Dangerous in Diamonds - Madeline Hunter [63]
“Allow me to remove your fears about your fate, Mrs. Joyes. Should I conclude that you can no longer use that property, I will move you to another that is at least as good, and even construct another greenhouse for your use.”
She had not expected that. He managed to astonish her still, sometimes. She gazed down at her hands in her lap while she accommodated what this abrupt generosity did to her.
The weight of worrying about The Rarest Blooms drained away, leaving her almost empty with its passing, since it had preoccupied her so much. The breeze sifting through the tent seemed to enter her heart with its cool, light flow.
This promise was not a small thing. True, she would have to reestablish the gardens, so it was not as perfect a solution as staying where she was. However, suddenly the future stretched securely and sure, not like a path lost in the near distance in a dank mist.
All of her plans resurrected, now that they could, exciting her. Moving her. Her immediate plans, and even the special ones for the future that had been little more than dreams for years. He had no idea what he had just given her, of course. A man with his privilege and wealth would never understand how just knowing one had a permanent home could affect everything in one’s life.
His boots moved back. He leaned toward her. His hand appeared on the table near her, then left. A small box now rested in front of her, opened. Inside it, two stunning diamond ear bobs rested on a bed of velvet. They flashed in the low light.
“You are too generous,” she said, carefully. “You have already given me a great gift with your reassurance. To add these is too much.”
“These are old gifts, not from today. They are only being delivered today.”
“I cannot accept them. Please do not be insulted.” She truly did not want to offend him right now, and not only because he had taken this weight from her soul.
“I am not insulted, but you have already accepted them. Remember? You certainly did not refuse them.”
“I understand how you may have misunderstood my silence when you mentioned them. However, I am not befuddled by wine this evening.”
“You were not befuddled on the barge.”
“I was thoroughly befuddled. Foxed. I would have never, ever been so . . . wicked, otherwise.”
“Nonsense. You loved being wicked. I know of what I speak, so do not try to be a fraud with me. I am a connoisseur of inebriation and wickedness, and you were not too much the first to be ignorant of embracing the latter. You were pleasantly relaxed but not thoroughly foxed.”
She felt her face warming. “A gentleman would allow a lady her excuses, it seems to me.”
“Fine. If you require wine to have an excuse, I will pour you some.”
“No!”
He just waited for more. He watched her in that seductive way he could call up at will, where nothing ostensibly changed, but it was just there, in the air, the appeal that led a woman to think of him in sensual terms. There should be a law against a man being able to do that. She felt her armor falling off, item by item, under that gaze.
She would try honesty first. He had been sympathetic today, so far. He might be still.
“I believe that you have misunderstood, due to the wine and my bad behavior, and that you now think . . . well, you assume that with these diamonds that . . .”
He just looked at her. He did not show any inclination to help her by showing he understood the rest. He just let her twist in the wind at the end of her words.
“It would be most unwise for me to be befuddled again, whether by wine or diamonds. I do not choose to be wicked with you anymore.”
No insult showed in his expression. Rather, she saw curiosity claim him. That could be more dangerous, she knew.
He dropped his elbow on the table, propped his chin on his hand, and considered her. “What an interesting woman you are. It is not shyness that makes you refuse me on all counts, I do not think. Or lack of desire. Do not protest that point, please. I will go to France and enter a monastery if I cannot recognize desire in a woman by now. As for your