‘The most beautiful!’ She tried to draw her hands away, but he held on to them firmly.
‘It is not that you are not beautiful, Miss Gibson. I have already told you that you have many good features. Clear skin, speaking eyes and a perfectly acceptable mouth. Your problem, my dear, is, as you yourself have already pointed out, that you do not have what you call the “charisma” to attract the notice of a man such as myself. Though I would call it allure. Feminine allure. That elusive factor which draws men to some females like moths to a candle flame.’
She frowned. ‘You aren’t going to suggest I suddenly start apeing all those girls who flutter their eyelashes at men and say how clever they are, and agree with whatever nonsense they spout?’ She wrinkled her nose in disgust. ‘Even if I restricted my fluttering and fawning to you, I don’t think I could be very convincing...’
She faltered as he began to chuckle.
‘God, no! You must remain your own, refreshingly honest self at all times. Only a more feminine version of yourself.’
‘How can I become more feminine? You aren’t going to advise me to wear low-cut gowns and paint my face, I hope?’
‘That would be to make you look desperate,’ he replied drily. ‘As though you are out to snare any man who will throw the handkerchief your way. No, what I plan to do is make you aware of yourself as a woman. Only when you understand and embrace your own sexuality will other men understand what it is that attracts me to you.’
‘Embrace my s-s—’ She tugged her hands free, a tide of red sweeping over her cheeks. ‘What,’ she said primly, ‘exactly, are you suggesting?’
‘Do not look at me like that,’ he said frostily. ‘Do you think I intend to ravish you upon this sofa?’
‘N-no, but—’
‘No buts, Miss Gibson. Either you trust me to turn you into the kind of woman who can have a man panting after her with one glance, or you do not.’
He could teach her how to have a man panting after her with one glance? Was that even possible?
Yes. Yes, it was. Hadn’t she seen Miss Waverley bewitching Richard? And even Mildred had the mysterious power to draw men to her side, and keep them fascinated, even whilst holding them at arm’s length. She had thought it was simply that she was beautiful. But Lord Deben was saying there was more to it than that.
‘Do you trust me, Miss Gibson?’
She looked into his stern features. If she said she didn’t trust him, he would get up and walk out, she could tell.
‘If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t be sitting here in this room, on the sofa with you, with the door locked,’ she pointed out. ‘I just don’t really understand how...’
‘I know you don’t understand. That is why you must trust me. Let me teach you about your body and the power it has.’
‘Teach me about my body? How will that help?’
‘You really have no idea, do you?’ His eyes, which could sometimes look as hard as polished jet, softened to something she felt she could drown in.
‘If you were more aware of yourself as a woman, the power to attract a man’s notice would flow naturally from that.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Why was it becoming so difficult to draw breath? ‘Of course I am aware that I’m a woman.’
He shook his head, almost pityingly. ‘No. Miss Gibson, though you inhabit the body of a fully grown woman, you are still, in many ways, just a little girl.’
‘I am not!’
‘Oh, but you are. You wield none of the weapons that other women employ upon the battlefield of the ballroom. You walk and talk more like a man than a gently bred female of two and twenty summers.’
He laid one finger upon her lips when she opened her mouth to make an objection.
‘And, my dear, it is quite obvious to every experienced male that nobody has ever kissed those innocent lips.’
‘Oh, but they have. I mean, they did. I mean, of course I have been kissed!’
‘Not to any great effect,’ he said with a slight sneer. ‘It was obviously a fumbling boy, not a man that kissed you, or you would not appear so untouched.’