Page 52 of How the Earl Entices

But once this was all over, once he was exonerated and came to realize exactly who she was, how would he look at her then?

The muscles in his back flexed as he set down the mug to reach for the razor and tested its edge on his thumb. Finding it sharp, he lifted the blade to his face, then hesitated as he tried to find the best angle against his cheek.

Thatbrought her out of her reverie. “When was the last time you shaved yourself?”

“Years,” he mumbled, trying not to move his jaw. “Most likely when I was still in the army.” He gritted his teeth and took a tentative swipe—

“Stop!” With a sigh of exasperation, she held out her hand. “Let me do that before you cut off an ear.”

He arched a brow, his manly pride clearly offended. “I’m quite capable of shaving myself.”

She shot him a dubious look and gestured at the remnants of the wounds she’d stitched up on his shoulder and thigh. “Haven’t you shed enough blood recently?” Snatching the razor away from him, she pointed at a wooden chair by the window. “Sit.”

Conceding that she was right, he sat and leaned back, tilting his face into the air the way he surely did for his valet. She applied more lather to his jaw.

He eyed her nervously. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Well, last month I scraped all the hair off a pig’s head we’d planned on making into soup.” She raised the blade. “In my experience, there’s not much difference between a dead pig and an earl.”

He grabbed her wrist and stilled her hand, the blade an inch from his throat.

Slowly, his gaze lifted to meet hers. His face remained carefully stoical, but amusement shined in his eyes. “Try not to cut me into bacon, will you? I think my arse might already be cooked.”

A soft laugh spilled from her.

He smiled, a lazy and relaxed grin that warmed low in her belly. Then he let go of her wrist, eased back in the chair, and closed his eyes. It was a posture of complete trust.

“How did you learn to do this?” he mumbled, careful not to move as she carefully scraped the blade across his cheek, swiping away both lather and beard in slow, short strokes.

“My father taught me.” She smiled at the memory, which now seemed like a lifetime ago. “I would shave him in the mornings before he dressed or for any special event.”

His brow wrinkled with a small frown. “Didn’t he have a valet?”

She paused in her strokes of the razor, debating how much she should tell him. More than endangering her true identity, what she revealed would be a blow to her pride. “He had to dismiss his man when we ran out of money.”

He cracked open one eye to look up at her. “How?”

“How does anyone go bankrupt? Too much property to maintain, bad business investments, falling wool prices, drought…” She shrugged a shoulder as if losing the fortune of six generations was an everyday occurrence. Yet she was surprised that talking about this to Ross came so easily and, for once, without the bitterness or anguish the memories of that time had always roused before. “We sold whatever we could, let the bank foreclose on whatever we couldn’t, and scaled back our lives, which meant that most of the servants were let go. After all, there’s no good justification for keeping a valet if you cannot pay your rent.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen.” She brushed her fingertips across his cheek, to feel his skin in the wake of the blade and gauge the quality of the shave. Warm, soft, so very smooth…“Anyway, it was only for two years. Once I married, Papa came to live with us, and he was assigned a footman to serve as his valet.”

He stiffened, not enough to be visible, but she felt it beneath her hands. “You were sixteen when you married?” He couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice. “Good God, you were young.”

“I was never young.” Her voice trembled with the raw honesty of that.

He said nothing, and his silence proved more unsettling than his gentle questioning.

Avoiding his gaze, she focused her attention on the shave. “I had to marry well in order for us to survive, and I couldn’t wait until I was eighteen. I had no dowry of any kind, but I was a gentleman’s daughter and well-schooled.” She wiped her fingertip at a patch of lather clinging to his upper lip and frowned softly. “And I was pretty.”

“Beautiful.”

She shivered heatedly. That he could give that compliment in such a matter-of-fact way, as if it were an irrefutable fact—the sun rose in the east, rains came in April…she was beautiful. She gave a dismissive laugh. “But you don’t remember me!”

“How is that even possible?” he asked carefully between small strokes of the razor, although she wasn’t certain if he took care because he didn’t want to move and be cut or because he was prying so unapologetically into her personal life when she held a razor at his throat. “I was a rogue of the worst sort back then. I made certain to claim the attentions of every beautiful woman I met. How did you slip through my fingers?”

“Because my husband stole me away.” With the pad of her left thumb, she pulled at his chin to smooth out the soft indention of his cleft, then carefully stroked the razor against his skin. “It was during my first ball and so early in the season, in fact, that it snowed that evening. My first waltz, too.” She smiled faintly at the memory. “You had requested it, but he was just arrogant and audacious enough to steal it from you. Not that you cared overly much. Rumors at the time claimed that you were quite happily involved with Lady Middleton.”