The Secret Wallflower Society - Jillian Eaton Page 0,19
gloves she felt oddly naked), Calliope started to say no, but the word caught on her lips at the last second and somehow turned into a different question. A question she had no right to ask, but surely it wouldn’t be any more rude or forward than knocking him to the ground, and having already done that…
“What’s your name?” She resisted the urge to nibble on a fingernail, an awful habit that had plagued her since childhood and had succeeded in turning her knuckles purple and blue on more than occasion after Lady Shillington got done rapping them with a wooden spoon.
His piercing eyes blinked. Then blinked again. “My name?” he repeated, scowling at her as if she’d just asked him for one of his innermost secrets. “Why does that concern you?”
“It doesn’t. I mean…it does. I mean…” If Helena were here, she would have said something witty and charming. Something that would have cleared the formidable storm clouds from the stranger’s countenance and caused him to smile. Calliope very much wanted to see what he looked like with a smile. But she wasn’t witty, or charming, and the best she could manage was a helpless shrug. “I’d like to know the name of the man responsible for saving me.”
For some reason, that only caused his scowl to worsen.
“I did not save you,” he snarled.
“You did,” Calliope insisted. “Were you not walking beneath the tree at the precise moment I fell, I would have landed on the ground. I could have broken my arm, or my leg, or worse.”
He took one step back, then another. Happening to spy the pelisse she’d stuffed behind the tree, he stalked over and picked it up. “Get dressed. If someone sees you without shoes or a hat, they’re going to start asking questions.” He looked pointedly at her. “I don’t like questions.”
No, she could see that he didn’t.
Kneeling down, she hastily put on her stockings and shoes, then slipped into her gloves. But when she went to pull on her bonnet she realized with some dismay there were still leaves in her hair, some of which she couldn’t reach.
“Would you mind?” she asked hesitantly before she turned her back to him, the bonnet clutched between her hands. For a moment she was afraid her dark hero was simply going to walk away. But with an annoyed hiss of breath he took an angry swipe at her hair, and she couldn’t help but wince at the rough handling.
The small, involuntary motion seemed to give him pause, for when he went to dislodge a leaf that was snarled in the heavy curls at the back of her neck his touch was noticeably gentler. Calliope gasped when his knuckles brushed against her bare skin, and his arm stilled.
“Does that hurt?” he inquired gruffly.
“N-no,” she whispered. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Despite the bitterness in his gaze, she could feel the heat radiating off of him, proving her handsome stranger wasn’t quite as cold as he’d like her to believe. A few more soft tugs and her hair was finally free of leaves.
“There.” He was standing so close his breath stirred the fine wisps behind her right ear. Goose pimples broke out all up and down her arms, making her grateful she’d chosen to wear a long-sleeved dress. “I believe that’s all of them. You’d do well to stop climbing trees, Lady…”
“Miss,” she corrected as she slowly spun around to face him. He towered a good eight inches above her diminutive frame and she would have found his size formidable if not for the tiniest glimpse of vulnerability she saw in the hitch of his shoulder and the tightly drawn line of his mouth. Hurt recognized hurt, and it was his pain that drew her to him even when his anger should have sent her fleeing in the opposite direction. “Miss Calliope Haversham.”
“The muse of eloquence and poetry,” he murmured.
“T-that’s right,” she managed to stammer as her pulse began to flutter erratically. Not many people knew her name’s significance. They only thought it slightly strange, as they thought her slightly strange. “My father was a Greek scholar.”
She felt a slight tug, and looked down to see the stranger had pulled her bonnet from her grasp. Wordlessly he placed it on her head, his thumbs tracing the delicate contours of her jaw as he unfurled the satin ribbons and, while she held her breath, tied them in a bow beneath her chin.
“That’s better.” His voice was deeper than it had been a