“I wish Lady Adam’s pianoforte skills were enhancing this enchanting summer evening, but alas, she’s quite horrible,” Raine murmured after taking an engrossed sip, as if she didn’t often get to taste wine. “If she starts singing, I may have to plug my ears.”
Her calm certainty about his honorable intent threw him off balance. “You’re not frightened to be out here with me?”
She paused, her gaze, black in the muted light, narrowing. “Should I be?”
He took a leisurely drink, then shook his head. “No.”
“You’re a gentleman. A gentle man. Known more for your reputation than the truth. I know the difference; I’ve encountered the difference.”
Imagining how she knew sent a jolt of anger through him. “Your beauty is tempting, but your mind even more so.”
“Beauty is fleeting. And no man has ever taken the time to know my mind.”
He blew out a breath, frustrated with himself. And her. “You effectively paint me in a corner when I’m not even sure it’s your intention. I’ve never had a partner verbally joust and outman me so well. Or so easily.”
That charming little dent pinged between her brows as she frowned. “What do you mean?”
“That I unhappily join the ranks of the fleeting and frail. Because I, too, find you incredibly beautiful. My captivation started when I had little notion what was in your mind, just like those toffs you describe with disdain,” he admitted, forging ahead despite her obvious shock. “I only knew you had a great love of books, nestled in the corner of the veranda night after night, lamplight flooding over you as you tuned the pages. I’d never wanted anything more than I did to hear your voice. And, I suppose, yes, to touch you. My only justification is that I was a fifteen-year-old fool.”
“Tavistock House,” she breathed.
He nodded with a long pull of his wine, wondering if he was going to be forced to chase her over the bridge and across the lawn if she decided to run. Because he would chase her. To the ends of the earth. She simply didn’t understand that yet—and he was just beginning to.
She placed the tumbler by her side and rose to her knees. “Who are you?”
“You’re waiting for me to lie, aren’t you? Maybe I should, but I won’t. The Earl of Tavistock is my cousin, a very distant relation. Even more distant in terms of our acquaintance. After my brother died, he was the last relative I had left. I spent three weeks with him one summer before I removed myself from his household for an apprenticeship in Cambridge. I was already on my future path, already had a reputation for repairing capricious timepieces.” Soothing a bout of nerves, he polished off the wine in his glass and reached for the bottle. “There was nothing for me at Tavistock House except the girl on the veranda, but I was in no position to fend for myself, to fight for more. I was a child still in many ways. Vulnerable in mind and heart from the previous months, losing my family. The earl was horrid. Belittling. Callous.” He paused, the idea of his cousin touching Raine blackening his vision at the edges. “Which I fear you already know.”
Her gaze lifted to roam the woodlands, the lawn, the bridge. Anywhere but on him. “That’s why you seemed familiar. How you knew about the books.”
“Yes.”
Through moonlight the color of a tarnished coin, her gaze found his. “Why didn’t you talk to me? Your bedchamber must have overlooked the veranda, and I went there every night. Mainly to escape the earl. He would come to the attic and select a maid, willing or not, it didn’t matter. Not every night. Or even every week when he was in residence. You never knew, just heard his footfalls on the stairs. At that time, I was young enough, fourteen maybe, to escape his attention and my father was the head gardener, my mother his housekeeper, so—”
“I may not be able to hear this,” he said between clenched teeth.
Her blinding smile, a most contrary reaction, rocked him where he sat. “Oh, no, Kit, he never…” She pressed the tumbler against her cheek as if it could cool her skin, then sighed and took another drink.
He wanted to tell her to slow down or risk becoming tipsy, but he said nothing, just sat there consumed with relief that his cousin had never gotten his filthy hands on her.
“My brother is friendly with Thomas Kingsman, the Duke of Devon’s footman,” she said after a charged moment of silence. “He spoke to the duke, who offered to pension me off, of sorts, from your cousin. He said my language skills were needed, his governess not equipped. Tavistock was deeply in debt, reducing his staff, so his attraction to me meant much less than the coin in his pocket and one less mouth to feed. All this delicacy, instead of my up and leaving in the middle of the night, was done so my father and mother could remain at Tavistock House until they are ready to retire, possibly with a modest cottage retained on one of his country estates. The countess is quite lovely, and my parent’s positions lofty enough to make her home a fine place to live, the earl notwithstanding.”
“I could kill him for making you feel like you had to run away, for making you leave your family. For making me flee to Cambridge, alone in the world with a hardened heart.”
Raine stilled, placing her tumbler on the grass. Leaning on an outstretched arm, she brought her face close to his, her body moving in until Christian caught the scent of her skin, her clothing, her hair. Starch, lavender, lemons. Raine. Mixing with the teasing aroma of a country summer, bringing his blood to a boil. “I wish you’d talked to me. Let me know you were up there watching.” She pressed her lips together, her lids
