A Lady's Dream Come True - Grace Burrowes Page 0,3

perfect complement to a strong nose, full lips, and swooping brows. Her features had a rare symmetry and came together in ideal proportions. Brows, chin, jaw, cheeks… All the structures of a human face were presented in her physiognomy on the balancing edge between grace and strength, beauty and perfection.

She was, quite simply, stunning. So lovely to look at that, for a moment, Oak forgot he was wearing only a towel, forgot she was his employer, and forgot that he stood gaping at her in the middle of a chilly corridor.

He’d heard her laugh out on the cart track, heard her whoop with glee, though now she was utterly composed, inspecting rather than gawking.

“I owe you a favor, Mr. Dorning,” she said, lowering the candle. “You extracted my gig from the muck and spared Dante and me a long, chilly walk home. For that reason, I will promise never to mention to another soul the circumstances of this meeting.”

He could not tell if she was teasing him, but he believed she’d keep her word, and thank God for that, because his brothers would never stop laughing if they learned of this encounter.

“I don’t suppose you might forget the circumstances of this meeting, ma’am? Wipe them from memory, perhaps?”

He’d have to pass her to return to his room. Her smile, so slight, so devilish, suggested she knew that.

She approached and handed him the candle. “When I am an old woman who hums under her breath to the distraction of all who must endure my company, I will still recall the sight of you clad in only a towel.” She made a slow inspection of his chest, his arms, his shoulders, his face. “And the memory will make me smile. Good evening, Mr. Dorning. I’ll see you at breakfast, though lamentably for me, somewhat less of you, I trust. One wouldn’t want such a fine specimen to come down with a lung fever.”

She sauntered off into the darkness, and Oak remained in the corridor, sorting through his thoughts. He could not recall anybody—male or female—regarding him with such frank appreciation. The attention was unnerving, but also gratifying in an odd way.

And besides that lingering sense of gratification, he had the artist’s aching need to render on paper something he’d experienced mostly through his visual senses—but not entirely. A hint of cinnamon hung in the air, a throb of awareness lingered such as a man felt toward a woman who had impressed him viscerally.

“That smile,” he murmured, gathering up his toweling and returning to his sitting room. “That knowing, impish, female…”

When three footmen arrived to deal with the tub, Oak barely noticed. He sat swathed in towels and blankets on the sofa, trying to sketch Verity Channing’s smile.

Oak Dorning made an even stronger impression fully clothed than he did wearing only a towel—which ought not to have been possible.

Perhaps the difficulty lay in the fact that Vera had seen him nearly naked and knew that the lean torso clad in a lawn shirt and blue paisley waistcoat was wrapped in muscle. Those long legs were similarly powerful, and those shoulders, which filled out a brown morning coat to perfection, could heft a gig from deep mud.

Worst of all, though, the man had been able to carry on a coherent conversation in a situation that ought to have left any mere mortal awash in mortification. What sort of upbringing produced such savoir faire?

And from what progenitor had he acquired eyes the hue of bluebells blooming in shade?

“Mrs. Channing, good morning.” Mr. Dorning bowed over her hand as she sat at the head of the breakfast table. “You are looking well this morning.”

While you are looking dressed. “Mr. Dorning, help yourself to the offerings on the sideboard and have a seat. I trust you slept well?”

“Quite. And yourself?”

He looked well rested and exceedingly self-possessed, but then, artists were generally nonchalant about nudity, a skill Vera had never acquired.

“Storms make me nervous,” she said. “I once saw a tree struck by lightning. A young oak in all its wet leafy splendor one moment, then illuminated brighter than day the next.”

He collected a plate from the table and went to the sideboard. “Did the tree survive?”

“No. At first, I thought my eyes must have deceived me, for there was no fire, but a few moments later, the highest branch was in flames despite the rain. The tree was consumed from within.” An oddly disturbing sight, for there had been no helping that tree, no saving it as