“Oh, that’s a very kind offer. But don’t trouble yourself to work on the wording overmuch. Thomas is no devotee of sonnets.”
Rose was looking forward to meeting this Thomas. She couldn’t imagine he was a very refined man, but Ellen certainly didn’t seem to mind.
“When will you bring me the words?” Ellen asked. “Tomorrow morning, at the pawnshop?”
“It’s past midnight already.” Rose stood with a yawn. “How many sonnets are there?”
“Sixteen.”
All those engravings to study. She had a lot to learn…and that odd heat was building again already, just thinking about it. “I could translate one by the morning.” It was late, not to mention she’d like to keep this book for a while. “Will Kit allow you to go to the pawnshop?”
“He has to sleep sometime,” Ellen said with a mischievous smile. “And I imagine once he allows himself to succumb, he’ll sleep like the dead. I should be able to sneak out easily enough. When he wakes, though, he’ll surely come for me and drag me back here while he works all the day.”
“And half the night,” Rose agreed.
Kit was the hardest working man she’d ever met.
“Probably.” Ellen sighed. “Will you visit the pawnshop tomorrow, then? In the morning?”
“I’ll come,” Rose promised. She grabbed the book, and the two of them returned to the dining room.
Kit was up on a ladder inspecting something or other. He’d removed his surcoat and wore only shirtsleeves rolled up nearly to his elbows. His forearms were muscular and sprinkled with crisp black hair.
The blasted man looked better than ever.
“Did you two have a nice visit?” he asked. As he climbed down the ladder, Rose saw muscles rippling under his thin white cambric shirt, too. She hadn’t sipped any champagne tonight, but her stomach seemed to think she had, anyway.
“Very,” Ellen said, but Rose couldn’t remember what the girl was responding to. She was thinking Kit must carry big beams all the day to have developed so many muscles. And she was thinking about how she’d decided to let him kiss her again, to find out what he did differently from Gabriel.
And she was thinking about the pictures in the book.
Oh, this wasn’t good at all!
“How did the translation go, then?” he wondered, his gaze on the book in Rose’s hands.
She knew he was hoping to get his hands on it. “It was more difficult than Ellen had anticipated, so I’m going to take it home to work on it. Please excuse me. I must go find my mother.”
She felt very relieved to escape. At least until she walked back into the drawing room and saw two men heading toward her. Gabriel and a man she had yet to meet.
Though the stranger wasn’t as handsome as Kit, he might be a good kisser. But she didn’t have the will left to find out. Not to mention she was holding a lewd book clutched to her chest.
She had to get rid of it.
When Gabriel got to her first, the other man turned away dejectedly. “Pardon me, your grace,” she said quickly. “I was just heading to the ladies’ attiring room.”
“Are you quite all right?” Gabriel asked, his blue eyes radiating concern.
He really was terribly nice. “Oh, yes. I’m just feeling a bit, um, peaked.”
“Still?”
“It’s all the excitement, I’m certain,” she told him with a practiced, romantic sigh.
When he smiled, she knew she’d succeeded in convincing him he was responsible for her excitement. Leaning close, he lowered his voice to an intimate murmur. “I do hope you’ll be feeling better soon.”
She didn’t care for his perfume. It was too flowery. “Oh, I’m certain I will,” she said blithely and sailed out of the chamber.
Blessedly, the attiring room was empty. She stuffed the book under her cloak and then dropped onto one of the green baize benches.
She really was feeling a little bit peaked.
TWENTY-THREE
“KIT,” HIS SISTER said a few minutes later. “I need to talk to you.”
“One moment, Ellen.” He turned back to inspecting the latest materials that had arrived.
“I need to talk to you now,” she yelled across the courtyard.
“It will do nicely,” he told his new foreman, then took a deep breath and strode over to his sister, thinking, not for the first time, that it had been a bad idea to bring her along while he worked. “What in your little selfish world is so important you had to interrupt me?”
Instead of bristling, she looked smug. “Lady Trentingham wishes to see you.”
He slanted her a suspicious look. “Lady Trentingham doesn’t even know who you are.”
“Could that be because you weren’t polite enough to introduce me?” She straightened her slim eighteen-year-old shoulders. “Well, she noticed me, anyway. Came right up and introduced herself, then asked where she might find you. I gather she looked in the dining room, but of course you were out here.”
“Where did she find you?”
“On the terrace. She’s waiting for you there.”
He headed in that direction, wondering just what Ellen had been doing out on the terrace now that she no longer had her book to occupy her.
He admitted to himself it probably hadn’t been fair to expect her to entertain herself all evening long. But he hadn’t felt as though he’d had a choice. If he’d left her at home, she’d surely have run off to spend the evening in the company of that damned pawn dealer. Doing God knew what.
He certainly didn’t want to know.
Life had been so much simpler when he was off at school and Lady St. Vincent was still alive and caring for Ellen. He and his sister had spent glorious times together during the weeks he’d been able to visit. They’d never argued.
Well, rarely. Only when she’d begged him to take her back to school with him.
He stopped in the dining room long enough to shrug back into
