My Vocabulary Lesson

Let's face it. My vocabulary can suffer from bloat and dullness.

Back up, I'm revising a draft. Of course my vocabulary is a square peg in a round hole. Everything becomes a misfit when edits are underway. But, here are a few words I've had to replace to make my book easier to read for the market, which in this case is romance:

consecrated (There are four confessions in my story, go figure, those 17th Century French radicals!)
entombed (How about just inside or buried?)
umkempt (Seriously, I love this word, but maybe not so much. I kicked it aside, boot.)
absolution (Again, religion is a subtext of this time period.)
cordiality (Happy, duh.)
soirees (Fancy Nancy word for parties.)
cavort (It's short but a sure reader-stopper.)
wrest (I actually found this word twice. Could I have just had my character grab the damn thing?)
chiseled lintels affixed (All these words were right in a row; yes, I tell you, it's the architect I'm married to.)

Now I could go on, but I'll stop there and tell you my other dilemma (problem). I find that there are aspects to writing romance that burn me. They have to do with the exchanges the characters make in body language and facial expressions. I've tried to limit looks and gazes, but sometimes there aren't good replacements for those words. Interior dialogue does the trick sometimes, but when the guy wants the girl, hey, a little smoldering eye contact can't be substituted (replaced).