“My birthday. It’s mine alone.”
He sipped, looking amused. “But Christmas is a time for sharing.”
“Exactly.” Two could play this game. “What’s your favorite book?”
His eyes narrowed as he considered. “The Odyssey.”
“Homer’s Odyssey? In Greek?” she added teasingly.
He laughed, tipping his wine glass to her. “George Chapman’s version.”
“Homer’s is more poetic.” She scooped up her last bite of the buttery carrot pudding. “Why do you like it?”
“Odysseus faced terrible obstacles, but he persevered and triumphed in the end.” Kit set down his fork. “I admire that sort of man, that sort of success.”
He sounded very serious. “He did it for love,” she reminded him.
“For his wife, Penelope, yes. She waited for him twenty years.”
Though Rose dreamed of such enduring love, she couldn’t imagine waiting twenty years for anything. “Penelope was more patient than I.”
“What’s your favorite book?”
“Aristotle’s Master-piece,” she said without hesitation, even though it was a scandalous marriage manual. It seemed she could tell him anything. “I learned quite a bit from that book.”
“Did you?” That brow went up again, making her wonder if he knew what the book was about or if he assumed it was Aristotelian philosophy. But his thoughtful expression didn’t give him away. “Musically,” he asked, “do you prefer instrumentals or songs?”
“Songs. I love to sing. I sang in the parlor after Lily’s wedding, do you remember?”
“I left early,” he reminded her. “I must have missed you.”
“Oh.” Absurdly, she felt disappointed. “Do you sing?”
“Not where anyone can hear me.” His eyes looking very green, he sat back and twirled his goblet between his palms.
“My turn,” she said, focusing on the pewter cup. “Red wine or white?”
“Red. Most definitely red. It’s richer, deeper, more complicated.” He fixed that vivid green gaze on her. “And you? Red or white?”
“Champagne,” she said, feeling like she’d just sipped some.
“Rare and expensive. It fits.”
Her face heated again. “The bubbles tickle.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but then apparently changed his mind. “Are you early to bed or late to rise?” he asked instead.
“Both,” she admitted with a chuckle. “But that’s about to change. Last night I was so early to bed, I have no idea what time the court festivities ended. Do you know, or did you seek your bed beforetime, too?”
“I never sought my bed at all. I had work that kept me there through the night.”
Her jaw dropped. “You haven’t slept?” She began to rise. “I must leave you to get some sleep, then. Although my mother’s heart was in the right place when she suggested I read to you, she was clearly unaware of the circumstances.”
He rose and helped her to stand, his hand warm on her arm through the thin silk of her violet gown. Her skin seemed to prickle underneath.
“I would have you stay and read,” he said. “If you’re finished with your dinner, we’ll adjourn to the drawing room.”
“But you must be exhausted—”
“Think of it as a bedtime story, then.” When she laughed, his eyes glimmered in response. “Honestly,” he added, “tonight will be soon enough for me to rest. I’m accustomed to keeping long hours when a project demands it.”
She thought about his words as she let him guide her into the light-flooded drawing room. The people in her life had no demands that would keep them up all the night—or at least none they hadn’t put on themselves. She had nothing in common with Kit Martyn.
But despite that—despite herself—she liked him. His ease, his self-confidence, his quick sense of humor. In fact, she liked him a little too much. She felt uneasy when he was too close.
When he fetched the book and sat beside her on the pale moss green settle, she briefly considered moving to a chair. But considering they needed to work from the same book, that would be silly—not to mention insulting.
She took the volume from him. “‘Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum,’” she read aloud, “which means, ‘Perspective in Painting and Architecture’ by Andrea Pozzo.”
“Just as I thought,” he said, reaching to open the cover and flip pages.
She caught a hint of his scent again—the same mix of frankincense and myrrh that she remembered him wearing at Lily’s wedding. It was woodsy and masculine and made the champagne bubbles dance in her stomach, no matter that she’d been drinking Madeira instead.
She’d have to see if she could duplicate it in Mum’s perfumery. Perhaps the Duke of Bridgewater would like some.
“See here,” Kit said. “There’s a sketch of how to properly mount paper on a board for drawing. I’ve done it, but I couldn’t tell what to do after that.” Rising, he strode across the room to a desk and lifted a piece of wood with sheets of parchment tacked to it. “What does that page say?”
“To the lovers of perspective,” she translated. “The art of perspective does, with wonderful pleasure, deceive the eye, the most subtle of all our outward senses…”
While she read, Kit collected an inkwell and quill and wandered back to sit beside her.
She turned the page. “This section is called ‘Explanation of the lines of the plan and horizon, and of the points of the eye and of the distance.’” She read on, turning the Latin into English as she went. “That you may better understand the principles of perspective, here is presented to your view a temple, on the inner wall of which…”
With quick, precise motions, he sketched the lines of the classic Greek temple pictured beside the Latin words. He nodded as he followed her translated instructions, adding a man—tiny, as fit the proportions—standing before the structure with its high, arched windows.
“Let me see,” she said when she’d finished reading the page.
He set down the quill and turned the sketch board to face her. “What do you think?”
“It’s lovely.”
“Just lovely?”
“Well, you’ve drawn it skillfully, of course.”
He smiled. “It’s a perfectly proportioned structure. Can you see the way the arched windows echo the arches in the rest of the building? A true thing of beauty.”
If she couldn’t quite
