‘How do you intend teaching me these arts of fascination?’ Jessica rescued her hand from Gareth’s grip and tried to make her voice as businesslike and brisk as possible. He sank back in his chair, recognising her capitulation and, she could only hope, not seeing the churning mix of terror and anticipation behind her question.
‘It will be easier for you once you have your new hairstyle and your new clothes, I imagine. I will send a note around to my cousin Bel and ask her to call tomorrow and take you under her wing.’
‘Will she agree?’ Jessica wondered. ‘It is a scandalous deception. She might well disapprove.’ He had not answered her question, she noted. One faculty life as a governess taught you was to recognise evasion when you saw it. Lord Standon might not be a naughty eight-year-old with a toad in his pocket, but in her opinion all males of whatever age were that boy under the skin.
‘Bel? I suspect not. She was first married to Lord Felsham, who was generally accounted to be the most boring man in the ton. When she was barely out of mourning she encountered Ashe Reynard, Viscount Dereham, who was just back from Waterloo. By all accounts it was a lively courtship. I have no idea of the details, but our highly respectable bluestocking of a cousin Miss Elinor Ravenhurst, who is a great friend of Bel’s, blushes whenever she mentions Reynard.’
‘It would be a relief if she does help us, because I do not feel we should involve Lady Maude in this.’ Jessica waited, trying her best stare to see if Gareth was going to answer her question about her lessons in flirtation.
‘I agree. Tell me, Jessica, why are you regarding me as though I have not finished my Latin exercises?’
‘I am waiting for an answer to my question about how you intend to teach me—and I fear you may be evading one.’
‘Very well. This is not something I have attempted before, believe me, but I will try. May I be frank?’
‘Ye…s,’ she responded, suspicious. His lordship was studying her closely. She felt uncomfortable meeting his gaze, but it was equally unnerving trying to find something innocuous to look at. Her immediate field of view seemed very full of large, disturbing, male. She settled upon his neckcloth and attempted to regard it tranquilly.
‘You are a very contained person, are you not?’ Startled, she nodded, the neckcloth and its intricate folds forgotten. ‘You sit very still, you occupy your own space and do not intrude into that of other people. You communicate with your voice and with the force of your argument, not with touch, or teasing or cajoling.’
‘Yes. That is appropriate to my role in life.’ That stillness and self-control had been hard-won, but necessary.
‘But not to your new one. You are to become a creature of the senses—all five of them. You want to touch silks and skin. You want to taste champagne and kisses. Your eyes will long for luxury, your ears for flattery, you will want to move within clouds of scent from lavish flowers and from exotic perfume. You will talk with your hands, with your eyes, with your laughter. Instinct will appear to dominate over thought.’
‘Appear?’ She felt breathless, her mind reeling from thoughts of silk, skin, kisses, perfume.
‘Underneath you will be thinking very hard indeed, because you will be acting, and the woman you are portraying will be thinking hard too. She is not a heedless flirt, she is a determined adventuress.’ He leaned forward, his forearms on his knees. ‘Unless we can release the inner hedonist in you.’
‘I am not sure I have one,’ Jessica confessed. Hedonism required money, time and self-indulgence. The first two she could not afford, the third she dare not permit. Until now.
‘In that case we will take one sense at a time and work on it. Which shall we start with? Not taste, for you have just had your supper, and not smell, because this fire seems intent on smoking. I shall have to think about hearing a little. Sight—or touch, Jessica?’
‘You choose.’ She threw the question back as fast as if this were a ball game and the ball red hot.
‘Oh, no. You must also learn to be demanding and capricious. You will always be the one to choose, whatever the question.’
Sight sounded safest. It was probably the one he expected her to say. ‘Touch,’ she decided, her eyes meeting his defiantly.
* * *
He had been sure she would decide upon sight, an apparently safe sense, although he was having ideas about that. Inwardly Gareth gave Miss Gifford points for courage.
‘Close your eyes.’ She stiffened immediately, her fingers curling tight around the arms of the chair. ‘Do you not trust me, Jessica? We are not going to get very far with this if you do not.’
Clear green eyes looked into his. For long seconds he watched her thinking. ‘Yes,’ she decided finally, her mouth quirking into a rueful smile. ‘Although quite what I trust you to do I am not certain.’ The long lashes that contrasted so piquantly with her tightly bound hair lowered, feathering her cheeks and she waited, blind, outwardly tranquil. Except for her death grip on the leather arms.
‘Stroke the arms of the chair,’ Gareth said, keeping his voice low. A frown line appeared between her brows, then she nodded and relaxed her fingers. ‘Tell me what you feel.’
‘It is smooth, warm from where my hands have been.’ She felt further down. ‘Cool here. It feels strong. Somehow I can tell it is thick.’ He waited while she explored further. ‘It is smoother here, where hands have rubbed; I can feel the grain lower down.’
Gareth felt in his pocket and pulled out the clean linen handkerchief his valet had placed there that morning. On the table beside him was a sample of heavy silk Maude had forgotten last time she had sat in this room. He leaned over and dropped both pieces of fabric into Jessica’s lap. ‘And these?’
She scooped them up in her cupped hands and rubbed with thumb and forefinger, then bent her head to bury her face in them. ‘That is cheating,’ Gareth said mildly and she raised her head and smiled in the direction of his voice.
‘Very well.’ She dropped the silk into her lap and concentrated on touching the linen. ‘Expensive, very fine Irish linen. I imagine one could see through it. But a strong, masculine feel.’ Her fingers found the white-ork monogram in the corner and rubbed gently. ‘Excellent work.’
‘And the other?’ He found he could not take his eyes off her face.
‘The silk? Beautiful. A dress weight, expensive again. I imagine it is coloured, although I have no idea why.’ She ran it through her fingers and sighed. ‘It is alive.’
‘Which would you prefer to wear?’ Gareth asked. Jessica frowned. She was thinking too much still, not feeling. ‘Next to your skin?’ he added outrageously, intent on shocking an instinctive reaction out of her.
Jessica gave a little gasp at his effrontery, but answered, as he had hoped, without reflection. ‘The silk. Utterly impractical, but like bathing in warm oil. See how it slides and slithers.’ Eyes still closed, she held it out to him and he took it, warm from her hands, and let it slip through his fingers. It was no longer possible, for some reason, to sit still. Gareth got to his feet, standing in front of the chair so close their toes nearly touched.
‘Will you stand up, Jessica?’
Obedient, she did as he asked. ‘You are standing very near.’ It was a matter-of-fact observation but he could sense the reserve behind it.
‘How can you tell?’
‘Your voice. And I can feel your—’ She swallowed, making the chaste muslin fichu veiling her throat move. ‘Your heat.’
Heat? Gareth felt suddenly as though he was burning up, the colour in his cheeks as high as that on Jessica’s. He dragged air down into his lungs and kept his voice