It was a difficult thing to achieve tonight, her hands were trembling so. '"Alas, they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.' " His voice moved over her skin like honey, the whiskey-rough sound of it shaping Coleridge's words into secret meanings and subtle seductions. Her burned palm throbbed in time to his cadence. He should be an actor, she thought, marveling at the ease with which he formed the words and worked the rhythms. But then, he was an actor, she reminded herself. Strangely the grim thought didn't help distance her from his words. It had been a horrible idea to let him read. She blamed her uncle for suggesting it, though she had agreed readily enough. But how could she have known Conor would pick Coleridge—why should she suspect that he would even know the most romantic of the poet's stories? Christabel. It had been her favorite as a young, romantic girl. A foolish girl, she amended quickly.
