She tapped her quill pen against the desk, considering. “Did Prinny think the proposal a lark?”
He placed his tweezers on the desk, removed the loupe from its nestle against his eye. “What else have the chattering ninnies been saying?” Gossip had followed him his entire life because he presented such an intriguing subject, stuck as he was in that graceless spot between the aristocracy and everything below. A man of industry when men of industry weren’t revered.
Her smile broke, spreading across her face. So exquisite, it stole his breath. “Watches and wenches,” she said through her glee.
A winding wheel dropped from his fingers and rolled across the desk, coming to a stop against the duke’s inkwell. “What?”
“All you care for, that is.”
His cheeks got so hot, they stung. “My work is my passion. I treasure this”—he gestured to the tools, the watch parts, spread across the desk—“more than, well…more than any…” More than any wench. More than I could any woman except you, I’m coming to suspect.
But that didn’t sound right at all. And she’d never believe him anyway.
Raine dropped her head, laughing softly. “I’m sorry. I’m being unkind. Teasing you when I should not dare to.”
Christian slumped back in his chair, uncertain where she was going with this. Women seldom admitted being unkind, especially when they were being unkind. “You are?”
“I don’t often get to converse in this manner.” She folded her arms along the desk and rested her chin atop them, giving him a candid perusal typically only circulated inside a bedchamber. “You see, clever conversation isn’t expected of a humble housemaid, isn’t requested or required. Just because I’m passive by necessity doesn’t mean I am in life.” Her lids fluttered with a sigh that almost had him reaching for her, which would be a mistake. He wanted to be her friend first. Needed to be her friend first. There was a reticence about her he feared had come from the debacle that had sent her fleeing from Tavistock House.
But Christian knew one thing. If he found out his cousin, a man he hadn’t talked to in ten years and barely knew, had touched Raine Mowbray against her will, he would kill him.
Calming himself, he picked up a winding wheel and flipped it between his fingers, better to have something to do with his hands than placing them on her person. “You can talk to me as I adore clever banter. I’ll not require but certainly request.”
Her gaze danced away from his. “I miss those conversations. I miss engaging my brain. My former employer, Countess Tavistock, let me attend lessons with her governess from the time I was in leading strings. Later, I acted as an informal tutor to her children in certain subjects. My education is lacking for a peer but advanced for a maid. Languages, reading, came easily.” Lost in thought, she chewed on her bottom lip, increasing his enchantment and his physical discomfort. “I think…I’m finding it easy to talk to you, which should not be. Or rather, doesn’t need to be for me to assist with your translations.”
He slid his hand across the desk, unable to check the impulse. His heart had begun to thump, images of what he’d like to share with her—mind, body, soul—flooding him.
She was watching, wide-eyed but accepting, about to let him touch her.
“Kit, have I found the most unbelievable—” Penny burst into the room, took one look at the intimate scene, and bumped back against the door. “Sorry. I’ve interrupted.”
“Kit,” she mouthed with a grin that lit Christian up inside. Then she flipped one of the five watches on the desk over and viewed the time. “Oh, goodness, I have to go.” Making a note on the letter to mark her place, she collected her papers in a tidy pile and laid the quill pen on top. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Same time. I don’t think it will take me more than three days, maybe four, to translate them. There are a few words I’m not sure of, colloquial speech, but the duchess has a German-language text in her materials for the children’s lessons which may help.”
Christian was out of his armchair like a shot and heading to the stack of books by the window. He knew Penny was watching the scene unfurl with undisguised interest, but Christian couldn’t worry about that and deliver Jane Austen. A bit winded from his effort, he intercepted Raine at the door. “You forgot this,” he murmured and pushed the volume into her hand. She wasn’t wearing gloves, and neither was he, and his thumb brushed her wrist, a desperate, exhilarating feeling flowing up his arm and into his chest. And settling. “Please,” he added when he’d never begged a woman for anything in his life. “We had a deal, remember?”
Her shoulder lifted, that ridiculous cap on her head bobbing as if she was going to refuse when her fingers closed gently around the book. Then she left him standing there, the sensation of touching her bare skin engraved on his senses like his name was engraved on his watches.
Penny stepped behind him, following his gaze down the deserted hallway, the only thing remaining Raine’s teasing scent. That, and the images racing like feral dogs through his mind. Some of them lewd, he’d admit.
How soon could he make that reality, he wondered?
“That gorgeous creature is our bluestocking?” Penny asked in dazed incredulity. “Remind me to consider the brainy ones in the future.”
“My bluestocking,” Christian corrected.
Penny jammed his broad shoulder against the doorjamb. “So that’s the way of it? Soft heart like yours, I knew it was coming at some point.” He sighed, the sound genuinely mournful. “Well, now we’re doomed.”
Christian looked away before his face betrayed him. His severe upbringing and everything
