“If you’re going to say some idiotic thing about how you can’t eat dinner because a lady shouldn’t eat with a man, or some damned thing along those lines, just don’t. I’m starving. You’re hungry and tired. Furthermore, you’re not a lady right now, but in my employ, and I could eat with my butler if I wanted to.”
Before she decided whether she was more hungry than tired, or more tired than hungry, the innkeeper bustled in with a large covered salver, followed by two maids with china and cutlery.
After they laid the table, India didn’t think about it any longer. She and Thorn sat at the table and ate oyster stew, followed by roast beef, French beans, peas, and a very good cheese pie. She ate more than she’d eaten in days. She drank two glasses of wine, then sipped a third glass more slowly, as she watched Thorn eat more of everything.
“You have an impressive appetite,” she said, somewhat awed.
“As have you,” he said, working on another helping of peas. “I like a woman who doesn’t nibble like a goat.”
“Lala has a very charming figure,” she offered.
He looked up and grinned. He had lovely white teeth. “I know.”
She was beginning to feel owlish and drowsily content, so she put her elbows on the table. Even not having had a governess, she knew it was deeply improper. Actually, worse than that: maybe it was criminal.
Thorn wouldn’t care.
“I think you’ll be quite happy together.” She poured more wine for him, thought about it, and poured more for herself as well. “Will you tell me about growing up in East London?” she asked, propping up her head with one hand.
“It wasn’t fun,” he said. His voice dropped in register.
“I didn’t suppose it was fun. I imagined it was terrible. But I don’t know, which is why I asked.”
He had curious eyes, a gray that looked almost green in the lamplight. With a thick fringe of black lashes. “Why do you want to know?”
“Why not?” She took a sip of wine, feeling heat pool in her stomach. It was his fault for being so damned handsome. She pushed the thought away. “I am curious about any number of things. Almost every moment, I realize something else I don’t know. For example, I don’t know who Leonardo was, any more than I understood Rose’s French verbs.”
“No particular reason why you should know about Leonardo,” Thorn said. “He was an artist, though I don’t care about that. I’m interested in his inventions.”
He was looking down at what remained of the cheese pie as if he were about to take another piece, even though he’d already eaten three. India reached across and took it away. “You’ve eaten enough. You will grow fat.”
“I won’t get fat.” He growled it.
“You’ve probably grown a paunch from all the food you’ve just eaten,” she said, enjoying herself.
His eyes narrowed and he stood up wordlessly, pulled his shirt from his breeches, and bared his stomach.
India barely stopped her mouth from falling open. He looked like . . . like something. Like no man she’d ever seen. Not that she’d seen many men. But she knew they were soft around the middle, the same as she was. Thorn wasn’t. His torso was rippled with muscle under taut skin. Rather than white, it was sun-browned, and a little line of hair led straight into his waistband.
“I trust I have made my point,” he said, sitting down again. “Now I shall have a slice of strawberry tart with cream.” He cut the tart and took half for himself. He cut another quarter and put it before her. And then he poured thick cream on top of both plates.
India never ate sweets because she figured that there was about the right amount of her. Besides, Adelaide was convinced that dessert went straight to one’s breasts, and India was wary of becoming more bosomy than she already was. Speaking of which—speaking of whom?—her godmother must have gone to sleep wondering why she hadn’t returned for supper.
“Eat,” he commanded.
She ate. He poured more wine and she drank that too.
“You appeared astonished at the sight of my stomach,” he remarked, glancing at her from under his eyelashes. There was something sinful in his voice that made her feel muddled.
“If you look at the satyr’s waist from the side, very carefully, his torso is almost as rippled as yours,” India said.