Page 76 of If the Slipper Fits
“You’re incredible,” he breathed.
Cheeks going rosy, she waved his words away. “I’m an idiot, more like.”
He glanced at the table he’d shoved away when his need to touch her had overridden all else. “You barely ate a thing.”
He rose and pulled it back intoposition in front of her.
Damn but she smelled good. Fresh from her bath, her delicate scent wafted off her skin like evening blossoms.
He snapped up the folded serviette beside her plate, then bent to lay it over her lap. His gaze trailed over the loosely tied front of her gown and his breath caught in his throat.
The woman would be the death of him. In her haste to don a gown, she hadn’t taken the time for undergarments, as he well knew. The result? The rosy outline of her coin sized nipples were just visible through the bodice—if one happened to be looking.
He straightened, and dragged his gaze to the plaster-tiled ceiling. “Bon appetite.”
“Merci, mére,” she said, a smile evident in her voice as she tucked in to her now tepid stew.
“As for your self-proclaimed idiocy…”
She snorted, clearly anticipating a snarky comment, and kept eating.
“Tell me again why you’re to blame for any of this?”
She took a moment to swallow her last bite before replying. “Only an idiot would agree to a marriage after one meeting, as I did, even if the man—the decoy, as you dubbed him—was a much younger, pleasant seeming chap.”
Caden had begun pacing the room, mostly to put some distance between them. Her words stopped him in his tracks. “Who was the man, I wonder?”
She gave a graceful, one-shouldered shrug and picked up a piece of cheese, examining it between her fingers. “Bolton’s secretary? I’m not at all certain. As I said, Angelique denied I’d met anyone other than Lord Bolton.” She nibbled the cheese.
Caden frowned. “You said she drugged you the night of your so-called ceremony. Maybe she’d started plying your wits with something medicinal before that.”
Anna’s mouth gaped briefly. “You know, I never considered that. I should have. It’s not as if I’ve no experience in such matters, having helped mother create her tinctures. Too, I assisted father for years. I should have known.”
“Why should you have? At the time you had no reason to question her.”
She gave him a grateful smile. “I still have no notion why it behooved her to marry me off to the man. Except that it obviously did.”
Unable to peel his eyes off her, Caden sauntered back to the spindly chair. He spun it around and straddled the seat, then rested his folded arms on the seat-back.
“I think we can safely assume she had a financial motive. Bolton hasn’t had a pot to…” He cleared his throat. “…hasn’t had means for some time, so it’s unlikely she expected a payoff from him. That leaves you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. Perhaps your father left you as sole heir to his estate?”
She appeared to give his words some thought, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. He would have told me, and, besides, I don’t think he would have done that to Angelique. He appeared quite fond of her before his illness took him.”
“Hm.” It was about money. Caden could feel it.
She lay her serviette across her nearly empty dish and sent him a replete smile. Faint, dark circles underscored her eyes. “That was lovely. Thank you.”
Their gazes caught and held. Something warm and intoxicating invaded his chest and spread like wildfire to all his extremities. Havinglearned the truth of her ordeal, her bravery, her utter blamelessness, every defense he’d erected against her siren’s call vanished. Mere lust he could handle. What flooded his veins now was…something more.
He was suddenly grateful for the chair and cart and every scrap of distance between them.
Still the moment stretched, with neither of them looking away. When her eyelids dipped and her lips parted Caden went painfully hard.
Enough.
