A Kiss of Lies by Bronwen Evans

names.” He didn’t give her a chance to protest. “You don’t appear to be wearing your glasses this evening, Sarah.” She stared at him with mouth open.
    Her eyes flashed to deep midnight blue. “I don’t need them for anything but reading.” She added in a haughty voice, “It would have been polite to ask if I minded before addressing me by my given name.”
    He tried to keep the humor from resonating in his voice. “But you don’t, do you?”
    Her mouth widened into a stunning smile that took his breath away. “I don’t think it would matter to you if I did.”
    It was a surprising response. Almost as if she was flirting with him. The blood heated in his veins. He regarded her with a critical masculine eye, trying to divorce himself from his body’s raging response to her femininity. Though she looked barely in her twenties, she had already been married. She was obviously experienced when it came to men—and experienced in parleying with them. He’d also seen little indication of servility in her behavior; in fact, he perceived almost an inbred arrogance, as if her intelligence gave her rights above her station. And her well-bred accent was unmistakably not that of a menial.
    The slender hands and fine, silky smooth skin suggested good bloodlines. Perhaps, unbeknown to her, she was the Duke of Hastings’s by-blow. The Duke was known to have a few illegitimate offspring. Perhaps that was why she had been raised by one of the Duke’s servants and educated with the Duke’s daughter.
    “What was it like growing up in the Duke’s household?” The question was unexpected and took them both by surprise. Her soft gasp told him it was inappropriate, but he badly wantedto know more about her.
    “It seems a lifetime ago now. A far happier time …” Then she clamped her mouth shut, as if she’d said too much.
    Christian surveyed Sarah speculatively. So she’d been unhappy in her life. That confirmed the suspicion he had after her comment yesterday about not wishing to remarry: her marriage had not been pleasant. He was a bastard for being so presumptuous in his plans for her seduction. If he wooed her, took his time in seducing her, treated her like a princess—a process he’d been an expert at before his injuries—then maybe she’d overlook his scars.
    Christian waited until the meal had been served before continuing. “You have recently been unhappy?”
    As if a curtain were closing on a play, her face emptied of all emotion. “My husband is dead. So yes, I have been unhappy.”
    “If you don’t mind my asking, how did he die?”
    “I do mind, actually. It brings up bad memories.” She seemed to catch herself at his stunned silence. She turned to him with a false smile. “I’d rather hear engaging tales of your life as a Libertine Scholar, while you were studying at Oxford.” In a dream-filled voice she added, “It must have been a wonderful experience, all that learning.”
    “And seduction,” he added, wanting to set her mind down the path he wished it to take.
    She actually giggled. “Yes, I heard you cut quite a swath through the ladies.”
    “Not so much now,” Christian stated in a tone curiously devoid of feeling.
    “Rubbish. You’re a handsome gentleman in his prime.”
    He sat in shocked silence for a second, thinking it was a cruel tease. He stared at her intently. To his surprise, Sarah really appeared to have meant what she said. “Not with this disfigurement, for my face repulses women.”
    Sarah gave him a startled look. His face did not repulse her. Her chief feeling when she regarded the raw scars was regret—regret that something so aesthetically pleasing should have been marred so terribly. To her, Christian looked exactly as she remembered him, a strikingly beautiful, virile tower of masculinity.
    Softly she uttered, “How can an injury received in honor, in defense of England, be repulsive? You are still a very handsome man.”
    His eyes bored into her, making