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“Very well.” He smiled, a lazy masculine sort of smile. “What, then, am I permitted to ask you?” “Nothing, really.”  “Nothing at all?”
“I suppose I might be induced to tell you that my favorite color is green, but beyond that I shall leave you with no clues to  my identity.” “Why so many secrets?”
“If I answered that,” Sophie said with an enigmatic smile, truly wanning to her role as a mysterious stranger, “then that would  be the end of my secrets, wouldn’t it?”
He leaned forward ever so slightly. “You could always develop new secrets.”
Sophie backed up a step. His gaze had grown hot, and she had heard enough talk in the servants’ quarters to know what that meant. Thrilling as that was, she was not quite as daring as she pretended to be. “This entire night,” she said, “is secret enough.”
“Then ask me a question,” he said. “I have no secrets.” Her eyes widened. “None? Truly? Doesn’t everyone have secrets?”
“Not I. My life is hopelessly banal.” “That I find difficult to believe.”
“It’s true,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve never seduced an innocent, or even a married lady, I have no gambling debts, and my parents were completely faithful to one another.”
Meaning he wasn’t a bastard. Somehow the thought brought an ache to Sophie’s throat. Not, of course, because he was legitimate, but rather because she knew he would never pursue her—at least not in an honorable fashion—if he knew that  she wasn’t.
“You haven’t asked me a question,” he reminded her. Sophie blinked in surprise. She hadn’t thought he’d been serious.  “A-all right,” she half stammered, caught off guard. “What, then, is your favorite color?”
He grinned. “You’re going to waste your question on that?”
“I only get one question?”
“More than fair, considering you’re granting me none.” Benedict leaned forward, his dark eyes glinting. “And the answer is blue.”
“Why?” he echoed.
“Yes, why? Is it because of the ocean? Or the sky? Or perhaps just because you like it?”
Benedict eyed her curiously. It seemed such an odd question—why his favorite color was blue. Everyone else would have taken blue for an answer and left it at that. But this woman—whose name he still didn’t even know—went deeper, beyond  the whats and into the whys. “Are you a painter?” he queried. She shook her head. “Just curious.” “Why is your favorite color green?” She sighed, and her eyes grew nostalgic. “The grass, I suppose, and maybe the leaves. But mostly the grass. The way  it feels when one runs barefoot in the summer. The smell of it after the gardeners have gone through with their scythes and trimmed it even.”
“What does the feel and smell of grass have to do with the color?”
“Nothing, I suppose. And maybe everything. I used to live in the country, you see ...” She caught herself. She hadn’t meant to tell him even that much, but there didn’t seem to be harm in his knowing such an innocent fact. “And you were happier there?” he asked quietly. She nodded, a faint rush of awareness shivering across her skin. Lady Whistledown must never have had a conversation with Benedict Bridgerton beyond the superficial, because she’d never written that he was quite the most perceptive man in London. When he looked into her eyes, Sophie had the oddest sense that he could see straight into her soul. “You must enjoy walking in the park, then,” he said. “Yes,” Sophie lied. She never had time to go to the park. Araminta didn’t even give her a day off like the other servants received.
“We shall have to take a stroll together,” Benedict said.
Sophie avoided a reply by reminding him, “You never did tell me why your favorite color is blue.”
His head cocked slightly to the side, and his eyes narrowed just enough so that Sophie knew that he had noticed her evasion. But he simply said, “I don’t know. Perhaps, like you, I’m reminded of something I miss. There is a lake at Aubrey Hall—that  is where I grew up, in Kent—but the water always seemed more gray than blue.” “It probably reflects the sky,” Sophie commented. “Which is, more often than not, more gray than blue,” Benedict said with a laugh. “Perhaps that is what I miss— blue skies and sunshine.”
“If it weren’t raining,” Sophie said with a smile, “this wouldn’t be England.”
“I went to Italy once,” Benedict said. “The sun shone constantly.”
“It sounds like heaven.”
“You’d think,” he said. “But I found myself missing the rain.”
“I can’t believe it,” she said with a laugh. “I feel like I spend half my life staring out the window and grumbling at the rain.”
“If it were gone, you’d miss it.”
Sophie grew pensive. Were there things in her life she’d miss if they were gone? She wouldn’t miss Araminta, that was for certain, and she wouldn’t miss Rosamund. She’d probably miss Posy, and she’d definitely miss the way the sun shone through the window in her attic room in the mornings. She’d miss the way the servants laughed and joked and occasionally included  her in their fun, even though they all knew she was the late earl’s bastard.
But she wasn’t going to miss these things—she wouldn’t even have the opportunity to miss them—because she wasn’t going anywhere. After this evening—this one amazing, wonderful, magical evening—it would be back to life as usual.