Seize the Fire by Laura Kinsale Page B

artificial means. But it seems…" Her voice wavered a little. "…excessive—even in the cause of freedom—to ask you to spend your life with me, only for the purpose of influencing the course of the next year in a place that can have no meaning to you."
    "I like your eyebrows. They have character."
    She put her hand to her face. "Pardon me, but I…it's very difficult to bear being made into a jest. In this."
    "A jest! Of all the—" He lifted his eyes toward the ceiling and shook his head. "I'm afraid it'll seriously hamper my courting if you can't tell a jest from a compliment."
    "Well," she said on a desperate note, "I can't, you know! I've never understood the things other people find humorous. And saying my eyebrows have character doesn't seem very complimentary. It doesn't even make sense. How can eyebrows have character? So I must assume it was said in jest. If you had told me you thought I had character, or that my eyebrows were…pretty, then I should understand it to be a compliment."
    A silence followed her outburst. She stared down at her tightly clasped hands, then suddenly stood up and moved away, the brisk rustle of her skirts the only sound in the quiet. When she came to the tea table, she stopped, her back to the room, her hands still clinging together. She bowed her head, feeling miserably foolish to be speaking of such silly things when it was the fate of her nation at issue.
    The floorboards creaked. She felt him come close behind her: a warmth, a presence that made her stiffen with awareness.
    "You have remarkable character, Princess. Your eyebrows are lovely. Your chin is adorable and your eyes are gorgeous. Your figure is…utterly splendid. Just about too splendid, if I may be forgiven for saying so. It's been damned hard to remember I'm a gentleman." He put both hands on her shoulders and turned her around. "For God's sake, do you really think I'm here on some crack-brained philosophical principle?"
    Olympia moistened her lips. His hands on her shoulders kept her pressed back against the table; his body planted solidly in front of her prevented any move in that direction.
    It was all rubbish, of course, everything he said: kindly meant and terrifyingly sweet to hear. Olympia feared for how vulnerable she was to such nonsense, how often she'd tried to excise aristocratic vanities such as a concern for personal appearance from her soul. She was glad she wasn't beautiful; she was proud that her governess cared more for Olympia's wardrobe than she did herself. But sometimes, when she looked in the mirror at her round cheeks, her heavy brows and small mouth and ridiculously large eyes, all monstrously out of classical proportion, she longed with a shameful fierceness to have Julia's slender neck and perfect face.
    In the silence that roared in her ears he moved closer. He put his hands on her imperfect throat and lifted her imperfect chin and bent his head to her flawed and trembling lips.
    He kissed her.
    And she fell in love. Helplessly; hopelessly—a consummate disaster. She felt it happen while his mouth came against hers and his gloved fingers pressed into the tender skin behind her earlobes. It was something physical, a tangible wound, a terrible rent in the fabric of her life, as if her whole self had been tom from her body and replaced by something else entirely. Something that belonged not to her but to him.
    To her horror, that new, helpless, slavish self answered the kiss. She parted her lips beneath the pressure of his. Her fingers gave up their vehement hold on each other; they slid apart and flattened against his chest, opening and closing like a cat's paws. A little aching sound came from her throat.
    His hold slackened for an instant. Only an instant, and before Olympia could break away, his hands slid forward and locked together behind her nape. The warm rush of his breath touched her skin: uneven and quick as he kissed her eyes and forehead and the comers of her lips.
    "Princess," he