The Postilion (The Masqueraders #2) - S.M. LaViolette Page 0,140
Charles Merrick did not find it unmanning to socialize with a female.
Cordelia was waiting for the two girls to climb into the barouche when a shadow fell over her.
She turned to find a vast expanse of great coat-covered chest in front of her.
Cordelia looked up and up and up. The man was so big his towering form blocked the sun and left his face in shadow.
“I believe you dropped this.” The voice was a deep rumble and did not sound entirely English. The footman, Marcus, who’d been helping Jane settle into the carriage turned, saw the stranger, and puffed up like a belligerent rooster.
“Here then, what do you want?” he demanded, attempting to thrust himself between Cordelia and the other man and failing when the far bigger man did not budge.
Cordelia had always believed young Marcus to be large, but that was before he stood next to the giant. The stranger turned in profile to glance at the younger man and Cordelia gasped as sunshine illuminated his face. Heat like the blast from a furnace surged up her neck and into her face at her ill-bred response.
His full lips twisted into something that might have been a smile, although it was difficult to say given the way the muscles in his scarred cheeks pulled in such odd directions. The footman took a step back and the stranger’s gaze turned back to Cordelia, his black eyes burning into her.
“Is this yours?” he said again, this time lifting his hand between them.
She knew she should pay attention to whatever it was he was attempting to return, but she could not look away. Aside from the savage scars radiating out from both corners of his mouth his face was handsome in a stark, harshly hewn way. His nose was the regal falcon’s beak so prevalent in many of England’s oldest families—or at least it had been before it had been broken and poorly set, at least twice from what she could see. While she was too consumed with his face to study the rest of his person, she had the hazy impression he was dressed like a gentleman.
His most unusual characteristic after his scarred visage was his hair, which was black, wiry, and long enough to be worn in a queue. Outside of a few military units who still adhered to the custom it was unusual to see long hair on a man.
“Ma’am?” He cocked a jet-black eyebrow at her and she wrenched her gaze from his face and looked down to see he held a rose-pink glove in his huge hand. She blinked; his huge six-fingered hand.
“Aunt Cordy?” Jane poked her head outside the carriage. She looked from the giant to his hand and then back to his face. “Oh, that is my glove.” She reached out a small, bare hand and her sunny, open smile made Cordelia even more aware of her own rude gaping.
The stranger cut Jane an almost dismissive look and handed her the glove.
“Thank you, sir,” Jane said, pulling the glove onto her hand.
But his eyes were already back on Cordelia, who realized she had been holding her breath.
She exhaled and fixed a gracious smile on her mouth. “Yes, thank you, sir.” She was pleased that her voice sounded so much calmer than her flustered brain.
His nostrils flared slightly and he gave an abrupt nod and turned, his graceful movements a surprise for such a massive body.
He cleaved oncoming pedestrian traffic like some sort of human axe, the people he passed cutting him furtive, anxious glances.
And then he turned down an alley and disappeared.
“Goodness,” Cordelia murmured. She climbed into the carriage, her mind a chaotic whirl, and settled into the forward facing seat beside Melissa, who, she realized absently, was glaring out the opposite window to communicate her unhappiness at having been dragged away from Lord Madeley.
Jane leaned toward Cordelia, her blue eyes wide. “Did you see that, Aunt Cordy?”
She was formulating a gentle chastisement about ladies not commenting on the disfigurements of others, when her niece continued. “I have never met anyone other than me, Charles and Papa like this, have you?” She held up her right hand.
Cordelia looked at Jane’s six-fingered hand, grateful she had misjudged Jane’s interest in the stranger. She shook her head and sat back against the plush velvet squabs, oddly exhausted by the brief encounter.
“No, Jane, I haven’t.”
***
John waited until he’d turned into the alley to look at the small square of embroidered linen in his hand, C. F. P.