She sent him a look that almost seemed to be of approval. “A forest of animals would be lovely, thank you. And you would actually offer me a whisky, as if I were a man? That rates a hug, but I fear I don’t dare offer that in return.”
Staring at her kissable lips and vulnerable expression, Drew spoke before he thought. “I could use that hug aboot now.”
Fifteen
And there it was, Phoebe understood—temptation placed squarely on her doorstep, and her choice to accept or reject. Mr. Blair requested a hug. How long had it been since anyone had shown her any token of affection? None since childhood. Could she deny him—and herself?
Tears sprang to her eyes. She hated weakness. But she was so alone. She had spent the afternoon terrified of being reduced to a homeless, dependent relation and leaving the children in danger. And here was a man who offered hugs, whisky, and a sympathetic ear.
It simply seemed the most natural thing in the world to wrap her arms around Mr. Blair’s—Andrew’s—waist and lean into him. He embraced her, and they stood there like that for a blissful eternity, just absorbing the closeness of another human being.
But the attraction was too strong to stay that way. Even innocent as she was, Phoebe felt the driving need for more. When he leaned over and brushed a kiss against her cheek, he offered her still another choice. She could back away.
She wasn’t a servant obliged to endure his caress. She was a lady. She had alternatives, of a sort. Just because she found those alternatives stultifying didn’t mean that she wouldn’t be better off accepting them.
But she’d grown up in the streets, doing as she pleased, and she didn’t have the willpower to deny herself—or him—right now. She longed to know his kiss again, to see if it felt the same as last time.
So instead of backing away, she tilted her head and brushed her lips to his, and there it was, the inferno of desire that they’d kindled the last time they’d done this. It was as if they’d only banked the hot coals so they could flame to full strength now.
His tongue invaded her mouth, and she felt the sensation in her lower belly. She pressed against him, needing to be touched while their lips meshed and clung. He obliged, pushing aside her redingote to caress her breast. They both groaned in unison.
The raven squawked overhead. Abruptly coming to their senses, they pushed away in the same accord as they’d come together.
“I should probably tender my resignation,” Phoebe said sadly. “I love the children, but my aunts would die of shame should I disgrace myself while in their care. I’m sorry. I’m not sure what came over me.”
She wrapped her coat closer and headed for the door, needing to cut this off before she slid backward and into his arms again. If she looked into his eyes, she’d be lost. Andrew Blair had the most honest face she’d ever seen on a man, and despite their differences, she liked it much too much.
He’d touched her bosom! And she craved more of that tantalizing caress—and the tingling sensations it aroused. She was shameless, but she supposed she’d known that all along. She’d never been normal.
“Phoebe.” He caught her arm and pressed her into the warmth of the chimney. “I don’t want you to leave. I know it’s selfish of me. I know I’ve made it impossible for you. I don’t know a solution. But please, don’t leave yet.”
The brusque businessman and stormy Scot pleaded in a way that made him entirely too human. She dared a glance at his expression, but in the cloudy light, she could see little. She simply knew his big body warmed her, and his plea spoke to her heart, and she couldn’t move.
“Let me court you,” he said abruptly. “Could we do that? I know I don’t come from aristocratic circles. My family is humble, I won’t lie to you. But we seem to have. . .” He stumbled over the words.
“Animal attraction?” she asked wryly. “I’ve never wanted marriage. I wish to attend the university. I don’t wish to be a man’s accessory.”
He pulled back, running his hand over his hair and sighing deeply. “And I need an accessory,” he agreed. “If I had a title, I could be as eccentric as I like, but I don’t. To overcome my background, I must be more proper than a king. I can’t afford a misstep or my investors will all desert me. Without investors, I can’t turn my patents into machines.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said in disbelief, reacting to this lack of confidence more than his so-called humble origins. “You are a creative inventor and an intelligent man. You don’t need a wife to prove that. What is the point of all your hard work if you can’t enjoy the fruit of your labor? You seem to take care of everyone but yourself.”
She blinked in surprise even as the words came out of her mouth—that’s what he did. He made a partner of a childhood friend who needed help. He took in his cousin’s children, even though they disrupted his life. He helped a neighbor he didn’t like because the neighbor had helped him. But what did he ever do for himself?
He shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s what a man does. I’ve been blessed with a brain that I can use to help others as well as please myself. I don’t expect more.”
“Then maybe you should expect more,” Phoebe said more tartly than she’d meant to. She needed to put a distance between herself and this man for whom propriety was more important than having a life , apparently. “In the meantime, hire an upstairs maid so we needn’t communicate by shouting.”
Or hugging or meeting on the roof. She stomped off, irritated with herself as well as him. Or frustrated would be a better word. She wanted more hugs and kisses. She wanted to know where they led. And he was making her see why her desire to learn was a foolish dream in a world like theirs.
Expect more? Drew unsteadily combed his hair from his face and waited until his body had cooled off before following the exasperating female into the house. He had everything he’d ever dreamed of and more—and she thought he ought to expect more from life? What? What else was there besides work, a solid roof over his head, food in his stomach?
He didn’t want fancy carriages and china or artwork on the walls. He’d never really required a wife as long as he could buy women for his needs. Children were an expensive nuisance, as Simon’s brats had proved. A bachelor could come and go and do as he wished without explaining to anyone.
A bachelor went to bed alone while the woman he wanted slept in a room above. Hell and damnation.
Hearing a whimper from the nursery, he passed Lady Phoebe’s firmly closed door and strolled down the corridor to look in on the weans. One of the twins was awake, sitting up in her bed and cuddling the kitten, her hair down in her face as she smothered sobs. His heart nearly broke at the sight.
Without giving it a second thought, he scooped her up and carried her into the low-lit hall. “Did you have a bad dream?” he whispered.
The kitten leaped from her arms, and the child flung them around his neck to sob into his shoulders. “Mommy’s not coming back.”
Drew wanted to weep with her. He hugged her and paced the floor while she wept, awkwardly patting her back. He could take her to Simon—except his cousin was probably blootered by now. The man needed his rest. “She’s looking out fer ye, noo, isn’t she?”
“Kitty walked right through her,” she said, sniffing. “She’s not really here.”
How in hell did he respond to that? What would Phoebe say? And why shouldn’t Phoebe say it? He turned his feet in the direction of the closed door. “And your mama is in your heart, too, isn’t she?” he asked, recalling one of the governess’s reassurances.
He didn’t even know which twin he was holding. He was helpless here. The child seemed to nod but didn’t answer. He ought to just plop her back in bed and tell her to go back to sleep, but he had the urge to rap on the lady’s door, so he did. She wanted him to know what he wanted out of life? He wanted someone to solve the human problems he couldn’t learn to handle from books.
Money couldn’t buy magic genies.
Phoebe immediately appeared at the door, looking a litt
le panicked and wrapping a robe around her. When she saw him, her eyes widened. . . until she saw the babe. Instantly, she reached for his burden.
“Where’s Daisy?” she murmured, adjusting the twin over her shoulder and covering her cheek with kisses.
He hadn’t thought to kiss the child’s cheek.
“Asleep, probably. She wasn’t making much noise.” He shrugged awkwardly, not knowing what to do now that his burden was lifted.
Phoebe brushed hair off the girl’s face and rubbed the tears from her cheek. “Clare, honey, can you tell me what’s wrong?”
Clare. This was the quiet one, of course. Persuading her to talk was like pulling teeth.
“She said her mama wasn’t coming back and kitty walked through her. Should I fetch warm milk?” He dragged that memory out of the bowels of his long-ago childhood.
She looked at him with such approval that his head bloody-well swelled two hat sizes.
“Did your mama used to fix you warm milk, my bonnie lass?” she whispered in the child’s ear.
Clare nodded her head. “Cocoa.”
“Will you tell us what you dreamed while we fix your cocoa?” Phoebe handed Clare back to Drew.
The girl went willingly. Her sobs lessened, and she watched with interest as Phoebe donned slippers and tied her old robe in place. Drew watched with equal interest. The lady had long slender feet and pretty toes.
“Was it scary when Kitty walked through your mama?” Phoebe asked as they traipsed down the stairs—as if this were the normal conversation one had after a nightmare.
Clare nodded vigorously against his shoulder.
“Did your mama know your daddy is here?” Phoebe reached over his shoulder to brush a strand of hair from Clare’s wet cheek.
Her hand brushed his scratchy jaw—Drew couldn’t tell if it was accidental or not, but the touch burned all the way to his core.
Clare nodded again. How the devil did one persuade the child to talk?
“Can you remember what your mama said?” Phoebe asked, in the same brisk tone she might ask what they would like for dinner.
Drew led the way down to the kitchen, so Clare could see Phoebe following behind them.
“She loves us,” Clare said with a sob. “I want my mama!”
“It’s hard to see and hear and not touch, isn’t it?” Phoebe asked, studying the dark kitchen.
Knowing where things were kept, Drew transferred the child back to her so he could light a lamp and hunt a pot. Hunting, he could do.
“Mama is sad,” Clare said, accepting the transfer. “She said to tell daddy about the bad men.”
Drew listened as he found the chocolate pot and milk and sugar. He’d prepared his own hot chocolate as a child, while his mother worked her fingers to the bones sewing for others. That was before his father’s injury, when they occasionally had chocolate.
“What does she want to say about the bad men?” Phoebe asked, taking a chair at the trestle table and nestling Clare in her lap.
The weasel peered out from under a cabinet, then scampered over to the lady. Phoebe scooped him up and placed him in Clare’s arms.
“She says ask your earl. What’s an earl?”
Drew swung to watch Phoebe’s face pale.
“The only earl I know is my uncle, unless one counts my dead father. Can she mean Drumsmoore?” Phoebe whispered, glancing to him with what appeared to be panic.
Drew shrugged. “He’s the only one I know.”
Phoebe returned to reassuring the child. “An earl is an important man. What are we supposed to ask him?”
“About bad men,” Clare said impatiently, squirming to watch him at the stove. “I don’t want it too hot.”
Nightmare apparently forgotten, Clare settled into Phoebe’s lap to sip her cocoa. The weasel did what weasels do, nosing around the floor, scaring the bugs and mice. Drew poured more cocoa for Phoebe and himself and wondered how in hell his life had come down to this level. He was a wealthy, important man of business, he reminded himself. He should be reading contracts or tinkering with his typewriter or drawing up a schematic for the new—
“My uncle is a grasping miser with no family,” Phoebe murmured, setting down her own mug to hold onto Clare’s so it didn’t slip. “I haven’t spoken with him since he refused to help my mother travel to a warmer climate.”
“Drumsmoore owns a mine,” Drew said. “We tried to persuade him to join us in the manufactory. He refused.”
He did more than refuse. Drumsmoore was an aristocratic bigot and one of the reasons Drew didn’t look kindly on the class.
Uninterested in what she didn’t understand, Clare clambered down to follow the weasel around the kitchen.
“I don’t know him well,” Phoebe said, keeping her voice low. “My mother seldom spoke of him, but I have the impression that he didn’t approve of my father’s marriage. When my father died and my uncle inherited the title, he refused to allow us to use the estate, even though he lives there all alone. To be fair, I believe my father left the estate management to Uncle Albert. My father preferred living in town and traveling.”
“There’s not much estate to manage,” Drew told her. “It’s little more than a stone watchtower on a hill overlooking a stream and a village, but there’s coal underneath the hill, and the land isn’t far from the main road between Scotland and Glasgow. It’s an ideal location for a manufactory, but the earl has few expenses and the old ways cover them.”
“If there’s an Association. . .” She whispered his fear aloud.
“Your grandfather would no doubt have belonged. Your uncle has no reason that I can see, other than sheer backwardness. He leases his mine, so the workers are of no concern to him. But maybe he knows who’s in the Association,” Drew added.
The governess looked as sad and sleepy as Clare. Drew set their cups in the dishpan. “Come along. I think we all need a good night’s sleep.”
He picked up Clare and led the way upstairs, wishing he could follow Phoebe back to her room and forget the world for a while.
The Earl of Drumsmoore was a crotchety bastert who opposed everything not his own idea on principle. Drew didn’t want to believe an old man’s opposition to change would take him so far as to attempt to kill an entire family. Clare could just be providing another bogeyman. Or she might be speaking of a different earl.
How the hell did one investigate an earl—based on a child’s report from a ghost?
Phoebe read the translated passage in Letitia’s journal again. The church ladies warned me again. I have tried to tell Simon. Men believe they are invulnerable.
Just not useful. Did she break a ghost’s trust and give this to Mr. Blair? What could he find that she hadn’t? And what could bad men want with a lady’s private journal? How might the book relate to an earl? There was no Latin word for earl. Noble, maybe.
After she got dressed the next morning, Phoebe deliberately avoided going downstairs. Mr. Blair confused her, and she needed to clear her thinking before she saw him again.
Hugh Morgan hunted her down in the nursery, the familiar packet of papers in his hand. “Have you had time to go over your copy of the contract yet?”
She hadn’t even looked at it. “I don’t think I’ll be signing it, thank you. You may ask Mr. Blair why I’m declining.”
“You’re leaving?” Hugh asked in incredulity, watching her surrounded by three children eagerly working on various puzzles.
“Not unless Mr. Blair insists.” She wasn’t a failure if she was tossed out for refusing indentures, she’d decided. The result might be the same as being cast out for not doing her job, but ladies did not sign contracts of servitude, she was fairly certain.
Besides, she had to be able to leave at a moment’s notice if she and Mr. Blair became too close. She was not marrying him for the sake of someone else’s children. His cousin could take the children away anytime, and then where would they be? The whole situation bordered on the ludicrous.
Mutt
ering, Mr. Morgan stomped back out.
As if the world conspired against her, a little while later Abby ran up, looking excited. “Miss, you have guests, very distinguished. They told me I would marry a soldier!”
Recognizing the tactic, Phoebe refrained from rolling her eyes. “Have you been walking out with a soldier?” She leaned over to praise Enoch’s math and correct Cat’s letter M, while her heart thumped with anxiety. What now? What other brick could fall on her head?
“There’s one as lives next door to me ma,” Abby whispered. “Very handsome, but he’s never home.”
“Did he give you that pretty pin you’re wearing?” Phoebe stood and shook out her skirt and debated donning something a little more respectable, but she refused to be dominated by her fears—or anyone else.
Abby touched a small insignia pinned to her stiff collar and nodded uncertainly.
“My aunts don’t read the future, just the present. Tell them I’ll be down shortly.”
Abby’s eyes widened before she dropped a curtsey and ran off. Life would be much simpler if her aunts could actually read the future instead of teasing people with their observational skills.
In trepidation—her aunts seldom left the school—she straightened her hair into some semblance of respectability. As Phoebe descended the stairs, she heard voices in the parlor—male as well as female. Drat.
She was almost petrified at any reason that might drag her aunts out of their lair. Having them meet Andrew. . .
They might not read futures, but they were perceptive.
Phoebe picked up her pace. She needed to separate them at once or they’d yank her away from the children so fast hair would fly.
Sixteen
Considering what he’d been doing with their niece just last night, Drew was extremely nervous about the arrival of Lady Phoebe’s possibly prescient aunts. One of the disadvantages of believing in the odd powers of women like Letitia and Phoebe was that it made him mistrustful to the point of superstitious. He despised wasting time looking for ulterior motives in every interaction.
Lessons in Enchantment Page 14
