Read Elise for Free Online Page B

it, Your Grace.”
    “You’ve a strange way of showing it, then.”
    “I beg—” Elise cut it off again. She really did say it too much.
    He grinned. The resultant blaze of fire through her chest frightened her, and there wasn’t a thing she could blame it on. She had to look away.
    “Don’t think I’m fey. I’m na’.”
    “Fey?” she asked the roses.
    “Sighted.”
    “Oh,” Elise replied, although she hadn’t the vaguest idea what he was talking about.
    “I doona’ think you do much that you do enjoy, although you playact like you do. You’re verra good, too. It’s hard to spot.”
    Elise frowned at what he said, and then she frowned at the plate being set before her, which contained several folded-over, thin slices of roast beef. She knew exactly how it would taste by her enhanced sense of smell, and then she got to frown at that, too.
    “I think you’re overstepping yourself,” she replied finally. The roast beef tasted just like she’d known it would, and Elise chewed thoughtfully on the four bites she allowed herself. Any more and she’d have trouble with the corset’s confinement.
    “I usually do,” he said beside her, as he devoured his own platter. “Get used to it.”
    “Good heavens, why?”
    He shrugged, and that movement in his tight jacket made the material go taut, defining sculpted shoulders for a moment, and then it was gone. Elise’s eyes flew wide, and she was afraid to breathe.
    “You asked for my company. You’ve got it.”
    “I never said—”
    “You know most people who say they enjoy a meal actually eat it,” he interrupted her, motioning to her unfinished serving.
    “I am eating it,” she replied, lifting her fork again.
    “Like I said before, you eat like a bairn.”
    “And you eat enough to kill a horse,” she replied, goaded into her own insult.
    His eyebrows rose again. “How do you expect to create healthy ones if you doona’ eat enough to support them?”
    “Healthy what?” Elise asked.
    “Bairns.”
    She was reeling in place, astonished that she still sat upright, twirling her dinner fork, and extremely amazed that not one of the other diners appeared to have heard anything Colin MacGowan was saying.
    “I believe I called you barbaric earlier, Your Grace. Allow me to embroider and refine that. When they invent the word, that is.”
    “I’m checking the market, dear lady. You’re on it. You’re making certain I take note of that. Very well, I am. I’m simply examining and testing the merchandise before the purchase. It’s impressively arrayed, too, I might add. It’s my prerogative, no?”
    “No. Unequivocally, irrevocably, and inescapably no. N. O. No. Never. No.” Her heart was pounding painfully against the little ribbon tie on the front of her silk chemise. She was afraid he’d spot it.
    “Then why this game?”
    “Game?” she asked.
    “The courtship game. I was beginning to think you were playing it. Then you deny it. Is that part of the game?”
    “The courtship game? I never thought of it—I mean, I never...” Elise stammered through her comment, and then put her fork down so the servants could remove her plate. She finished her words to the molded fruit sorbet that was being put in front of her. She didn’t dare look anywhere toward him. If she held her breath, counted to ten, and kept her voice low, she was ready to blurt out her secret, and then she was going to run, as fast and as far as she could. She started counting.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Counting to ten,” she replied without thinking.
    “Why? It’s na’ going to change things. You’re very good at the play of it. Very.”
    “The play of what?” she asked.
    “The courtship game. Intrigue. Witty remarks. Entrancing displays. Catching interest. Holding it. You catching mine. Literally.”
    Elise lost her inhaled breath, every bit of her nerve, and any ability to answer. Little needles of reaction felt like they were racing her body to reach her toes in