, lips glistening, and swallowed. “Agree with me?”

“I’d need to make a closer inspection,” he said, allowing desire to show in his eyes. In the wavering firelight, she looked like a goddess. Diana, emerging from the woods to strike a mere mortal man silent with her beauty.

She snorted. It was ladylike—but definitely a snort. “Here, you eat the rest,” she said, pushing the toast at him. “I had supper and I’m guessing you didn’t. Besides, you’ve burned your piece.”

Sure enough, the bread had turned black on one side.

“Try another,” Diana said. “I thought you never burned toast!”

“I was distracted by the question of whether you were withering away,” he retorted, discarding the blackened bread as a bad job. He ate the remains of Diana’s piece in three huge bites. He hadn’t been hungry for months, but now he felt ravenous.

“I sliced the whole loaf,” she said, reaching forward with a slender foot and nudging the plate closer to his leg. She met his eyes with a bland smile. “In case you burn another piece.”

“I would snort,” he said pointedly, “but gentlemen try to express themselves in words. They never mock a lady’s comment.”

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, chin cupped in her hand. “Would you like to know more about what you were wearing in my dream?”

“I believe you said that I was naked from the waist down. I was hoping that you were in dishabille as well.”