by Lauren Royal
But today she’d sipped champagne, and he’d noticed her lips were made for kissing. And he’d taken her hands and felt something like a punch to his gut. And she’d challenged him verbally, and those words had jumped out of his mouth.
Ludicrous words. As a man who’d never wanted for female attention, he was frustrated by Lady Rose’s obvious disinterest, but deep down he knew that pursuing her was an absurd waste of time. Although he thought her lovely and intelligent—he’d watched her decipher a coded diary weeks earlier and been nothing short of astonished—he had no illusions of winning Lady Rose. Or, for that matter, any lady at all. He knew his place in the world.
Commoner, through and through.
His best friend might be an earl who’d grown up in a mansion, but Kit had been raised in a single-room cottage. No Martyn had ever borne a title. Before him, he doubted any Martyn had ever even considered the possibility.
He knew that, social perceptions aside, he was damn well as good as anyone else. But he was also well aware that he wasn’t considered good enough for the Earl of Trentingham’s daughter. And wishing things were different would never make them so.
At least, not in the near future.
The circular redbrick summerhouse was a small building with classic Palladian lines. He ushered the king’s man inside. Owing to the admirable design—large arched windows over each of the four doors—it was bright beneath the cool, shaded dome.
Bright enough to make out the seriousness in the messenger’s eyes.
Apprehension soured the champagne in Kit’s stomach. “Yes?” he asked.
The man’s words were anything but reassuring. “This concerns one of your projects. I’ve been sent to advise you that the ceiling at Windsor Castle is falling—”
“Falling? Has anyone been hurt?”
“I should say chunks of plaster have fallen—not the ceiling itself. But it’s sagging, and there are many cracks. There have been no injuries, but His Majesty wanted you to know—”
“I understand.” Kit understood Charles’s underlying message all too well. If he failed to complete this project on time and satisfactorily, his dream of being appointed Deputy Surveyor—a step toward someday becoming Surveyor General of the King’s Works, the official royal architect—would be as good as dead.
And without that, the rest of his dreams—his plans to obtain a title for himself and marry his sister Ellen to a peer of the realm—would die along with it.
He yanked the door back open. “I shall depart for Windsor posthaste.”
“Sir.” The man bowed and preceded him outside.
Back at the house, Kit looked around for Rand, but his friend was nowhere to be found. He went instead to give his apologies to his hostess. “Forgive me, Lady Trentingham, but I must take my leave. There’s a problem at Windsor Castle. I cannot seem to locate Rand—”
“He and Lily have a habit of disappearing,” she told him with a suggestive twinkle in her eye that took him by surprise. She was, after all, the girl’s mother. But then her brown eyes turned sympathetic. “I’ll explain,” she added. “He’ll understand.”
In no time at all, Kit was settled in his carriage, rubbing the back of his neck as the vehicle lumbered its way toward Windsor.
Could he possibly have made an error in designing Windsor’s new dining room? Had a flaw in the plans gone unnoticed? He unrolled the extra set he always carried, spreading the linen they were drawn on over his lap. But he couldn’t seem to concentrate.
Especially when his carriage jostled past the village of Hawkridge, where he’d grown up.
Toying with the small, worn chunk of brick he carried in his pocket—a chip off his first building—he found himself gazing out the window as memories assaulted him. Nights whiled away in his family’s snug cottage, he and Ellen playing on the floor while their mother read by the fire. Days spent with his father, learning carpentry and building. Afternoons fishing with the local nobleman’s son, Lord Randal Nesbitt, both of them starved for companionship their age.
That felt like a lifetime ago. Rand was married now, a man who declared himself in love. As for Kit, love wasn’t high on his list of priorities.
A luxury, love was, and one Kit felt quite capable of living without. After all, love had done his parents no favors. They’d been happy together, content with their simple lot in life—and both ended up in early graves.
That wasn’t going to happen to Kit or his sister.
For twelve years—through school, university, and a quickly rising reputation—he had dedicated himself to one goal. The Deputy Surveyor post was almost within his grasp.
He couldn’t fail now.
Three
“YOU LOOK melancholy,” Rose’s mother said later that evening. Standing with Rose in her perfumery, Chrystabel picked over the many flower arrangements on her large wooden worktable, plucking out the marigolds. “Why the long face, dear? Are you sad to see your creations destroyed?”
“Of course not.” Rose added a purple aster to a pile of flowers and some ivy to a bunch of greens. She looked up and forced what she hoped sounded like a romantic sigh. “The wedding was beautiful, wasn’t it?”
“Made more so by your lovely flowers.” Rose had filled the house with towering creations made of posies cut from her father’s gardens. “Which is why,” her mother added, “I thought—”
“I don’t care what becomes of my flower arrangements. Honestly, Mum, it makes no sense to let the blooms wither and die when we can turn them into essential oils for your perfumes. I don’t mind in the least.” With a bit more force than was necessary, Rose tugged two lilies from the vases and tossed them onto the table. “Whatever happened to Kit Martyn, do you know?” she asked in an attempt to change the subject.
“That messenger brought news of a problem with one of his projects. He had to leave.”
“Which project?” Rose asked.
“He didn’t say. Or perhaps I don’t remember.” Chrystabel fixed her with a piercing gaze. A motherly gaze. “Does it matter?”
“Of course not. It was only idle curiosity.” A headache threatened, pulsing in Rose’s temples. “Why should I care what happens to the man’s projects?”
“You danced with him—”
“Father traded that dance for a greenhouse. It meant nothing.”
Her mother nodded thoughtfully, beginning to pluck petals from a bunch of striped snapdragons. “You just look melancholy.”
If Rose weren’t already suffering from a headache, that swift change back to the original subject might have prompted one. She lifted the lid off the gleaming glass and metal distillery that Ford had made for her mother while he was courting Violet. “It’s nothing, Mum.”
“It doesn’t bother you that your younger sister is wed?”
“Why shouldn’t I wish her happy?” She was chagrined to hear her voice crack. “I do, Mum, I vow and swear it.”
“It’s no failing of yours, dear, that Lily found love first.”
“Stuck as we are in the countryside, it’s a wonder she found a man at all, whether she loves him or not.” It was an ancient complaint, but in her present mood Rose had no compunctions against dragging it out again. “We hardly ever get to London, or anywhere else we might meet eligible—”
“You have a point,” Mum interrupted.
“Pardon?” Rose blinked.
“You heard me. You haven’t much opportunity here to meet men.” Chrystabel tossed the pink petals into the distillery’s large glass bulb. “I’m thinking that we—you and I—should attend court.”
“Court?” Rose decided she couldn’t be hearing right. One of them had clearly drunk too much champagne. “As in King Charles’s court?”
“I believe they’re at Windsor now—they do move around, as you may know.”
“What I know is that you and Father have always claimed court is no place for proper young ladies.”
“Well, you’re not so young anymore,” Chrystabel said, then cam
e to wrap an arm around Rose when she winced. “I didn’t mean it that way, dear. But you’re one-and-twenty now, a woman grown. And I will be there to chaperone. It’s perfectly acceptable.”
It was more than acceptable, Rose knew—girls as young as fifteen went to court, many of them unchaperoned. And she also knew the licentious men there treated them like full-grown women. Violet had been to court with Ford, and she’d come back with stories that had made Rose’s eyes widen.
A little part of her wondered if this was really such a grand idea.
But she wasn’t going to argue when faced with such surprising good fortune. “Gemini, I’d best go talk to Harriet. She’ll doubtless need to alter some of my gowns, and it will take me hours to decide what to bring before she can even begin.”
“There’s no time for alterations, dear.” In opposition to Rose, whose stomach was churning with excitement, Chrystabel calmly plucked petals. “I mean to leave tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!” Rose dropped the stem in her hand. “Tomorrow?”
“There’s no time like the present,” her mother said with an enigmatic smile.
Normally, Rose might have been vexed at the implication that she was getting more spinsterish as the days sped by. But this was no time to be touchy.
No, it was time to prepare.
She was going to court! Leaving her flowers on the table, she rushed to her chamber to pack.
Four
“WHAT A DAY.” Chrystabel slipped beneath the counterpane to join her husband in bed, sinking into the mattress as she relaxed for the first time in what seemed like weeks. “Thank God they’re married at last.”
“I suspect you’re really thanking God they can no longer create a child out of wedlock,” Joseph teased, leaning up to kiss her lightly on the lips. He lowered himself onto an elbow, smiling into her eyes, his own a deep, sparkling green.
She pushed a lock of dark hair off his forehead. “Well, there is that,” she admitted. When Lily and Rand’s marriage plans had been threatened by Rand’s father, she’d been mortified to realize she’d allowed them to share a bed before her daughter was safely wed. It had seemed a fine idea at the time, but it wouldn’t be happening again with Rose—or Rowan, for that matter.
Chrystabel reckoned she could learn from her mistakes.
“But mostly,” she added, “I’m just gladdened to see them happy at last. Everything worked out.”
“It usually does,” said her ever-practical husband.
She released a contented sigh. “Another wedding.”
“Another wedding night,” he responded with a lustful grin.
A tradition, their wedding nights. That was one of the reasons she so loved arranging other people’s marriages. Not that either of them needed an excuse to make love, but there was something thrilling about watching a wedding while anticipating their own wedding night to come.
She smiled as he kissed her again, then moaned when he slipped a hand beneath her night rail’s neckline to caress a sensitive breast. For long minutes they said nothing, their breathing growing louder and more ragged in the stillness of their thick-walled room.
Here, in their quiet, private chamber, her Joseph could hear whatever she said. Every word, those spoken as well as the silent ones that passed between two as attuned as they.
But they didn’t need words now. Actions would do. A brush of lips, warm skimming hands. Bodies coming together, creating a thrill that the years had done nothing to dim. Soft cries filled the chamber, matched by a low groan of pleasure that echoed into the night.
When their hearts had calmed, when Joseph leaned away to blow out the single remaining candle, Chrystabel sighed. “I’ll miss you.”
“Where are you going?” The words vibrated against her throat where he’d settled back into her arms.
“I’m thinking to take Rose to court at Windsor. With your permission, of course,” she rushed to add, knowing he would never deny her.
“Court? Do you expect that’s wise? The men there—”
“I’ll watch her like a hawk. And rest assured, there’s not a man at court I want for Rose. She belongs with Kit Martyn. He’s at Windsor as we sleep, checking on a project—”
“Kit Martyn? Chrysanthemum my love, I know you fancy yourself a matchmaker, but Rose has shown no interest—”
“Which is exactly why he’s the perfect man for her.”
Joseph lifted his head and searched her eyes in the dim, flickering light from the fire. “Come again?”
“You know how she is. As soon as she sets her sights on a man, the act begins. The flirting. The flattering. Don’t you see? She has a much better chance of winning a man she thinks she doesn’t want. With Kit she’ll be herself. Charming, intelligent, sharp-witted….why, he cannot fail but fall in love with her.”
“I suspect he’s taken with her already,” Joseph said dryly. “But what good will that do if she doesn’t fall for him? We’ve promised her she can choose her own husband.”
“Making her fall,” Chrystabel said, “will be Kit’s problem, and I’ve no doubt he’s up to the task. I need only provide the opportunity.”
“You cannot push, Chrysanthemum.”
Her laugh tinkled through the darkness. “I would never. I know full well our daughters pledged to avoid me arranging their marriages. Yet I managed to match both Violet and Lily without either being the wiser, didn’t I? Have no fear, darling—Rose’s romance will follow suit. And she’ll have no idea I was behind it.”
Five
KIT STOOD in a corner of Windsor Castle’s soon-to-be new dining room, watching two carpenters affix carvings of fruit to the paneled wall. The piece, exquisitely worked by Grinling Gibbons, was made of the finest wood.
He wished he could say the same for the rest of his project.
His gaze went to the sagging ceiling on the side of the room that had recently been part of a brick courtyard. Jagged cracks ran this way and that, and bits of broken plaster littered the floor underneath. On his orders, men were hastily erecting scaffolding to support the damaged ceiling until it could be repaired from above.
All day, Kit had measured and figured, tearing out parts of the ceiling to search for causes, to find where his planning had gone wrong. It hadn’t, he’d finally discovered—the plans had been perfect. That was, if they’d been executed with the fine materials he’d used in his calculations.
But Harold Washburn, his project’s foreman, had apparently not seen fit to order those materials, no matter that he’d been supplied with the funds. Instead, the new portion of the room had been built with inferior goods that weren’t strong enough to support the ceiling. Kit had found beams made of wormy wood that had obviously been hit by lightning, weakening it; and cheap, substandard plaster that might look fine on first inspection, but wouldn’t hold up over the years, sagging ceiling or not.
And Washburn, no doubt, had pocketed the savings. Making Kit look the fool.
Calculations in hand, he stalked toward the bald, dark-eyed man. “Washburn!”
The man swung around, his beady gaze hooded. “Aye, Martyn? Have you a plan to repair the faulty addition?”
“Faulty?” Seething, Kit struggled to keep his temper in check. “The only thing faulty is the material you purchased to build it—which isn’t anywhere near the quality in my specifications.”
Washburn had the gall to pretend shock. “Sir! I would never—”
“Never again for me, at any rate,” Kit interrupted. He gestured with his rolled-up sketches. “Be gone.”
The man’s breath huffed in and out through a large nose crisscrossed with tiny red veins. “You cannot just dismiss me,” he snapped.
“Lord Almighty, you’re a nithing half-wit. The damn ceiling could have fallen on your good-for-nothing head. You’re lucky I’m only dismissing you.”
To Kit’s astonishment, Washburn simply shouldered past him and walked away.
Was it Kit’s imagination, or did the man actually look smug?<
br />
Kit consciously unclenched his jaw, reaching for the scrap of brick he usually carried in his surcoat pocket. His fist clenched around it; he’d been itching for a fight.
In the end, though, the anger faded, replaced by relief. In truth, the problem had resolved more quickly than he’d any right to expect.
He took a deep breath, promoted a grateful man to take Washburn’s place, then headed to the small chamber he’d been given to use as an office, revamping the schedule in his head. The project would still finish on time.
That there were greedy men in the world wasn’t news to Kit. But this particular one wouldn’t cost him the Deputy Surveyor post.
It would take a much bigger problem to destroy Kit Martyn’s plans.
Six
“HURRY,” ROSE said. “Or by the time we get to court, the presentations will be finished.”
“Stop worrying, dear.” Seated together with Rose at the single dressing table in the rooms they’d been assigned at Windsor Castle, Mum held very still while her maid, Anne, used hot curling tongs to put the final touches on her hair. “We’ll still be allowed inside, even if we’re late.”
With all the last minute preparations, they’d left home today much later than they’d planned. Chrystabel had needed to leave instructions for the running of the entire household, and Harriet, Rose’s maid, had taken forever to pack. It had been dark by the time they’d reached Windsor, and Rose, dying of curiosity, had hardly been able to see anything of the huge castle as a warden showed them by torchlight to their small apartments.
“I don’t want to be late,” Rose complained. Beneath burgundy satin sleeves fastened at intervals with jeweled clasps, her skin prickled with suppressed excitement. “I want to meet the king and queen.”
“You will, dear.” Chrystabel met her gaze in the dressing table’s mirror. “You look very pretty.”
