Page 17 of The Viscount's Promise
To her surprise, laughter bubbled up in her chest. He gave her a quick glance of mocking surprise. “And here I thought you had no sense of humor at all.”
She did not know what possessed her, but in the next moment she raised an eyebrow and said in the most serious manner possible, “I am sitting here with you, aren’t I? If that is not a good joke, I don’t know what is.”
He eyed her in approval. “Nicely done, Lady Emily,” he murmured. “We may make something of you yet.”
Once again her tongue took on a mischievous mind of its own. “Oh, don’t go getting optimistic, my lord. It isn’t like you at all.”
He looked at her for several long moments, his face slack, not a hint of humor lighting it, and Emily thought perhaps she had gone too far. Then he threw back his head, and the most wonderful laugh burst forth from him. It shook his entire body, lit up his face, completely transformed him. Several people turned in surprise to look their way.
Emily found herself smiling, a large grin that lifted her cheeks, pulling at her scar. For once she didn’t mind the unpleasant sensation. He had a wonderful laugh. It was positively infectious.
His laughter died down, and he looked at her in approval. “You know, you really must smile more often. It is very becoming.”
Instantly her joy fled. He thought to patronize her with false praise? “I am not a fool, my lord. You hardly need to condescend to me in such a way.”
“You think I am talking down to you?”
“I know you are.”
He rolled his eyes and sat back, crossing one booted foot over the opposite knee. “I should have known you would be like any other female, looking to drag more compliments out of a fellow.”
Affront immediately straightened Emily’s spine. “I assure you, I am not at all like that.”
“Please,” he scoffed. “You must know you’re lovely. Look in a mirror and you will see the truth of that.”
At his words her indignity of the moment dimmed to an aching sadness. “Ihavelooked in a mirror,” she all but whispered.
“You are referring to your scar,” he said with typical bluntness.
Her mind immediately went blank. Most people were not usually so forthright with her about it. She didn’t quite know how to handle this new situation. Avoidance and uncomfortable silences she had dealt with aplenty. She had even dealt with her fair share of couched rudeness, such as those from Lord Randall. But never this.
“I get the feeling,” he went on, apparently oblivious to her distress, “that you think it is much worse than it actually is.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your scar,” he clarified blithely, as if she were not perfectly aware what he was referring to. He waved vaguely at her face, as if to bring home the point. “It’s truly not bad at all. I do think that, if you did not show so much sensitivity to it, people would ignore it. As it is, the emphasis you give it makes people more aware of it.”
Anger ran through her, molten, heating her veins. “How dare you pretend to know what I have been through!”
“No, I don’t know what you’ve been through,” he agreed, completely unfazed by her reaction. “But I do know that self-pity will do you no good at all. You may as well raise your head high. To hell with what everyone thinks.”
Her mouth fell open, not at the use of his profanity, which was shocking enough, but at his crass attitude toward something that gave her daily pain. “I do not pity myself,” she countered hotly. “Nor do I intentionally bring attention to it.”
“Well, now, I never said you intentionally did. Butunintentionally, you certainly do. Pressing your cheek when you flush, tilting your head in that ridiculous way. But worst of all, that slouched, eyes-to-the-ground defeated look you constantly wear.”
So shocked was she at his words that when he lowered his foot and leaned forward she did not even have the sense to recoil. In the next moment he extended his hand and gently traced her scar.
Emily could not have moved if she tried. His fingers were warm, feather light. A whisper of sensation on her skin. People generally didn’t even look on her scar; she could not remember the last time anyone had touched it. It sent a shiver of awareness through her, a longing.
It stole the very breath from her lungs.
Then his hand was gone. Emily simply sat there, at a complete loss what to do or say.
His lips—those wonderfully chiseled lips that could look so cold and cruel one minute and so boldly seductive the next—curved in a small smile. “See,” he murmured. “Not disgusting at all.” He held his fingers up and waggled them. “And not a wart to be seen.”
He was mad. Absolutely and completely mad. “Well,” was all she could think to say. Because, really, how was one supposed to respond after such a thing?
“Do you typically take on the duty of playing for the dancers?”
