Winter's Woman (The Wicked Winters #9) - Scarlett Scott Page 0,16
find something—anything—she could say, to allay the damage she had done.
“Forgive me, Mr. Winter. I did not intend to—”
“No need to apologize. I ain’t a fancy lord. I can’t read. There’s no schooling for bastards raised in the East End to Covent Garden whores.”
There was no anger in his voice, and yet she still flinched. “I am sorry, Mr. Winter.”
“I ain’t.” His lip curled. “Read to me if you like, Lady Evangeline. Or don’t. Time is wasting.”
A hollowness blossomed in her heart, spreading. “I could teach you.”
He stared at her, once more solemn and silent.
“To read,” she elaborated, feeling foolish and yet needing to continue. To make amends. To erase the damage she had so rashly done. “I could teach you to read, Mr. Winter. Whilst we are both trapped here with little else to entertain us, it may prove an excellent diversion.”
“Is that what I am to you, milady?” he growled. “Entertainment? A diversion?”
“No.” She shook her head, needing him to understand for reasons she did not dare comprehend. “I want to teach you, if you wish to learn.”
“I don’t need the charity of a duke’s daughter.”
“It is not charity,” she bit out, frustrated with him, with herself. “I want to teach you, if you wish it. And in return, you may teach me a skill unfamiliar to me. Think of it as an even exchange between the two of us.”
The two of us.
How those words lingered. How the thought lingered. Her cheeks went hotter still, and yet she refused to avert her gaze. To look away. To surrender. She held his stare. Blue burned into her, bluer than the summer sky. He was astoundingly handsome, Mr. Devil Winter, and Evie had never been more aware of that fact than now.
“You want me to teach you a skill,” he said, doubt dripping from his baritone.
Did she? The prospect seemed ill-advised. Dreadfully so, as Mr. Winter teaching her anything would require a great deal more time spent together. So, too, her teaching him how to read.
And yet, the notion of spending more time with him did not perturb her in the least.
“Yes.” Her answer left her before she could think better of it. “I will teach you to read, and you teach me a skill of your choice.”
A wicked grin curved his lips.
Good heavens, when Devil Winter smiled, he was lethal. He stole her breath. She did not think she had ever seen a man as irresistibly, magnetically attractive.
“What if the skill I choose is not proper, milady?” he asked.
Heat flared in her belly, between her thighs, telling her she would not mind.
However, she fixed him with her most disapproving stare. “Mr. Winter.”
“Knife fighting?”
She blinked. “I cannot imagine I would require such a skill.”
“Pistol shooting? Fisticuffs?” he carried on.
“Whatever you wish, Mr. Winter,” she relented, because she felt she owed him that much.
“Anything?”
There was a distinctively wicked note in his voice.
Everything, she longed to say.
More heat slid through her. She could not seem to keep her gaze from his lips. They were so full and thick. Tempting.
Nay! What was she thinking?
“Milady?”
His question sliced through her tumultuous thoughts. She forced her eyes away from his mouth. “Any skill you wish to teach me, Mr. Winter, as long as it is suitable for a lady.”
There. He could not misconstrue her words.
Even if she wanted him to.
He nodded. “An even exchange. Whittling. That is what I shall teach you, Lady Evangeline.”
For some reason, she wished he would call her Evie. But she wisely kept that thought to herself. They had crossed enough boundaries as it was this evening.
“Whittling, Mr. Winter?” she asked.
“I can carve almost anything you’d wish from a hunk of wood.”
“A snowflake?” she suggested.
“Aye.” He nodded. “I could make a snowflake with ease, and I can teach you to carve one as well, if you like.”
“Yes. I would like that very much, Mr. Winter.” She smiled at him. “You see? An even exchange.”
He shrugged and maintained his stony silence.
Leaving her with no recourse save to continue reading where she had left off. She took up the volume of Shakespeare once more. “O, I have bought the mansion of a love…”
Chapter Five
Lady Evangeline Saltisford teaching him to read was Devil’s idea of hell.
She hovered at his elbow, her nearness filling his head with fire. The scent of ripe apple would forever give him a cockstand from this moment forward. Her finger traveled slowly over the page, moving beneath the letters he was supposed to be reading.
At the moment, he could not concentrate