The Virgin’s Secret

by Victoria Alexander

  “Come now, Gabriella. You can’t—” Realization dawned on Nathanial’s face and his smile vanished. “You are embarrassed, aren’t you? Why, you’re blushing again.”

  “Yes, well…” The ease with which she blushed was the bane of her existence, and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it. But of course she was embarrassed. Not as much by his words as by the explicit images her own mind had created. Even so, it was his fault.

  “I am sorry.” He winced. “I didn’t intend—I had no idea that you—that is to say—”

  “No idea? And why not?” The words came without thinking. “Because women who break into houses and pretend to be someone they’re not and are every bit as clever as you, who want to restore the good name of their family and have a sense of honor, would, of course, not be the sort to be embarrassed by crass, improper comments? That such women do not deserve the common courtesies you would give to a lady on the street? Because my family, my background, my circumstances are not such that they warrant respect?”

  It was his turn to look as if he’d been dashed by cold water. “I assure you, Gabriella, my intent was only to tease—flirt, if you will. I never meant—”

  “Enough, please.” She pushed out her hand to stop him. Where had her outburst come from? In truth she was far more annoyed than embarrassed. Just like her tendency to blush, not keeping her mouth shut when she was angry had always been another unfortunate character flaw. “Now, I must apologize.” Certainly, the differences between her family and his, her life and his, had been brought home to her last night. And yes, she might have felt a twinge of what could possibly be called resentment or even jealousy. But it was absurd. Life was what one made of it regardless of the hand one had been dealt. “Your family has been nothing but kind and generous to me, far more so than I deserve. My remarks were uncalled for.”

  “No, I am to blame. I baited you, and for that I must beg your forgiveness. I am most sorry. I lost my head.” He took her hand. “In my defense, Gabriella, you should know…” He raised her hand to his lips, his gaze never leaving hers. “…you were not the only one who was disappointed.”

  “I wasn’t—” She paused, then drew a deep breath. “Your apology is accepted. I would prefer that we never bring this incident up again.”

  “Oh I agree,” Nathanial said somberly, but the wicked twinkle had returned to his eye.

  She stared for a moment. “I can’t trust you at all, can I?”

  “Of course you can. In most matters, I can be most trustworthy. Now, then.” He gestured at the letters. “Where do you suggest I begin?”

  “Here.” She stepped to the desk, of necessity standing far too close to him than was proper. Still, they were going to work together, and her standards of what was and was not acceptable would have to change, or at least bend. She reached in front of him, her arm brushing against his. Without warning the feel of being in his arms washed through her. She firmly set it aside. Now was not the time, nor, she amended at once, would there ever be a time. She arranged the letters in chronological order. “There are only seven. The first few came rather quickly, and as you will see, are the most lucid of the lot. The last…” She shrugged. “I suggest you read them in order.”

  “Very sensible.” He sat down and picked up a letter. “This is the first?”

  She nodded. He started reading, then glanced up. “Do you plan to watch me read every word?”

  “Not every word.”

  “It makes me most uncomfortable.” He grimaced. “This is a library, Gabriella. I would think you could find something to read. There are a great many reference works here that you might enjoy. Or better yet, a novel.”

  She scoffed. “I never read novels.”

  “That explains a great deal,” he said under his breath.

  “What do you mean?” She drew her brows together. “What exactly does that explain?”

  “Your manner. Your attitude toward life, as it were.”

  “My attitude is just fine.”

  “You, Gabriella Montini, take the world entirely too seriously.”

  “You don’t know that. You don’t know me.”

  “Nonetheless.” He shrugged. “This was not difficult to ascertain.”

  “Just because a woman doesn’t leap into your arms, doesn’t long for your embrace, doesn’t ache to feel your lips upon hers—”

  He arched a brow.

  She ignored him. “Does not mean she takes the world too seriously.”

  “If you say so.”

  She huffed. “The world is a serious place, Nathanial Harrington.”

  “Indeed it is.”

  “And my life is a serious matter. My brother is dead, his reputation is shattered. I have no real family save a handful of serv—friends. And the one thing I truly wanted in my life is now—” She blew a resigned breath. “—out of the question.”

  He settled back in the chair and studied her. “What is the one thing you truly wanted?”

  “It scarcely matters.” She waved off his question and wandered to a bookshelf. “As you think a novel will somehow make my manner more frivolous—”

  He laughed. “I never used the word frivolous.”

  She cast him a haughty glance. “It was implied.”

  “I should have said…lighthearted. Yes, that’s it.”

  “My heart is anything but light at the moment, nor has it ever been.”

  “What a shame,” he said softly.

  “Not at all, Nathanial. It’s simply how life is.” She turned back to the shelves. “Do you have a recommendation? As to a novel, that is?”

  “Come now, Gabriella, there must be some author’s works you like? You cannot tell me you’ve never read a novel? Not even in a youthful misspent moment perhaps?”

  “My youth was not especially misspent.” Unless one considered being dressed as a boy and accompanying your brother from one exotic location to another on a quest for antiquities misspent.

  “Still, you must have a favorite?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said under her breath. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember ever having read an account of fiction, although surely she must have. Her brother had taught her to read, but in that employed the use of the manuals and historical references he routinely carried with him, and the Bible, of course. When she began her schooling in England, she had been made to memorize a great deal of poetry, and recalled studying the plays of Mr. Shakespeare, but not a single work of narrative fiction came to mind.

  “Not Mr. Dickens? Or Mr. Trollope or Miss Austen?”

  “Apparently my education has lacked in that respect.” She perused the titles on the shelf. “Besides, I’ve never had the time.”

  “How do you spend your time?”

  “I study, Nathanial. I study ancient civilizations, history, archeology, myths, legends, and anything else that might prove useful for my brother’s work. I have earned certificates at Queen’s College, have already been awarded one university degree, and I continue my studies. I have as well committed to memory most of the books and papers in the Antiquities Society library and archives.” She glanced at him over her shoulder. “I have an excellent memory.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  She arched a brow. “A compliment, Nathanial? One that has nothing to do with the tempting nature of my lips or the hypnotic quality of my eyes?”

  “I don’t know what came over me.” He grinned. “I shall try not to let it happen again.”

  In spite of herself, she returned his smile. The man was quite engaging. “In addition, I am fluent in nine languages, including Coptic, Persian, Turkish, and Arabic.”

  He stared. “Nobody speaks Coptic. It’s extinct.”

  “Not entirely. It’s still used in the Church of Alexandria.”

  “Even so, why learn something so obscure?”

  “Because it’s the closest thing we have to any knowledge of an ancient Egyptian spoken language.”

 
“I suppose it makes sense in a strictly scholarly sense. But why would you learn Turkish, Arabic, Persian? Most women of my acquaintance—even those few engaged in scholarly pursuits—learn French, a smattering of Italian, perhaps German. Even if one wished to travel extensively, that would certainly be sufficient.”

  “I thought we had already agreed I am not like most women of your acquaintance.”

  “Still, it seems rather unusual.”

  “Perhaps it is.” She studied him for a long moment. Telling him her plans hardly mattered now. Nothing would come of them. Surely she should trust him enough to tell him this, and trust as well that he wouldn’t laugh at her ambitions. She drew a deep breath. “I had hoped to become knowledgeable enough to join my brother in his work. To be indispensable to him.”

  “I see.” He nodded thoughtfully. “I would say it is a farfetched aspiration for a woman, but we have established you are not like most women.” He paused and considered her. “This, then, is what you wanted most in your life, isn’t it?”

  “It’s of no consequence now.” She shrugged and turned back to the shelf. Somehow, telling him, saying it aloud now twice today when she’d never admitted it to anyone before, made her loss all the more real. “Besides, I’m not sure I ever could have convinced Enrico to let me join him. I had hoped if I learned enough, if I made myself…well, essential, important to his work, he would allow me to come with him.”

  “Those obscure, remote areas of the world where your brother and the rest of us search for the treasures of the past are not places for western women,” he said slowly, as if treading lightly.

  “I know that.”

  “And yet that did not deter you?”

  “It sounds rather silly, I suppose. I know the proper place of a woman in this day and age. Still, women do travel the world and go all sorts of places not substantially more civilized than those regions you frequent. Besides, I would prefer to be considered an expert in the field of archeology rather than a mere woman.”

  He chuckled. “There is nothing ‘mere’ about you.”

  “Nonetheless, as a practical matter, I am well aware I can do nothing as a woman alone. It doesn’t seem especially fair, but it is the way of the world.” She didn’t have to turn to know he had risen to his feet and crossed the room to stand behind her. “So, my studies, my training, has all been for nothing.”

  “I am sorry, Gabriella.” Genuine regret sounded in his voice. “I can only imagine what it must be like to lose something you had worked for. Something you had wanted.”

  “And I did,” she said softly, “want it very much.” For a moment, misery swept through her. She had some time ago laid to rest the grief she’d felt for her brother. This was for her, her dreams, her hopes. She drew a deep breath. Ridiculous, of course. Her dreams never had any chance of coming true. “It was quite foolish to think it was ever a legitimate possibility.” She turned to face him. He was less than the width of her hand away. Her heart sped up. She ignored it. “There you have it, Nathanial. My frivolous hope. As fictional as anything one might read in a novel, I suspect. My—” She sighed. “—secret, as it were.” She cast him a deprecating smile.

  He smiled back as if he did indeed understand. At once it struck her that no matter what else he might be, he was a nice man. A very nice man. The kind of man one might be able to depend on. The kind of man one might possibly trust.

  She stared into his brown eyes and abruptly the moment between them changed. Without warning, an odd tension snapped in the air between them, charged with an intensity and awareness as unexpected as it was irresistible.

  The kind of man one could love.

  He stared at her. “And do you have many secrets?”

  Where on earth did that come from? She had no business loving any man, let alone this one. She pushed the thought away and forced a cool note to her voice. “Yes, of course. We all have secrets.”

  He moved imperceptibly closer, bracing one hand on the shelves to the left of her head. “Any you wish to share?”

  “They wouldn’t be secrets then, would they?” Her gaze slipped from his eyes to his mouth. Hers weren’t the only lips that begged to be kissed, not that she intended to do anything of the sort. “I should hate for you to know everything about me. Where would be the mystery? The excitement? The challenge?”

  “I suspect that will not be a problem,” he said under his breath.

  She could feel the books on the shelves behind her pressing into her back. Still, why not kiss him? Just once. What harm could it do? “You’re nicer than I expected you to be.”

  “Excellent.” He smiled in a wicked manner that should have seemed silly or overly dramatic or far too arrogant instead of making her breath catch and her knees week.

  “Are you going to kiss me?” She swallowed hard.

  “I think I might, yes.”

  “There is no moonlight now, Nathanial.”

  “I may be willing to forgo that condition.”

  “Would you?” She raised her lips toward his.

  “I can’t seem to help myself.” He leaned closer.

  “You said a first kiss should be savored and remembered always.”

  “I shall remember it forever.” His lips were within a breath of her own.

  “Nathanial?” She fairly sighed his name.

  He paused. “Yes?”

  She tossed caution aside and brushed her lips lightly across his. “As will I.”

  “Mmm.” He pressed his lips firmly to hers. Her stomach clenched with newfound desire.

  “Ahem.” Someone cleared his throat at the doorway. “Beg pardon, my lord.”

  Eight

  Damnation, she knew that voice.

  Nathanial straightened reluctantly, cast her a quick smile and turned toward the newcomer. “Yes?”

  Xerxes stood in the door, garbed in the same apparel as every other servant she’d seen thus far in the household, holding a silver slaver bearing a letter. “This just arrived for Miss Montini, sir. I was told to deliver it at once.”

  “Very well.” Nathanial took the letter, glanced at it in passing, and handed it to Gabriella. “Are you new here?” he asked Xerxes. “I was under the impression that John Farrel was the footman on duty in the morning.”

  “I am serving in John’s stead, my lord,” Xerxes said smoothly.

  Gabriella clenched her teeth.

  “I hope nothing is wrong,” Nathaniel said.

  “He was called to the country on a family matter of some urgency, sir.”

  A family matter—hah! Gabriella glared. “Was he?”

  Xerxes met her gaze firmly. “Yes, miss.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “How urgent?”

  “Gabriella.” Nathanial shook his head. “I really don’t think—”

  “It’s his younger sister, miss. My cousin fears she could be getting herself into some difficulty and may need his assistance.” Xerxes’s gaze locked with hers. “Even perhaps rescue.”

  Gabriella crossed her arms over her chest. “Is she a child?”

  “In spite of her behavior on occasion, no, miss, she is an adult.”

  “Then I’m sure she’s more than competent to handle the situation on her own,” Gabriella said.

  Nathanial’s confused gaze slid between her and the older man. “Gabriella?”

  “I’ve no doubt she thinks she is, miss. However, she has been mistaken about her competence in the past.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “The entire family is most concerned.” He turned his attention to Nathanial. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “No, thank you.” Nathanial cast an amused glance at Gabriella. “Unless you had something more?”

  “Not at the moment,” she muttered.

  “Then you may go.” Nathanial nodded.

  Xerxes headed for the door.

  “Oh, I don’t know your name,” Nathanial said.

  “John Farrel, sir.”

  “Like your cousin?”

  Gabriella c
hoked back a snort of disgust.

  Nathanial glanced at her.

  “It’s a family name, sir.”

  “I see.” Nathanial nodded, and Xerxes took his leave. “Do you know him?”

  “No,” she said shortly. “He reminded me of someone—something in his manner, I think.” She cast him an apologetic smile. “I seem to be rather on edge today.”

  “Not surprising, really.” He nodded at the letter in her hand. “Aren’t you going to read that?”

  “Yes, of course.” Gabriella opened the letter and scanned it. “It’s from my friend, Miss Henry.”

  “Wasn’t she just here?”

  “Apparently there were some things she failed to mention.” Among them the fact that she, or Xerxes, had paid John the footman to go on a bit of a holiday so Xerxes could take the man’s place. Apparently that was the plan Florence had referred to.

  “Now that we’re alone…”

  To keep an eye on her. Gabriella’s jaw clenched. No one in her household seemed to understand that she was no longer a child.

  “Yes?” she said absently. Still, it wasn’t a bad idea to have Xerxes within reach should she need his assistance.

  Nathanial cleared his throat. “Now that we’re alone…”

  “You said that,” she murmured. Indeed she should have thought of it herself. She refolded the note and glanced at Nathanial. “Now that we’re alone, did you still want to kiss me?”

  “And get it over with, you mean?”

  “I didn’t mean that at all.” Even so, the moment wasn’t quite as electric as it had been. The desire to press her lips to his not as urgent, although she was certain it wouldn’t take much more than a heated glance for her to again want what she’d never imagined she’d want. Regardless, the opportunity had passed.

  “I should…” He nodded toward the desk. “…finish the letters.”

  “By all means.” She suspected as well that it would not take much to reignite his desire either.

  He sat back down and picked up a letter. The first, she noted. He certainly hadn’t progressed very far. She crossed her arms over her chest, bookshelf at her back, and watched him read.