Page 44 of A Dare too Far

Had his body turned to stone? His muscles felt that bunched, that tight, that marble.

“Why not?”

Like marble, he did not speak.

“I see this conversation is to go the way of the laudanum.”

Without taking his gaze from hers, his fingers flew to the book, opened the pages, and he lifted it before his eyes. Only then did his gaze leave her and travel to the page.

I wonder by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we i’the seven sleepers’ den?

‘Twas so; But this, all pleasures fancies be.

If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desired, and got, ‘twas but a dream of thee.

He paused and looked at her, trying to gauge her reaction.

She seemed so alive she nearly vibrated. Her cheeks glowed, and her eyes were molten embers. The shawl slipped from her shoulders, and what skin it revealed on her neck, her shoulders, hummed a healthy, rosy pink. Her lips, her sumptuous lips, slightly open, seemed to beckon him without words.

“My,” she breathed. “That was…lovely.”

“You really liked it?”

“It was exquisite. I cannot describe how it made me feel.”

He thought he might be able to guess, and the guess made his trousers tight.

“It was Donne.”

“Pardon?” She blinked, her gaze sharpening.

“Philip Sidney did not write those words. Your favorite rakehell John Donne did.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You’re as bad as that poet, tricking me like that!”

“Not a trick. I’m merely making a point.”

“And what point is that? That I’m a dunce who knows no better?”

“No, Jane,” he said softly. “That people are not always what they seem to be.”

She straightened her shoulders. “I cannot argue that.” She slumped into her chair, the pink draining from her skin, the light dimming in her eyes.

“What has happened?” he demanded, unable to keep the bite from his tone. “You are not as…Janeas you usually are this evening.”

“And what does that mean, pray tell?”

He waved a hand in the air, rolling through the words in his head to find the correct ones. “Spirited. Determined.”

She stood abruptly and strode across the room and back, biting her thumb all the while. “How can I be spirited after… I do not think I should tell you.”