by Mia Marlowe
“I’m not opposed to women voting,” he said. “I just don’t know why they need to be as shrill as opera singers about it.”
She bristled at that and almost pulled her hand away from his beguiling touch. “Maybe because we aren’t sure anyone is listening if we aren’t ‘shrill.’”
“You have my undivided attention, I assure you.” When John’s intense gaze swept over her, every bit of her tingled with awareness. “Isn’t there anything else you find fascinating?”
You, Rebecca almost blurted out. How could she be so irritated by him one moment and drawn to him as inexorably as a lily to the sun the next? Then, to cover her unladylike response, she admitted, “I’m a bit of an amateur astronomer.”
She tugged her hand away and did up the button on her glove quickly, before his soft touches removed all possibility of rational thought from her head.
He smiled at her, seemingly unaware of the effect he was having on her. “Stargazing, eh? That sounds like a suitable feminine diversion. Moonlight is supposed to be romantic.”
She’d sighed over the moon as much as the next girl, but she’d also taught herself to recognize the constellations and tracked the progress of a number of planets across the heavens.
“Not all women are romantics. My astronomical studies are quite scholarly,” she said. “If you wish to impress a lady with your conversational skills, you shouldn’t denigrate her interests.”
“Sorry. Do most ladies engage in scholarly pursuits?”
“No, they don’t,” Rebecca admitted. And even if they did, like Freddie, they often tossed their other interests aside in favor of a woman’s supposed only goal in life—to marry the right man.
“Then you are as exceptional as I thought. Dazzle me with your knowledge of the stars.”
“Just so you know, being confrontational like this is not the best way to advance a conversation with a lady,” she said. “But as a matter of fact, I can dazzle you, or rather the stars themselves can. The annual Leonid meteor shower is due shortly.”
“Is it? No doubt it will be easier to see here in the country than in London. What do you say we meet on the roof at midnight and count the falling stars?”
“That doesn’t sound very safe. Your father fell from that roof, remember.”
“We, however, will not. So long as we stay far from the parapet, you will be in no danger. I give you my word.”
She might not be in danger of falling off the roof, but she’d be in peril all the same. “I don’t think it’s a very good idea.”
“I’ll collect you at your room at a quarter to midnight, and we’ll go up to see your falling stars,” he said as if he hadn’t heard her objection.
“You will do nothing of the sort because you don’t know which room I’m staying in.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Do you seriously think a future marquess can’t find out where each of his guests is staying?”
“That settles it. I’ll ask to be moved to a different chamber.”
“Which is still in my power to discover.”
“There are plenty of big chairs and sofas in the parlors and receiving rooms in the public areas of this house. I can just slip into one of them to sleep. You could look all night and never find me.”
He leaned back and shot her a reassessing look. “You’d go to all that trouble just to avoid stargazing with me?”
“No, I’d do it to avoid a scandal,” she said. “Can you imagine how tongues would wag if we were caught creeping about the house together in the dark?”
“Which will not happen so long as we’re quiet about it.”
A delicious tingle sparked down her spine. It could work. They might have a lovely, totally innocent adventure together under the stars. But the more practical part of her nature argued there was nothing innocent in John’s suggestion. “Why do you want to take such a risk?”
“Tomorrow, the beau monde arrives. Tonight, I simply want to be with you.”
A warm glow spread through her chest, but her heart still urged her to caution. “Why do you want to be with me?”
“Because I want to know you, Rebecca.” He stroked her cheek with his fingertips. “I can see from your face that this meteor shower will mean something to you. I want to be a part of that.”
“Oh.” Something inside her melted like chocolate in a steamer. He wanted to know her—and not necessarily in the biblical sense. Well, maybe that too, but he certainly gave every appearance of being interested in her for more than rakish purposes. “I thought you were only interested in a tryst on the roof.”
“There you have me,” John admitted. “I can’t deny I’d like another chance to kiss you.”
The dowager’s promise to settle her father’s debts if Rebecca managed to teach John to approach a young lady correctly thudded back into her. She had to proceed with caution. “You’ve given me every reason to say no. That’s not at all a proper request.”
“Maybe not, but it’s an honest one. Was kissing me that terrible?”
She glanced at him from under her lashes. “No.”
It was wondrous. Stirring. Life-changing.
“Good.” They sat in silence for a moment, and then he turned to her. John reached over and slid his fingertips under her chin, tipping her face toward him. “For me, that kiss was almost an absolution. If someone like you can kiss me, there may be hope for me yet.”
She chuckled. “So I’m supposed to save you by sneaking out of my chamber and engaging in a clandestine meeting on the roof? It sounds as if you’re urging me to sin more than I’ll be trying to sway you to better behavior.”
“And I thought you only wanted to watch the stars.” He grinned at her. “You almost sound hopeful.”
She swatted his shoulder. “You, sir, are no gentleman.”
His smile faded. “You’d do well to remember it.”
Then he gathered her close, and before she could protest, he brought her near enough for her to feel his breath feathering over her lips.
Fifteen
Of course I remember the first young man I kissed. He was Leander Higginbotham, the twelve-year-old brother of my best friend. As I recall, it involved a great deal of sighing and altogether too much exchange of saliva. Can’t think why I found it intriguing at the time, but my belly fizzed like seltzer water all the same.
—Phillippa, the Dowager Marchioness of Somerset
John had expected Rebecca to put up a fuss, but instead, she melted into his arms with the rightness of a homecoming. Her eyelids fluttered closed. She wanted him to kiss her.
He wanted to do much more.
Rebecca Kearsey had no idea of the darkness swirling in him.
But as much as he wanted to kiss her, he knew he shouldn’t. Not if he wanted her to trust him. So he dropped a quick kiss on the tip of her turned-up nose, and rose.
She blinked at him, clearly surprised.
“Expect me when you hear the longcase clock in the foyer chime a quarter to midnight.” Then, before she could tempt him to snatch her up and kiss her thoroughly, he turned and headed back into the great house.
His insides were a tangle of jumbled-up emotions he couldn’t identify. Lust, certainly, but there was also tenderness and longing that had as much to do with Rebecca’s restful spirit as her luscious body. He wanted her, and he wanted to protect her from himself in equal measures.
He’d been wrong when he thought the garden would be less intimidating than the big house. Any garden which had Rebecca Kearsey in it was devastating.
* * *
Rebecca paced her sumptuous room, walking back and forth through the increasingly narrow swath of moonlight that shafted through her window. The moon would sink into the western horizon by midnight, leaving the sky inky black. Perfect for stargazing and exploring the heavens.
Perfect for
other sorts of exploration as well.
But the fact that circumstances had given John not one but two opportunities to kiss her and he hadn’t done so made her belly swirl with disappointment.
After that first kiss, maybe he didn’t really like her in that way at all. She wasn’t accomplished in matters sensual. Her inexperience probably amused him more than anything. Maybe John was simply toying with her, entertaining himself until the more important debutantes arrived and he was forced to make a choice from among them.
After her chat with Freddie, she was under no illusions about what would happen to John during the Somerset house party. All the daughters of the ton on their way to Somerfield Park would launch themselves at his head. Even if Lord Hartley was rough around the edges, he was still the highest-ranking bachelor available on the marriage market this year, and now that his family had taken him in hand, he would be irresistibly attractive.
A fox on hunting day had more chance of escape than he.
If Rebecca weren’t so irritated about the fact that he hadn’t kissed her again when he could have, she might actually have felt sorry for him.
The longcase clock chimed half past eleven.
Rebecca sank into the Sheraton chair by her fireplace and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. Perhaps John wouldn’t even come for her. She wondered if he was laughing to himself, imagining her sitting up, waiting for him.
Freddie would say it served her right. Rebecca was getting above herself, imagining that the heir to a marquess, even one as unorthodox as this new Lord Hartley, might find her worth his time.
Still, there was something of the deserted bastard child about him. He presented a hard face to the world, but that facade had slipped in her presence more than once. She didn’t think he’d reveal that part of himself willingly to just anyone.
That made him more hers than any of the other debutantes on their way.
She hugged that to herself as the last of the moonlight slanted into nothingness.
Then she heard a soft scratching at her door. She hurried to open it and found John with a candle in a small glass holder.
He smiled as he took in the fact that she was ready and waiting for him. Then he put a finger to his lips to signal for quiet, and offered his hand.
She slipped her fingers into his and let him lead her into the corridor. Her fingertips were icy with nervousness, but his hand was warm. Silent as wraiths, they passed along the walkway that looked down into the foyer and then slipped up the grand staircase. Once they reached the fourth floor, Rebecca lost track of all the twists and turns they made in the much narrower hallways. John had evidently been doing some exploring since they’d parted company in the garden and led her on without a pause. Rebecca was so turned about she’d be hard-pressed to find her way back to her chamber without his help.
Finally, they reached a door at the end of a long corridor. Behind it, there was an even narrower set of stairs that led up to a hatch-like opening on Somerfield Park’s flat roof.
Once John handed Rebecca up the last step, he closed the hatch behind them and straightened.
“Thank you for coming, Rebecca,” he said, his voice a dark summons that set her stomach aflutter. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
“Your invitation had me at a disadvantage,” she whispered. “It’s hard for me to resist the stars.” There was no need to let the man know she felt an even stronger tug toward him.
“No need to keep quiet now,” he said. “No one will hear us up here.”
“But we might hear something if we listen hard enough.”
He cocked his head. “What?”
“The music of the spheres.” Rebecca lifted her arms to the Milky Way spilling across the heavens, a frothy band of white against the eternal dark. When she was a child, she imagined the cloud of stars flowed in an unending stream from a giant’s upturned milk pail. The image still made her smile.
“Music of the spheres? That’s hokum, surely.”
“Pythagoras didn’t think so. Neither did Sir Isaac Newton,” she told him. “There is a demonstrable relationship between sound and mass and movement.”
John stood silent for a moment. Wind sighed through the garden below. An owl hooted in the distant woods. No grand symphony dropped to them from the sky.
“I don’t hear anything out of the ordinary,” he said.
“I’m not surprised. I’m convinced it’s not something we can hear with our ears,” Rebecca said. “But I believe if I listen hard enough, someday I’ll hear the music of the spheres with my heart.”
“Then I’ll have to trust you to describe it to me, since my heart is probably not able to perceive anything so sublime. But there’s nothing wrong with my eyes, and I expect to see some fireworks in the sky. Come.”
He led her to a place roughly in the center of the roof, near the octagonal skylights that looked down into Somerfield Park’s foyer four floors below. If the foyer’s crystal chandelier had been lit, this would have been a wonderful vantage point to spy on the nocturnal comings and goings in the great house.
Next to the skylights, John had made what looked like a camp bed. There were a couple of straw ticks topped with a feather one, so that it reached Rebecca’s mid-calf. He’d layered several blankets on the ticks. He blew out the candle and set the holder down on the roof beside the mattresses.
“What’s this?”
“It’s chilly here on the roof, so I figured we’d need blankets,” he said. “And is there a better position for stargazing than flat on your back?”
She’d often taken a quilt from her bed and lain out on her terrace to watch the stars wheel overhead. “No, I suppose not.”
He lifted one corner of the blankets.
“John, did you even think for a moment about how improper this is?”
“You mean did it occur to me that this is a thinly veiled attempt to get you into my bed? Of course. But you can’t deny it’s also a sensible way to stay warm and look at the night sky. Two birds. One stone.” He caught up her hand and brought it to his mouth for a soft kiss. “All teasing aside, I promise you that nothing will pass between us you don’t wish as much as I. Not a thing.”
A brisk breeze ruffled over them. It was early November, after all. Her heavy shawl, which had seemed so warm and snug in her bedchamber, was wholly inadequate now.
As long as we both stay fully clothed, there’s not much likelihood that I’ll accidentally succumb to performing the mysterious “it.”
“Very well. I hold you to that promise,” Rebecca said as she sat down on the low, impromptu bed.
“Let me help you take your slippers off.” He knelt at her feet to remove them before she could object. “Your feet will be warmer without them under the covers.”
So much for staying fully clothed.
Then he tucked the blankets around her and went around to slide into his side of the bed. With the layers of mattress beneath her, the soft blankets over her, and a man beside her who seemed to be throwing off as much heat as a crackling fire, Rebecca was as toasty as if she were in her own bedchamber with a heated brick at her feet.
“I don’t see any falling stars,” John said, lacing his fingers under his head. It left an inviting space where she might snuggle close and lay her head on his shoulder. Rebecca forced her gaze back to the heavens. “Are you sure about this meteor shower?”
“It actually lasts for several nights. Be patient. We should see some.” She rolled onto her side to face him. “I have it on good authority that you were educated at Eton and Oxford. Did you not learn a thing about astronomy there?”
“If I did, it’s escaped my memory.” He shifted to face her and half sat up, propping himself on his elbow. “I spent most of my time avoiding fights at Eton. An Oxford education is still heavy on rhetoric and Latin. Any study of astronomy was tucked neatly into mathemati
cs. But I do know the names of a couple of stars here and there.”
“Do you? Then it’s your turn to dazzle me. Which stars do you know?”
John rolled onto his back and scanned the sky from north to south. He was closer to her now, his shoulder touching hers, his muscular arm flush against hers. Instead of resting in two little pockets in the feather tick, John and Rebecca seemed to be sliding together into one.
“Well, I can usually pick out Arcturus.” He frowned at the heavens. “It’s a reddish star that’s sort of off by itself. It’s brighter than most in the southern sky, but I don’t see it now.”
“That’s because it’s the wrong time of year. You can see it best in our hemisphere in the spring.” Rebecca fought off the urge to snuggle even closer to him. The sagging bed seemed to be arranging for that of its own accord. “But Arcturus is not really off by itself. It’s part of the constellation Boötes. That’s a roughly kite-shaped grouping of stars.”
“There’s a description worthy of a bluestocking—just the bare facts. I’d have thought someone who expects to hear the stars’ music someday would have a bit of whimsy to share about them.”
“There are as many myths about them as there are stars in the sky. But instead of accepting someone else’s story, I always think the ones we tell ourselves about the stars are more interesting.” John’s scent, a heady mix of leather and bergamot, wafted by her nose, and she breathed him in. Who knew a man could smell so good? Rebecca forced herself to roll onto her back and focus on the heavens. After all, that was why they were there. “So what about you? Did you tell yourself a story about Arcturus?”
His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I don’t know that I gave it a story, particularly. It just always stood out to me. Solitary. Pulsing a bit. It seemed a little angry to me. Does that sound strange? That a star could be angry?”
Solitary and angry. “No one can say whose story about the stars is the right one. Of course, stars can’t really be angry, but a boy looking up at one might be.”
He turned to face her.
“You thought you were alone when you were a boy, looking up at that red star,” she said softly.
