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“Aye.” He gave a determined nod. “I must. Fully and without reservation.”

“Agree? It isn’t done. I am certain of it.”

“What? Concurrence?”

“Yes. It is quite horrid of you.”

“I’m a brute.”

“Of the most rotten sort.”

“Should I… Disagree with you, then? Would that make everything aright?”

“Assuredly, you should. With verve and passion.”You brothel bait! How dare you banter blithely about—and with a man you just met?

Surprisingly easily.

“Why, Miss Thomalin-alin-alin.” Luce watched, wholly entertained, as he affected a shaky, high-pitch reminiscent of an aged woman—if she tippled and toppled and sounded the loon. He tottered back and forth behind the counter. “Do come in, dearie, for I have need of a bruising sort of companion. One who can shame rainbows in the sky with her very countenance, thanks to the field of flowers ripe upon her cheek.

“Greens and yellows and purples, oh my. I will not be able to take you anywhere!” His prancing footsteps paused and he brought one dainty hand up to his jaw, as though flourishing a handkerchief. Keeping the elderly voice and manner, he widened his eyes. Cocked his head. “Although… If one such as you were to be in my employ, could you not, mayhap fight off footpads and highwaymen? Why, alas! I could dither hither and yon to my aged heart’s content and you, my dear—you, of the giant bruised jaw and puny-muscled arms—would you not be able to protect my virtue? I am in alt! In alt, I say. Why, I will hire you upon the nonce!”

By now, she was grinning and giggling so much her sides hurt, cheeks pained from smiling—not to mention the stretched swelling. “Upon the n-nonce?” Chuckling so hard, she could barely speak, she asked, “What matter of nonsense do you spew?”

“I have no idea other than when you challenged me to respond with verve and passion…” Back to his normal, husky timbre, his response quickly banished the laughter lurking close to the surface. “I wanted nothing more than to bend you back over my arm and claim your lips with more passion than I have felt in the last decade. And would that not make me the most veritable of scoundrels?”

He slapped both palms upon the counter, his shoulders and head rising to their full and impressive height. “How could I even contemplate such? To take advantage of one dependent upon me, one within my care?Ishould be the one banished into the stormy wilds beyond the safety of the shop. Tomorrow is Christmas Day; I expect no one to trouble us. So you will have another quiet day to recover. I bid you good night.”

With a gentle touch of his knuckles to the discolored bruise under discussion, he gave an abrupt nod and spun away, the sound of his feet pounding up the stairs two at a time no match for the pounding of her heart.

As his gentle touch spread from her cheek and jaw across her face and down to her toes…

As the laughter and the frivolous exchange left her breathless…

As she wished with everything in her that he had obeyed his first inclination and kissed her—passionately.

She might have missed out on the unexpected lifting of her heart and spirits, of the giddy, humor-induced tears that even now she wiped from beneath her eyes. Might have missed out on knowing the full extent of his unexpected mirth and flair for the farcical.

Might have missed out on how so very, very easy it was to converse with him, despite their short acquaintance.

But she would not have missed out on his kiss. Not for any of that.

Knowing that she had, uncertain whether the moment would present itself again, left a strange and gaping hollow in her chest.

A KISSING QUANDARY

Unable to sleep,unwilling to face his guest after their near-but-not-quite physical encounter, despite the hollow in his gut that reminded him he’d skipped dinner, Brier waited until hearing the clock chime eleven before he roused his sorry self from the disarrayed bedding and pulled his shoes back on—never having undressed in the first place, just flopping backward on the bed, forearm thrown over his eyes and a grimace adorning his lips the last hours…

As he revisited those precious moments with not-loose Lucinda, of the piercing blue eyes he’d catalogued the first time she’d ventured forth today—their brilliant, country-sky hue as firmly entrenched upon his senses as her scent. As her vibrant spirit.

In truth, he couldn’t help but wish she were. Loose, that was. “And damn me for the thought.”

Not since his dear Alice had he exchanged witticisms so freely with any female not a relation. Not once, in the last nine-plus years (or realistically,eightyears, given that first year of deep, deep mourning, the days—and nights—of grief so acute he wondered at times if he would ever bluster his way through) had he longed to lock his lips against another’s.

But now?

The minutes that had crept by since his escape—and that’s what it was, he, a grown man,fleeingfrom desire. The interminable minutes that had both passed by in a flash yet yawned with excruciating slowness as he relived every nuance since the bedraggled package had first burst through his door and through his customary self-possession.

“Shredded that, she has.”