She smiled, a shy smile. Her pale cheeks colored. For a fleeting instant he thought she might let him kiss her. But then that gratifying moment passed and unease set in.
He saw his misstep. His inexperience in these matters served him ill. He shouldn’t have made his interest in her so nakedly known. He should have offered her more whiskey instead. A cigarette even, for his vice-laden Cinderella. Or some of the biscuits Durbin kept in a tin somewhere—she looked as if the Wicked Stepmother had not been overly generous with food.
“I’ll go for the hack,” he said reluctantly.
He was a stranger to her. They were already in his house. She had no choice but to mistrust any express inclination on his part.
“Do you not have a carriage of your own?” she asked, her tone almost as reluctant as his own.
“No.” Until he’d sold the Somerset town house, he hadn’t even been able to pay Durbin for more than a year.
“And you have no servants to fetch a cab for you either?”
“My man is on holiday visiting his sister in Derbyshire this week. And my maid lives next door, I’ve a third share of her. So I must do the cab-fetching myself, as lowering as it is.”
“And leave me alone here?”
“You won’t feel safe?”
“I meant, leave me alone with a very nice Constable painting in the house?”
“I think if Cinderella were to turn to thievery, she’d have done so already. Since she’s elected to stay in the kitchen, I assume my possessions are safe,” he said, moving toward the door. He was either an astute judge of character or dumber than the sack of turnips to which he’d compared her intelligence earlier.
Her words halted him. “You shouldn’t trust me. You don’t even know who I am.”
“Then come with me. We’ll take a stroll together. It’s not every day a mere mortal meets Cinderella herself.”
She almost smiled again. She opened her mouth to say something. Nothing emerged. Instead, she stared at the spot that he’d vacated.
He turned his head to look at the shelves before which he’d been standing. Books, his collection of mounted Hashshashin daggers, several small idols of Ganesh, the elephant god…and a little lower, the framed photograph of himself and Bertie.
“Is that you?” she said, her voice unnaturally flat.
“When I was much younger.”
“May I?”
“Please.”
She moved to the shelves and lifted the photograph. She was not very tall, but her arms were long and slender. As she bent her head, her hair gleamed in the light, a deep, burnished gold. Her thumb rubbed against the hammered silver frame as she gazed into the picture.
He took a few steps toward her, until he was standing nearly at her elbow, looking down at the lobe of her ear, the clean line of her neck, the tiny tendrils of hair at her nape that didn’t quite make it into her chignon. Her scent of strawberry surged and teased. His lungs—and his head—were full of the smell of her.
She didn’t say anything for almost a minute, her attention focused solely on the photograph. He wondered at this extraordinary, sustained interest.
“You look livid,” she said at last.
“I was.”
“Why?”
“My brother.”
“Your brother the prince?”
He need not respond. She already knew.
“Do you still hate him?” She handed the photograph to him.
Did he? He studied the photograph. Some days he almost pitied Bertie, forcibly evicted from the town house he’d considered his birthright. Other days the pleasure he took in Bertie’s humiliation was as strong and unmistakable as his own heartbeat.
He shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“Then I don’t like him either,” she said, smiling oddly.
“Do you know him?” The question came out of nowhere.
“No. I don’t know him at all,” she said, decisively. She set aside her empty glass. “Shall we go now?”
“If we must,” he said, shocking himself.
She cast a quick glance at him. “I really can’t justify trespassing further on your hospitality.”
Stay, he wanted to say. Make yourself at home. Trespass as much as you like.
“Let me find my hat,” he said.
“I’d always thought that particular household arrangement somewhat suspect,” said Stuart, as they approached Sloane Street. “I remember asking our governess whether it would be quite all right if Snow White lived with seven shortish men.”
They were in the midst of an improbable conversation on the private lives and thoughts of fairy tale characters. Only a minute ago, she’d declared that Cinderella would have little in common with Sleeping Beauty, who’d never done a day of hard work—sleeping for a hundred years, how idle and slovenly—but would welcome a chat with Snow White—keeping a house for seven was no mean feat.
She giggled. “And what did your governess say?”
“Fr?ulein Eisenmueller? She started shouting in German.”