My Lady,
You can expect my presence at the place we’d last met at precisely five past six. I value punctuality. The volume will be yours.
Bainbridge
Bainbridge. Not Jasper. Not the man who’d taken her in his arms, whose touch had melted her like the hot sun upon a blanket of snow. She didn’t know what she’d expected of his missive. Mayhap, something…something…
Less precise.
She didn’t know why she expected him to be different than the calculated, unbending man he’d shown himself to be.
Katherine touched the tip of her glove-encased finger to her lips.
It had been, The Kiss, as she’d come to think of it, that accounted for this madcap scheme she was about to propose to him. That is, if he still intended to honor the words in his note.
“My lady.”
Katherine gasped, and spun on her heel. Snow crunched under the heels of her boots.
Her gaze met Jasper’s, and she swallowed hard. “You.”
“Yes, me,” he murmured, his emotionless tone gave little indication as to the nature of his thoughts.
“You came.” Her cheeks blazed. “That is…” Her eyes fell to the book in his hands. “Oh, you have the book.”
He handed it over, and Katherine accepted the volume. She studied the leather tome etched in gold lettering.
“I am a gentleman who honors my word, my lady.”
Katherine glanced up at him, ever-serious, always frowning, and yet, somehow, his stoic reserve inspired a sense of confidence. This was not a man who’d squander his family’s wealth, leaving them destitute at the mercy of the creditors and loathsome lords who’d called in their vowels.
It was also why he would make her an ideal match.
He sketched a bow, and spun on his heel.
Panic bubbled up her throat. “You are leaving?” Her voice emerged as a high squeak.
He turned back to face her, his black cloak gaped open to reveal his long, powerful legs. Her mouth went dry. Ladies were not supposed to notice things such as the breadth of a gentleman’s thighs or the ripple of muscle in his forearms, or…she gulped.
“My lady?”
She swallowed back her improper musings.
“Er…are you leaving already?”
Jasper arched a single, black icy brow. “I didn’t believe there was another reason for me to stay.”
That honest admission chafed, more than she wished. She didn’t want to notice his uncharacteristic handsomeness or his honorable characteristics when he should disdain to notice her.
“Er…” She wet her lips, as the plan she’d concocted that had prompted her to send round the note requesting his presence seemed the height of foolishness. Had she imagined his kiss those two days ago?
Except…her body still burned in remembrance of his touch.#p#分页标题#e#
No, that had been no imagining.
“My lady?” he prompted again; a thread of impatience underlined that question.
Katherine jumped. “Katherine.”
His brow wrinkled.
“That is to say, considering our initial meeting, and then our chance encounter in the bookshop, and then the time we met at Hyde Park, and you and I k…” He quirked that icy brow yet again. She waved her hand. “That is to say, talked. We spoke that day,” she amended. If their kiss was wholly unmemorable to him, well, then she’d not do something so foolish as to mention that particular part of their meeting that day—even if it had been the single most passionate moment of her nineteen, nearly twenty years. “Well…”
“My lady?”
She stamped her boot in the snow. “I’m merely suggesting you call me Katherine because of, of…our friendship.” She balled her hands in pained embarrassment.
His green eyes deepened to the shade of jade. He took a step toward her, and she took a hasty step back in retreat. He continued advancing, and Katherine scrambled backwards until the heels of her boots reached the edge of the frozen river.
She glanced over, and her stomach lurched at how precariously close she’d come to the water. Her time at the Frost Fair had proven that even frozen water was not to be trusted.
When she turned back around, he was a mere hands width apart. Katherine gasped, and stumbled.
His arms shot out, and he gripped her by her forearms, steadying her.
“Thank you,” she murmured, hating the breathless note to those two words.
He dipped his head. “Is that what we are, Katherine? Friends?”
Katherine would have to be a lack wit to not hear the mocking sneer to those two words. Suddenly too aware of his body’s proximity to her own, she took a hesitant step around him, and placed several steps between them.