What exotic port of call?” She smiled. “Dover? Plymouth? Southampton?”
A glint of wariness cooled his eyes. “I don’t see why it matters.”
Strange, the abrupt change in him. “I thought that’s what one did when meeting a fellow countryman abroad,” she said. “Find out where they come from. If you know the same people.” When he continued to look at her guardedly, she demonstrated, “‘Oh, you’re from Manchester? Do you know Jane?’”
The chill in his blue eyes thawed, and he smiled. “Of course, Jane! Makes the worst meat pies. Dresses like a Anglican bishop.”
“So you do know her!”
They shared a laugh, two English strangers in the chaos of an Athenian market, and London felt within her a swell of happiness rising like a spring tide. As if in silent agreement, they continued to stroll together in a companionable silence. With a long-limbed, loose stride, he walked beside her. He hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his simple, well-cut waistcoat, the picture of a healthy young man completely comfortable with himself. And why shouldn’t he be? No man had been so favored by Nature’s hand. She realized that he hadn’t told her where he was from, but she wouldn’t press the issue, enjoying the glamour of the unknown.
His presence beside her was tangible, a continuous pulse of uncivilized living energy, as though being escorted by a large and untamed mountain cat that vacillated between eating her and dragging her off to its lair.
“How did you know I was from England?” she asked. “The vendor was speaking English to everyone.”
“Your posture. English ladies have a particular way of holding themselves, as though a disapproving governess was glaring at them.”
“Different than, say, a French or Greek lady?”
“There’s bundles more self-imposed Anglican morality in an Englishwoman’s stance. I am,” he added, with a slow, suggestive smile, “an avid connoisseur of the language of the body.”
“Of that, I have no doubt,” she said, dry.
His chuckle was low and velvet and very, very carnal. If he was unleashed on polite British society, virgin debutantes and genteel matrons would turn into Bacchae, tearing at their clothes and ripping apart anyone foolish enough to stand between themselves and the object of their desire. She felt much the same uncharacteristic urge.
London busied herself with pretending to admire a gold silk scarf at a booth. As she did this, she sent a cautious glance toward the beautiful English stranger. With a small, internal start, she realized that his stance only appeared to be negligent and easy. He was, in fact, vigilant, ready as if poised for movement. And his eyes, though glittering with a secret amusement, were never at rest. He watched the marketplace, keen as a blade. He was looking for someone.
But who? She dared not ask such an impertinent question, and didn’t know if she wanted the answer. There was something, the edge of a darkness, in him, or, at the least, a potential for danger. She wondered if he was armed. Travelers to Greece were advised to bring at least a revolver if they planned on leaving Athens. But this man’s strong body would be weapon enough.
“Is it within the rules to ask what brings you to Greece?” London asked.
“Never said there were any rules.” A small dimple appeared in the corner of his mouth. London wanted to touch it. Or, better yet, feel it with her lips.
“If there were,” she said, “you don’t play by them.”
He gave an unapologetic shrug. “Following rules means there’s no fun or pleasure in life.”
She was certain he had both in abundance. “And decorum? Responsibility?”
“Decorum stifles. Women, especially.”
London picked up the scarf and draped it around her shoulders, as a lady might at the ballet. “That sounds like a libertine’s well-practiced speech to lure women into dalliance.”
“There’s always truth in seduction. That’s why it works.” He stepped closer and loosened the scarf from her shoulders, then he gently wrapped it around her waist like a sash. She felt it like an embrace. His deft, long fingers tied the fabric into a decorative knot. “Much better. More Greek,” he murmured in approval.
London’s pulse sped at his nearness, yet she did not step away. “But what of responsibility?”
He gazed at her levelly, and in his clear aquatic eyes, she saw a steadiness of purpose that she had not anticipated. “I take my responsibilities seriously.”
“They must be the only things you take seriously,” she answered.
No mistaking the way he looked at her, how his gaze flicked down to her mouth and held there for more than a moment. “Try me, little troublemaker.”
She felt herself standing above the sea, the warm water beckoning her to plunge into its wet, welcoming depths, frolic in its waves. She wanted to jump. She was afraid of the height. “Sir, you are more dangerous than a Barbary pirate,” she said, after a breathless pause.
Again, he laughed, something he seemed to do readily. A bedroom laugh. Teasing. Intimate. And such a laugh made her body respond without thought. Her skin felt sensitive, and a molten heat gathered in her core. Oh, it had been a long time since a man touched her, and not a single half-hearted caress from Lawrence affected her as one laugh from this stranger did. She recalled how, moments earlier, his fingers had brushed her hand, and the strange, intense response even that minor contact had engendered.
“Know many Barbary pirates?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.
“I do, now.”
It was then that she realized something. All this time, he had been speaking to her as his equal. Granted, he was a devil of a flirt, but he did not seem to consider her female sex a liability. He talked truthfully, openly, without the polite phrases or evasions so common to the speech of every other man she knew. And when she answered him, it was as if she’d unlatched a little door inside herself and could meet him on the level ground, confident in herself.
“I think you are the dangerous one,” he said, “but you don’t know it yet.”
Again, their eyes caught and held. No, she was not imagining it. Something hot and knowing in their shared look. And that other thing, that tie that bound them in ways she did not understand.
“We should get back to the hotel, madam.” Sally’s voice was sharp. Ah, blast, London had almost forgotten about the chaperoning maid. But it truly was a marvelous thing to flirt with a devastatingly handsome man far from home. To pretend, for a moment or two, that she wasn’t esteemed gentleman and governmental adviser Joseph Edgeworth’s daughter, a paragon of English virtue.
London sighed and stepped back. As intoxicating as this stranger’s company was, she did have to go to the hotel. Father expected her. “All right. We’ll go.”
“Tell me the name of your hotel,” the stranger said. “I’ll call later tonight. We’ll share some hot…tea.”
“You know I can’t,” London said with reluctance. Probably no woman ever refused him. She could not blame them, but London’s careful deportment won out.
