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Fingering her fan, she faced him. She could either sit beside him or disrupt the third row. With a resigned sigh, only decipherable if one studied her closely, she claimed the chair to his right and promptly flicked her painted, lace-edge fan open. And snapped it shut. Open. Shut. Open. Shut. You are cruel.
He almost laughed aloud at her silent, terse message. Instead, rather tenser than he ought to be, he watched to see if she’d draw the frilly accessory through her hands. That meant I hate you.
Staring straight ahead, she didn’t move except for the rhythmic rising and falling of her chest, the slow blinking of her expressive eyes, and the tap-tap, tap-tap of her slippered toes. Nonetheless, he felt the vexation radiating from her. A doubt didn’t exist she’d love to have snubbed him once more. Instead, she’d sunk onto the blue cushioned seat with the aplomb of a queen, disregarding him as if he were a lowly boot-shine boy.
Her decision revealed an aspect of her character he’d already suspected she possessed and which played perfectly into what he intended to do to regain Hartfordshire Court. Miss Gabriella Breckensole would suffer herself rather than cause others discomfort or inconvenience. That he would exploit the goodness in her for his own mean ends, said much about his him for all of his professions that he was a gentleman.
“Well done, Miss Breckensole,” Charles Edgeman, Mrs. Twistleton’s aged father, a retired banker, whispered loudly on her other side. More than a little deaf, Edgeman was wont to bellow when he believed himself inconspicuous. “I quite enjoyed your performance One of the best I’ve heard, I do believe.”
Color climbed the slopes of her ivory cheeks once more, but Gabriella demurred with a kind smile and angled head. “You are most kind, Mr. Edgeman.”
“I quite agree,” Max murmured. “Is there anything you don’t do well?”
“Hold my tongue, when you are about,” she snapped, a false smile painted upon her lips. Which only made him want to kiss them until a seductress’s smile bent that soft mouth.
Her fresh fragrance tickled Max’s nose. Yes, definitely a hint of lemon and lavender and jasmine. An interesting, heady, and unexpected mélange. Much like her.
“Happy birthday, Miss Breckensole,” he murmured softly. “Did you and your sister receive your gifts?”
She gave him a reproachful look, marked uncertainty shadowing her expression. “Thank you, but you know full well it’s improper, and we cannot keep them.”
He hitched his shoulder. “No one but you and I know where they came from.”
“The seamstress knows,” she all but hissed beneath her breath.
“Ah, but she’s in London, and doesn’t know who they were for.”
“You are impossible,” she muttered with a little shake of her head, causing her earrings to bob.
“So you’ve remarked before.” From the side of his mouth he whispered, “I didn’t know you played the violin.”
“I should think there are a great many things you do not know about me, Your Grace,” came her equally hushed but acerbic retort. She tilted nearer a fraction. “Cats make me sneeze. I abhor fish of any sort, most especially shellfish, and I don’t take milk with my tea. I cannot resist maid of honor tarts, I enjoy long walks and sketching, and I have a distinct dislike for bullies and liars.”
Touché, chérie.
“Now do be quiet, Duke. We’re being most rude.” A censuring sideways glance accompanied that pert comment.
He hid a grin. If any woman could bring him up to mark, if he cared to be brought up to mark that was, it would’ve been Gabriella Breckensole.
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