Rakes and Roses (Proper Romance Regency)

by Josi S. Kilpack

  He grinned in obvious triumph.

  “Apology accepted—for the knitting. But I earned your overall displeasure last night so there is no need to apologize for that. Would you please call me Harry?” he asked.

  The invitation took her off guard and sent a shiver through her. To call him by his Christian name was an invitation for a more casual connection. “I fear that would be undignified, Mr. Stillman.”

  “I am wearing a nightshirt and knitting,” he said slowly. “Dignity is no longer an option. Also, you remind me of a schoolteacher when you address me as Mr. Stillman, though that is better than ‘Young Stillman,’ I suppose. However, if you continue to refuse, I must press my suit. As the reigning champion of our chess matches, I ask that you satisfy this demand and call me by my name.”

  She pressed her lips together in an attempt to maintain some dignity of her own, but she could not seem to keep her serious attitude when he was so very light in his. “You demand I call you by your Christian name as the prize for having won our matches? Though I use that term loosely due to the fact that you distracted me in order to win both games.”

  “Yes,” he said. “When you are champion, you can make a demand of your own, and I will comply so long as it is within the same boundaries of propriety.” He winked and smiled, and she felt it in every nerve of her body. What did he mean by it?

  She cleared her throat. “I do not think it proper for me to call you by your Christian name, Mr. Stillman. I am your caretaker.”

  He set his work in his lap and looked at her pointedly. “Therese is my caretaker, and Joshua assists. You are my chess partner and . . .” He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Well, since you are mistress of the house I can’t really tell you what to do, so let me go about this another way.” He smiled his overwhelmingly bright smile that made her feel wobbly on her feet. “Will you please call me Harry?”

  “Absolutely not,” Sabrina said, not only because she was a woman of principle but also because if she played along with his masculine wiles, she could find herself falling under his spell.

  He sighed loudly and picked up his work. “Would you like to see what I am working on? It is nothing too elaborate—just a lap rug—but then I’ve only been a knitter for a few days, and no one can expect to build Rome in such a short time as that, now can they? Therese says that once I have mastered a single color, she will show me how to do alternating ones. Have you seen the checked scarf she wears? The yellow-and-purple one? I should like to make something like that, only with colors more befitting my sex. Blue and green, perhaps.”

  Sabrina pressed her lips together again to keep from laughing at the boyish excitement in his voice. “It is remarkable, Mr. Stillman. I am very impressed.”

  “And surprised,” he said with a knowing glance. “Admit it—you did not think me capable.”

  “You are exactly right,” Sabrina said, no longer holding back her smile. “I have not once considered what a master knitter you could be.”

  He smoothed the partially knit rug across his lap, looking as pleased as a hound before the fire. Then he let go of one of the needles and waved her toward the chair. “And how was your day? What adventures did you have?”

  She felt too tense to sit and instead walked around the room, straightening and resetting the room as she told him about her day, trying to make it all sound more interesting than it had been.

  “When will you be returning to London?”

  “I have an appointment on Friday,” she said, turning toward him. She’d run out of things to do, and since he was busy with his knitting, it didn’t seem right to ask that he put it aside so they might play chess. “But the Season is finished, and my brother has removed to the country for the winter, so I shall return Saturday afternoon.”

  “I shall miss your company,” he said, giving her a heartfelt smile before lowering his gaze back to his knitting.

  She was unsure how to respond to that. Did he really mean it? And what, exactly, would he miss?

  He looked up at her. “Would you have some time to read to me?” He nodded toward the book on the nightstand beside his bed.

  “No chess?” She hoped she didn’t sound disappointed—she hadn’t meant to.

  “Is that all right? Nothing against the game or the time we have spent playing, but I think you are on to my strategies of distraction now, and a man who knits cannot also lose at chess.”

  “Lose to a woman, you mean?”

  He let go of his needle and put up his hand, palm facing her. “Do not put words in my mouth. Can we leave it at my not being able to accept losing at chess to a person and let me get back to my needles?”

  Sabrina smiled. “Well, when you put it that way, I suppose so. But if we are not playing chess, then perhaps I ought to return to the papers and—”

  “The only part of knitting that I find tiresome,” he broke in, winking at her when she closed her mouth, “is the silence of it. I tried for a time to put the book on my lap and knit in between turning the pages, but I kept dropping stitches, so I had to give up one for the sake of the other. I would very much like to get a bit more work done today, and I can do it better if I have something to listen to.”

  She crossed to the book and read the title gilded across the front cover. “Clermont?” She looked from the gothic novel to him though he remained focused on his yarn.

  “I am abashedly ignorant of what makes up good fiction, but I read the first book of The Children of the Abbey after a friend bet me I could not read an entire book in one sitting if that sitting was done in a bath. I am proud to say that I won sixpence, though I also caught a cold so it may not have been a worthwhile venture, save for the bragging rights—things like that can really boost a young man’s reputation in school—fortitude and all that.”

  Sabrina shook her head at the ridiculous, yet entertaining, folly of this man.

  He continued as though she had not reacted. “I asked Therese if you might have any Regina Roche in your library, and she came back with this.” He waved toward the book in her hand. “I only made it through the first chapter before realizing that I could not be attentive to both activities, as I have already explained.” He picked up his needles and smiled brightly at Sabrina. “If you would be so good as to start at the top of chapter two, I would be most obliged.”

  She pulled up the chair and turned the pages to the start of chapter two, amused and entertained in equal amounts. She had just opened her mouth to begin reading when Mr. Stillman spoke again. “Before we start, did you notice that I chose pink for your lap blanket?”

  He lifted the square of tidy stitches.

  “My lap blanket?”

  “Yes, did I not mention that? I have so few ways of showing my thanks, it seemed fitting that my first completed project should be a gift to you to thank you for all you have done for me.” He glanced up at her, his expression humble and gracious. “I really cannot thank you enough, Lady Sabrina.” He rested the needles in his lap. “The clearer my mind becomes, the more I realize the level of sacrifice you and your staff have made to accommodate me.”

  He looked toward the window, turning his perfect face into profile. “Being away from the places where it was easy to be my worst self has given me a view of the future I have never considered before, and while I am eager to heal and get to work on making a life worth living, I am truly trying to make the most of this time here, in your home, surrounded by good and generous people. I am not sure you can know what a remarkable experience that is for a man like me, but it has changed me.”

  He looked at her, and she—yet again—could not look away. Her heart was beating in her throat, and she felt as though he could surely hear it.

  “You have changed my life, and I want you to know that I will never forget that. I will do all that I can to make you proud of the sacrifices you and your staff have made on my behalf.”

  Sabrina could not think of how to answer him, and so she just nodded and waved toward the knitting now piled i
n his lap. “It is a lovely shade of pink.”

  There was silence for a moment, and then he spoke as though he had not just laid his heart bare. “It represents your roses. Therese brought me an entire basket of yarns to choose from—your late mother-in-law’s, I believe—and I was completely tickled to have found this exact shade.”

  Completely tickled?

  Sabrina complimented the color, and the neat stitches again, earning herself another radiant smile, then settled in the chair beside his bed and opened to chapter two. She cleared her throat at the same time his needles resumed their clicking.

  When Therese arrived with Harry’s dinner tray, Lady Sabrina helped him put the needles and yarn into the knitting basket he kept under his bed, though he did not need to hide it anymore now that she knew. He wished she would stay and eat with him, but it seemed out of place for him to ask.

  As Lady Sabrina was leaving the room, however, he could not help but offer a parting invitation. “If you feel up to a game of chess after dinner . . .” He trailed off. It seemed presumptuous to invite her to his room, which was actually her room. Yet in just a few days he’d become so accustomed to spending time with her in the evening that he could scarcely imagine doing without her.

  Lady Sabrina stopped near the door and turned to him, cocking her head as she regarded him. He’d noticed her eye color yesterday—brown, but not just brown. Chocolate brown. Deep brown. “You said earlier that you might not be able to tolerate losing to a woman now that your knitting secret is known.”

  “Person,” he emphasized. “Sex is of no consequence. And I think I may have come up with another way to win.”

  She pursed her lips slightly, emphasizing their perfect shape and rich color, the sight of which sent something like a shiver through him. “Aside from winning through better skill?” she asked.

  “Well, of course,” he said with a laugh, ignoring the sensation the sound of her voice ignited in him. He winked at her specifically to watch her catch her breath. He did not think she was aware of her reaction, and it worried him that he had noticed. What worried him even more was that he continued to deliberately elicit the reaction, which now seemed to be creating a reaction inside himself.

  She laughed and shook her head. “I shall return in an hour, then.”

  “Brilliant.”

  Therese set up his dinner—pork and new potatoes that made his mouth water—and he thanked her when she stepped back.

  “Is there anything else you would like, Mr. Stillman?”

  Aside from a better understanding of Lady Sabrina? “No. Thank you for all you’ve done.”

  She excused herself, and Harry began cutting his meat and replaying his conversation with Lady Sabrina. It had been so . . . easy. They had bantered back and forth the way friends would. But she was a woman. Men and women could not be friends—or at least that was what he’d always believed.

  But then he’d believed he could never give up drink, never humble himself before his uncle and sisters. Never learn to knit. This—whatever it was—was different from those things, however.

  Harry had spent a great deal of time with women. Flirting and . . . He shook his head away from those thoughts. He’d never talked to a woman the way he talked to his male friends, and he’d never enjoyed talking to his male friends the same way he enjoyed conversation with Lady Sabrina.

  Spurring a physical reaction in a woman, such as her catching her breath and blushing, was a tactic he’d employed when he wanted a woman’s particular attention for a particular reason. Such as convincing a tailor’s wife to make him a new shirt against her husband’s wishes. She’d blushed and simpered and finally agreed. Harry had always had that sort of effect on women. And he’d taken it much farther than shirts too often. He knew how to get whatever he wanted from women, and it wasn’t usually difficult.

  Those thoughts and memories were uncomfortable; he wanted to be better and stronger and noble. Was he attempting to seduce Lady Sabrina without even knowing that was what he was doing? What if all his years of manipulating women to do what he wanted had made it impossible for him to have an honest relationship? Maybe it was ingrained in him, an evil flaw he had let take such hold that he could not free himself now.

  His chewing slowed, and he swallowed hard, staring at his plate. He couldn’t treat Lady Sabrina the way he’d treated other women. For one thing, he knew she would not stand for it—blushing and breath-catching aside. For the other part, women were another vice, another thing that helped him hide from himself. The distraction was dangerous for him and vastly unfair to them.

  Lady Sabrina was also a lady. She held herself with confidence and decorum. Her good opinion of him meant everything, and he wanted to be the kind of man a woman like her might one day see as worth spending her life with. That idea startled him, and he put down his knife.

  Was that really what he wanted?

  Had he changed so much that he wanted marriage and security?

  The thought came with a release of tension that felt like settling into a warm bath or stepping off a horse after too many hours in the saddle.

  If marriage meant feeling the comfort of friendship and flame of passion together, he could not think what he would not do to have it. That must be part of what Uncle Elliott had meant when he talked about the good of marriage.

  But could he be faithful? It was not an expectation for men, but when Lady Sabrina had ranted about the injustice of infidelity, he’d remembered the insecurity he’d felt as a child when his father had flirted with a maid or stood too close to one of his mother’s friends at a party.

  Mother would drink too much wine on those occasions, and later there would be yelling and crying, and the next day his mother’s eyes would be swollen from crying. Sometimes her lip would be swollen from his father silencing her when he could take no more.

  If his father had been faithful, then his mother would have trusted him, and they could have spoken civilly to one another. Loved one another. Lived as partners and companions instead of antagonists. So much could have been different.

  Could it be different for Harry if he remedied the hurt he’d seen in his mother by keeping his own marital vows? He thought that it could.

  But he was getting ahead of himself. He had been off the bottle for only a week.

  He went back to his meal, trying to sort his surprising and unexpected thoughts. When Joshua returned for the tray, Harry still had not found balance.

  Too soon—or not soon enough, based on how happy he was to see her—Lady Sabrina returned for their game of chess.

  He watched her cross the floor of the bedchamber to him, regal and self-possessed, and he felt that same something move through him that he’d felt earlier in her company. If he’d lived his life differently, could he have already become the type of man she would want to spend a life with? She didn’t trust men, and she certainly didn’t trust the type of man Harry had been.

  “Mr. Stillman?”

  The questioning tone in her voice told him that she’d been speaking, and he felt a flush creep up his neck. He wondered how long he’d been staring. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  She furrowed her eyebrows. “Are you all right? You are looking at me as though I am a ghost.”

  “More a phantom, I think,” he said softly, then looked away as his earlier questions buzzed inside his head again. Was he flirting with her? Did he know the difference between talking to a woman and flirting with her?

  “A phantom, am I?”

  He looked back in time to see her rosy full lips pull into a wide smile. Did he want to kiss those lips or did he just not know any other goal to set with a beautiful woman?

  Before he lost his nerve, he dove straight to the heart of his quandary. “Are you certain you will never marry again, Lady Sabrina?”

  She sobered instantly, then busied herself with setting up the chess pieces. He watched her long fingers position the pieces and wondered what the difference was between admiration and attrac
tion. He admired many people. Had he ever admired a woman, though, without there being attraction involved?

  “I believe we have exhausted that topic, Mr. Stillman.”

  “I just want to make sure of it.”

  She looked up at him, guarded. “Why?”

  He swallowed and threw whatever remaining caution he had to the wind. “I have never had a female . . . friend.” Goodness, what was he doing? He bumbled forward, however, speaking fast to get all the words out. This new man he was becoming would be forthright and ask for help when he needed it. “The more time we spend together, the more confusing it becomes for me, and I know this is terribly indelicate of me to bring up, yet I feel I have to. I need you to convince me that whatever connection is between us is nothing more than friendship so that I do not get the wrong idea.”

  His face was on fire when he stopped for a breath. “I have never been friends with a woman before,” he repeated. “Therefore I don’t have anything to compare this to.” He clamped his mouth shut to keep from saying anything else.

  She blinked and swallowed and then smiled. Not sweetly, but not necessarily patronizing either—somewhere in the middle of those two positions.

  “Mr. Stillman,” she said in an even and controlled voice. “I have male friends; we discuss politics and our families and what travels we might have in the future. Having friends of the opposite sex is invigorating and, I believe, helps me to be a more complete person with a wider understanding of the world beyond what I gain through my female friends. I can assure you that whatever it is you feel between us is, and will only ever be, friendship.

  “It will not feel like your connection with Mr. Ward or other men as there are topics you and I will never discuss and things that will never happen. For instance, I might walk through a park with a woman friend, but I would never walk with you because of the impression it would give.

  “We are friends, and it is all we will ever be.”