by Karen Ranney
“Are the cherubs another oddity of the builder?” she asked.
His glance followed hers. “This part of the house was originally public rooms. I had it changed to make it easier for the staff. But I had the workers leave the cherubs intact.”
“They no doubt annoy Smytheton.”
He grinned again. “No doubt.”
He filled the bucket with hot water again.
“It’s a great deal of bother,” she said watching him pour it into the bath.
His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, his shirt dotted with water. A lock of hair had fallen over his brow. He appeared intent on this chore and she could not help but wonder if he approached everything with such single-minded directness. As if he focused his entire energy on each separate task to the exclusion of everything else.
She warmed, thinking that he had been the same during their lovemaking in the carriage. He had been as fevered as she and as lost to their surroundings.
“Have you changed your mind, then?” he asked, turning.
“I would not dare to,” she said, smiling. “Not after all your efforts on my behalf. I simply meant to express my appreciation.”
“Enough to let me stay and watch you bathe?” One side of his mouth curved. A thoroughly charming expression of mischief.
“Is that what mistresses do?”
“A companion,” he corrected, his smile slipping. “My companion.”
“No,” she said, admonishing him with a look. An answer to both questions. One asked, one hidden.
She turned away, reached behind her, and began to unfasten the buttons of her dress.
She heard a hollow sound as the empty bucket was placed on the floor, then felt his hands releasing the rest of her buttons. She turned her head and glanced at him, holding the bodice of her dress close to her chest.
He stepped back and dropped his hands, caught in the same silence that enveloped her.
Margaret felt exposed, and absurdly vulnerable. She had bared her body to this man in the bright light of a spring day, loved him in a rocking carriage. Yet she had not felt as naked then as she did at this moment. It was as if he could see all of her insecurities, and worries and knew how they battled with her pride.
“I will be in my library if you need any assistance,” he said, his eyes suddenly filled with a stormy intensity.
Margaret nodded, said nothing to him as he left the room. She removed the rest of her clothing, folding it carefully and placing it on the small table beside the door.
The tub rose high in the back, where it was heavily embossed with roses and daisies, then sloped to a blunt point at the foot. Almost like slipping into a shoe, she thought with a smile, as she stepped inside it.
She sighed in bliss as she sank down into the hot water. A stool beside the tub was piled high with toweling. Atop it, a small container that she picked up and opened to reveal a soap fragrant with herbs. It reminded her of Michael. An intimacy, to bathe herself with his scent. But then, she had crossed the boundaries of proper behavior so many times since she’d met him that she would be hard pressed to find the line now.
It was not wise to admit to infatuation. It was most assuredly not sensible to admit that he occupied too much of her mind. She could easily admire him. There were many things to commend him. The fact that he so obviously respected his surly butler. There was his humor, and his tenacity, his way of looking at the world as if he’d dared it to interfere with his plans. Coupled with a self-reliance she had not often seen among nobles.
She smiled at herself. The only other acquaintance she had with nobility was the Duke of Tarrant, a man she could never admire.
She placed her hands on her waist wondering how long it would be before there were signs that she was with child. If she had not decided to leave Silbury, this week would ruin her, scandalize the villagers, label her a whore. Carrying the Earl of Montraine’s child would render her a pariah to all those people who spoke so approvingly of her subdued demeanor and proper ways.
She didn’t feel the least proper now.
A week. Let it be too short a time to become captivated by him. Let her leave here in a week and return to herself.
She leaned her head against the back of the tub, closed her eyes. It sounded almost like a prayer.
He stood in the doorway, watching her. She was asleep, the washing cloth bunched into a ball between her hands. The candlelight flickered over her face, dancing over the hollows created by cheekbones and long lashes. Firelight tinted the room yellow, summoned forth the red and gold highlights in her hair.
He was lax in his knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology, but surely there was a goddess appropriately similar? A being with the light of humor in her eyes, who disappeared in springtime to become a fawn, perhaps. Or emerged in summer adorned in leaves of gold. Someone with a nature as changeable as the seasons and as eternal as womanhood itself.
If so, her name should be something commonplace, to counterbalance the fascination of her character. Margaret, perhaps.
He smiled at his whimsy. He had come to see what was delaying her only to become adrift in thoughts of myth and Margaret.
“I am only grateful Smytheton has gone to bed,” he said, retrieving the toweling from the table. “Otherwise, you might give the poor man a heart seizure.”
She blinked open her eyes, watched him even as her lips curved in welcome. Her expression was quickly overlaid with one of more caution, but not before he’d felt the full effect of that warm and tender smile.
Her eyes, those lovely eyes that seemed to change hue depending upon what she wore, were now simply hazel. Tired, with a look to them that solicited his concern.
He unfolded the toweling, held it out for her.
She crossed her arms over her breasts. He smiled at the evidence of her modesty. She had been as fervent as he this morning in the carriage. And that one afternoon nearly two months ago when they’d loved on the carpet in a room a few feet from here. But now she hid herself from his sight.
“The water’s cold,” he said, finally, when it was obvious she was not going to stand. “I shall avert my eyes if you wish,” he offered.
“Please.”
He smiled, but turned his head to the side. He heard the sound of the water, glimpsed a view of her fire-lit silhouette out of the corner of his eye.
He wrapped the toweling around her, stroked his hands over her arms, chiding her with a look. Retrieving the candle, he handed it to her, then bent and scooped her up into his arms.
“It is not necessary for you to carry me,” she said. He said nothing in response.
“I shall not run away,” she promised.
“You are cold.”
“But not infirm,” she said.
“You are not that much of a burden, Margaret.”
His left hand was pressed against her shoulder, while his right curved against her bare thigh. But that was not what incited his sudden foul humor. It was his erection, hard and joyous at the feel of her. As if he’d been celibate for a decade.
What was happening to him?
She looked up into his face, then glanced away.
At the top of the stairs, he lowered her before a long table. “If you put the candle on the table,” he said, “you can open the door.”
“If you’d set me on my feet, I could do so more easily.”
“Just do it, Margaret,” he said tersely.
She placed the candle on the table, then reached out and obediently turned the handle of the door. He pushed it open with his foot and entered the room.
Watery light streamed into the chamber, touching upon the four-poster bed, filtering in through the opened curtains. A bower of moonlight.
He set her on her feet beside the bed, then walked to the hearth and knelt before it.
He had taken her from the cottage without giving her a chance to pack a valise. Not an entirely reasoned move. But he vowed to buy her what she needed. Clothes, most definitely. Either that, or kee
p her in his chamber for the next week, slake his lust, bury his tumescence where it most longed to be. He turned and glanced at her.
She yawned. Just that. A simple gesture, but one that tempered his mindless hunger even as it grew.
He stood, walked to the armoire, and retrieved his dressing gown. He returned to her side, placed it on her shoulders, helped her arms into it. The garment was silk, only marginally thicker than the thin toweling she wore now. But it fostered the illusion of cover. He tied the belt around her waist, smoothed the lapel, found himself staring at the curves his dressing gown now boasted.
He tugged at the toweling and she allowed it to drop to the floor. He retrieved it and threw it on a nearby chair.
“It will be something for you to sleep in,” he said. He himself preferred nakedness to the cumbersome nightshirts fashion dictated.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft and tremulous. Her look held no condemnation. It was simply as if she had accepted her circumstances and had decided to endure them for as long as it lasted.
He wanted ask her, suddenly, if that was how she accepted what life gave to her. Poverty, loneliness, the grief of losing her husband.
Yet this woman with her quiet dignity and her small smile was not his captive. There was nothing truly binding them together but the will to be bound. At least for a week.
She yawned again, hiding the gesture behind a raised hand. A surge of tenderness, coupled with lust, surged through him. An altogether uncomfortable pairing of emotions.
“Get some sleep, Margaret,” he said, kissing her softly on the forehead. An almost avuncular gesture. Hardly a way to treat a woman he wished to make his mistress.
He left her then, before he could change his mind.
Margaret awoke at dawn, feeling as if she’d slept upon a cloud. The mattress was soft and fragrant with herbs and the scent of lemons. She turned her head and he was there beside her, asleep.
A curious feeling, waking beside a man again. Especially one who looked like Michael Hawthorne.
She propped herself up on one elbow and studied him.
His face was oddly commanding even in sleep, as if his features, proud and strong, needed no animation. A smile, however, normally warmed that line on the side of his mouth, created a dimple from it. A look in his eyes made his brows appear less fierce. His habit of brushing his hands through his hair contained that one unruly lock on his forehead.
He lay on his back, one arm flung above his head, the other resting at his waist. His legs were splayed wide so that he took up most of the bed. The sheets bunched on his upper thighs revealed a well-defined chest, muscular arms, both furred with black hair. A thoroughly imposing man.
Had she been captivated by him because of his appearance? Or because of her own loneliness? Or had she simply been angry about the future decreed her and it had spilled over into defiance? Was that the reason she had gone with him that first day?
And this week? What was the answer for that?
He had not come to her last night. She didn’t know quite what to make of that. She lay down on her side, watching him sleep, feeling remarkably content to do so.
Her stomach was blissfully steady, she was pleasantly sleepy, and the dawn sky over London was a reminder that her country hours could well be ignored for this week. She stretched out her hand until her fingers almost touched him.
Sleep came and brushed a smile over her lips.
Chapter 16
A woman of pleasure
will praise her lover often.
The Journals of Augustin X
When she awoke again, Michael had left her.
But on the end of her bed were the clothes she’d left in the kitchen, now cleaned and pressed. She dressed and went in search of him.
“I believe, miss,” Smytheton said at the bottom of the stairs, “that you will find his lordship in his library.” A curt nod was his only direction. “The morning room has been cleared for your modiste,” he added, a severe frown settling over his face.
“I am not properly a miss anymore,” she said, clasping her hands together. Why she should care what he thought of her, she didn’t know. But it seemed somehow important that he realize she had not totally ruined herself. “I am a widow, you see. And I know nothing of a modiste.”
He bowed slightly. “His lordship has sent for one, madam.”
She crossed the foyer to the library door, watching as Smytheton glided into the shadows. Michael’s voice answered her knock and she pushed open the door.
She had thought the rotunda magnificent. But it was nothing to this chamber, as a taste of sugar is lacking when compared to a cream-filled pastry.
The library was easily four times the size of her cottage. It soared two floors, the upper story reached by curving iron stairs at either end of the room. Mahogany bookcases filled with volumes lined both the lower and the upper levels. Arranged in front of a fire were a settee and two chairs. A perfect place to curl up and read.
But the greatest wonder was above her. She tilted her head back, surveyed the painting.
She had heard of cathedrals built to revere God and palaces designed to ennoble men. Places that would inspire awe and a sense of reverence. But she’d not thought to feel such emotions in a man’s library.
No shelf had ever lain empty in their bookshop, and they’d had orders from all over England. Still, there were more volumes here than their shop had ever carried at one time or perhaps altogether.
“Your eyes are as wide as moons, Margaret.”
She glanced at him. He sat at his desk watching her.
“It’s a wondrous place. And a very large room.”
“The house has only one bedchamber because of it,” he said. “The others were sacrificed in order to enlarge the library.”
“I have never seen so many books,” she confessed. “Have you read all these?” Her fingers brushed against the spines of the volumes as she passed from one bookcase to another. He had diverse interests. There were topics ranging from ancient civilizations to animal husbandry.
“A majority of them,” he conceded. “I read quickly.”
“Is that what occupies you in this room?”
He seemed to measure the words in his mind before he spoke them.
“I primarily do ciphers here.”
“Ciphers?”
“Puzzles. Codes, if you will. I unravel secrets that other people do not want read.”
The knowledge surprised her. It seemed alien to the nature of the man he had shown himself to be. But then, he had remarked on more than one occasion that he was restrained. Orderly. Wished to live by a certain structure. But the Montraine she knew had always been a volatile mix of impatience and passion.
“Why ciphers?” she asked.
“The easiest explanation is because they need to be solved. But it’s not the only answer. I’m intensely competitive,” he said, an admission made with a mocking smile. As if he gave her the truth and ridiculed it at the same time. “A deplorable facet of my character,” he said. “I hate to be bested by anything.”
“Is that why you found me? Because you did not like to be bested?”
“You were a puzzle,” he conceded with a smile. “A fascinating one.”
She thought about it for a moment. “So, this week is to allow you time to reason me out?”
“I doubt you would be that quickly solved,” he admitted, his smile surprising her. “Even though I’m exceptionally good at puzzles.”
Her look must have been questioning, because he continued. “There’s something orderly about them. Numbers have a purpose, a reasoning, a pattern.”
“Are you working on a cipher now? Other than me,” she added.
“Right at the moment I’m involved with overseeing the mundane details that occur on a weekly basis.”
“What mundane details does an earl oversee?”
He smiled, his expression lightening. “Do you truly wish to know?”
“Very muc
h so,” she said truthfully.
“I read and approve the accounts of three stewards, assess the inventory of three estates, give orders to plant, harvest, or lay fallow acreage. There are forty-three people whose lives are entwined with Montraine interests here and abroad. I approve their salaries and their employment and adjudicate grievances when they occur. There is the upkeep of foreign investments, there are horses to be purchased, buildings to be maintained. Not to mention paying the not inconsiderable bills for my sisters and mother.”
“Three estates?” she asked, surprised.
“Setton, the largest, which is entailed. Haversham, which was brought into the family by my mother. And Torrent, which is a smaller farm on the border. It sounds a great deal more than it is.”
“Yet you still have time to do ciphers?” she asked in amazement.
“I confess I recited all that to impress you,” he said, looking not at all like a man who needed to resort to braggadocio. “I handle a little of it each day. That way it’s manageable.”
“Order, again.”
“I have always believed it to be of some value,” he said.
She walked slowly to a table in the corner. On it was an odd device that looked to be nothing more than bits of twisted black metal.
She turned and he was there beside her. “A mathematical engine,” he said. “An invention of mine.”
“What does it do?”
“It will not harm you,” he said with a smile. She glanced at him. “You look very cautious of it.”
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it before.”
“That’s because there isn’t anything like it,” he said, smiling. He reached past her and turned a large crank. All the various parts began to move in harmony, wheels rotating and clicking. Finally, a rectangle of slate flipped onto a small metal bed.
“What does it do?” she asked, spellbound.
“It writes ciphers,” he said proudly. “But I believe it can do much more.”
“I can see why you have not yet selected a wife,” she said. “Courtship would take too much time from your work. Perhaps you can simply abduct a bride.”
