by Lenora Bell
“It does complicate things,” said Miss Mayberry. “A bookshop of this nature isn’t the most ideal location for a respectable clubhouse.”
“I’d be happy to take a few of the books off your hands,” Ford offered. “Those sea voyages can be long.”
Lady Beatrice gave him a murderous look. “You’re not helping, Wright.”
“You’re the one who invited me.”
Miss Mayberry fastened her bonnet over her dark blond hair. “This has been a most interesting and edifying afternoon, I must say, but I have an appointment to keep. Wright, I look forward to reading a full report on the feasibility of renovations, if Beatrice decides to keep the property.”
He bowed and she gave a little mannish bow in return, instead of curtsying.
Lady Beatrice pulled her aside, and Ford couldn’t hear what they whispered, except for the words scandalous, naughty, and carpenter.
He approved of that combination of words.
Miss Beaton thanked Mrs. Kettle for the tea and said that she was expected at music lessons very shortly and she would accompany Miss Mayberry out. “I might just take one of these, for research purposes.” She plucked a naughty book from the shelf and slipped it into her reticule.
The two ladies left, the shop bell tinkling as it closed again.
“Do you want me to finish the inspection, Lady Beatrice?” he asked.
“Yes. I’d like to make an informed decision.”
“I have an appointment on the docks, but I’ll take a quick look around.” They made their way to the staircase. “Why were your friends looking at me like that?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“They were staring searchingly. As if they knew something about me, as if you’d already described me to them.”
“I may have mentioned you in my letters from Cornwall.”
“You told them how handsome I was.”
“More like how arrogant and obstructive to my work.”
“Admit it, you told them I was distractingly virile.”
“Humph. You have an inspection to make, Wright.” She walked ahead of him up the stairs, and he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the curve of her backside—well, at least he imagined her curves under all those layers of petticoats.
Duke’s sister. No trespassing.
“I hope your brother returns soon,” he said as they climbed the curving central staircase. At least the staircase was in good repair. “My ship leaves in a fortnight, and I must speak with him in person.”
“You said it was something about Gibbons?”
“I believe he’s embezzling from your brother.”
She stopped walking at the first-floor landing and faced him. “Really? That’s a serious accusation.”
“I have proof.” He patted his pocket. He’d pilfered a receipt from Gibbons’s desk that showed the discrepancies in the bookkeeping.
“Then my brother needs to know immediately upon his return. He trusts Gibbons completely and has granted him wide latitude to make decisions on his behalf.”
“I don’t want my father implicated in any way when the theft is uncovered.”
“I’m sure my brother will return any day now and you may present your evidence.”
The landing led on one side to a drawing room stuffed with mismatched furniture, and on the other to a small back room with well-scrubbed walls, sparse furniture, and several bookshelves. The room was light and airy with none of the clutter evident in the rest of the house.
Lady Beatrice entered the room, her eyes lighting with approval. “A reading room. This must be where Mr. Castle kept the more rare volumes of his personal collection.”
Ford bounced on a few floorboards. “Seems safe from damp.”
She walked to the window, the light teasing the flames in her hair to life. “And there’s a view of the Thames!”
He moved to stand beside her. “A view of coal barges.”
“You see coal barges, I see a river undulating into the distance. The perfect view for writing. I’d place my desk right here by the window.”
Please don’t talk about desks. “So you will keep the property?”
“My mother told me that she’d heard rumors of scandal attached to the shop, and she assumed it was because Aunt Matilda had taken a lover. She has no idea about the bawdy books, or she never would have allowed me to visit the shop.”
“But that’s exactly what your friend Miss Mayberry was saying—you own it, not your mother.”
“You don’t know my mother, Wright. When I’m in London she controls what I wear, what I eat, what I think, everything. If one word of this reached her . . . let’s just say that hell hath no fury like a Mayfair mother protecting her daughter from scandal.”
“She sounds quite formidable.”
“She’s not to be crossed, not in matters of propriety or taste. When in London, I’m under her rule. She’s obsessed with finding a brilliant match for me. But here . . .” She spread her arms wide as if she wanted to hug all of the books to her bosom. The movement lifted her breasts, giving him an enticing hint of lush curves. “Here I could be as bookish as I please. This could be my literary haven. My little slice of freedom.”
“You must be thrilled to inherit this collection.”
“It’s like a dream.” Her face fell. “But I can’t possibly read all of them. It keeps me up at night sometimes, knowing that I can’t read every book I own. An unread book is a terrible thing. You should see how many books are stacked beside my bed just waiting to be read. And I don’t have time to read them all.”
Her gaze caressed the books lovingly. “Don’t worry, my beauties. We’ll patch the roof and keep the damp away from you and build you a nice safe home,” she crooned.
The attention she was lavishing on the books made him feel restless and . . . jealous?
He was jealous of a bunch of old books. He must be losing his mind.
He cleared his throat. “If we’re finished with the tour, then I’ll be on my way.”
“Oh, no, we must see the bedrooms. I want you to assess any structural damage.”
“I think I’ve seen enough to make a report,” he began, but she was already out the door and heading upstairs.
The two small guest bedrooms were unscathed by damage of any kind. They moved to the master bedroom.
Take a glance at the walls and be on your way.
Ford turned his back on the spacious bed festooned with pink velvet curtains and peeled back a section of blue paper from the wall. There was a faint line of water, just as he’d known there would be from the condition of the paper. “If I trace this water upward, I’ll find the source of the leak, but it will often be in a different location than one would think.”
“I don’t understand. If the roof is leaking, can’t you just walk around up there until you find the loose tile?”
“Sometimes it’s that simple, but other times not. When slate roof tiles become cracked or dislodged, it’s often too minimal to see, but the water enters nonetheless. And water will always follow its own path throughout the frame of the building. In order to find the source of the breach, someone will need to translate this course upward through its pathway.”
“Within the walls?”
“In the walls, beneath the floor joists, under the beams.” He grabbed a pencil and notepad from a table beside the bed. “I’ll draw it for you.”
She stood closer, watching as he sketched.
He pointed at his drawing with the pencil. “When water enters through the roof, rather than flowing straight down it first follows beams horizontally, then flows down the rafters until it comes to a wall plate, flowing down the interior of the wall cavity and pooling in the base, or following the floor joists until it settles at the lowest point. That would be the leak in the showroom. I don’t think the damage has moved past the ground floor.”
She bowed her head to study the drawing. She smelled differently than she had at Thornhill. Instead of sweet
and fresh, like apple blossoms after a rain, this was more of a city scent, heavily floral—a costly eau de toilette that her mother had chosen for her to dab behind her ears.
Ford had preferred the simple scent. As he’d preferred her hair loosely knotted with unruly curls escaping and framing her face, instead of this elaborately constructed tower.
She tilted her head and caught his eye. “You’re a talented draftsman. I wonder that you didn’t become an architect?”
Ford laughed harshly. “You make it sound easy, princess, as though I had all of the opportunities in the world. I’m the son of a carpenter who rents a cottage, and whose livelihood is dependent on the largess of a duke. First your father, and now your brother.”
He wasn’t ashamed of his humble origins. He wouldn’t pretend to be something he wasn’t.
“Oh.” Her pale lashes fluttered closed for a moment. “I didn’t think about what I was saying.”
“In case you haven’t realized, Your Ladyship, you and I are from two vastly different worlds.”
She inherited bookshops and treated it as a fun little diversion. Let’s transform this bookshop into a clubhouse for lady knitters! Only a pampered and privileged lady would ever have a notion like that.
To own property, to own land, was to have power in this world.
Ford was an exile—from Cornwall, from London—his place was on a ship, drifting across oceans and touching land only briefly. But even so, his goal since he joined the navy was to earn enough money to purchase land near London and build a house. He wouldn’t live in the house very often, but his mother could use it when she visited, and it would be a symbol that he’d escaped the yoke of servitude his father wore.
“And yet the circumference of your life is wider than mine.” She traced her finger down the lines of his sketch. “My mother narrows the scope of my experience as much as possible. I can only follow prescribed, preapproved paths through life. While you’ve explored the world with the navy.”
“Mostly the Mediterranean. I was stationed off Greece for several years.”
“I’ve never left England’s shores and I probably never will.” She turned to study the portrait hanging over the bed. “This must have been Aunt Matilda’s bedchamber.”
The portrait showed a young woman with bright red hair sitting on a bench heaped with gold velvet cushions and reading a leather-bound book.
“I wish I’d known my aunt,” she said with a wistful expression.
“Why didn’t you know her?”
“She was my father’s eldest sister. She fell in love with Mr. Castle and was disinherited by the family for making an imprudent marriage with a shopkeeper. It’s nearly unfathomable to me that she lived so close by and I never even knew she existed.” Her brows knit together. “It’s not right.”
“No, it’s not right, but it’s common practice. My mother, Joyce, was born into a wealthy tradesperson’s family and fell in love with my father, a mere carpenter. She was cut off and disowned for her choice. She and her father have never reconciled.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
It made him furious that he would never know his aunt, or his nieces. His mother only visited her sister once a year, in utmost secrecy, for fear of retaliation from his grandfather. She would arrive in London for their yearly meeting soon, and then she would bid Ford farewell.
He threw the pencil down. “I always laugh when I hear people express the sentiment that our world should live in peace and harmony. How can we achieve peace between nations when families are torn apart so easily and so often?”
Lady Beatrice nodded her agreement.
“I’ve seen enough of war,” he said bitterly, “to know that men thirst for it, that they say they want a diplomatic solution, but instead they charge toward it, guns at the ready, pointed straight for hell. Families are no different. One transgression and a beloved daughter, or a sister, becomes a stranger, an enemy.”
“It’s tragic. How I should have liked to know my aunt. Anyone who reads a book while having a portrait painted would have been a bosom friend of mine. She was very beautiful, wasn’t she?”
“You look like her,” Ford pointed out. “The same red hair and slender figure. The same pale brows and straight little nose. And definitely the same expression of pure bliss when you’re turning the pages of a book.”
Lady Beatrice stared at him. “Don’t be silly. I look nothing like her.”
“You don’t see it?”
“Mr. Wright.” She turned fully toward him, into the light from the windows. “I was born with palsy of the facial nerve caused by damage from the instruments the doctor used during my birthing. I speak plainly of it, using none of the euphemisms my mother employs. It’s become more manageable and less noticeable over the years, but there’s no use attempting to ignore the condition, hide it, or pretend that it doesn’t exist. This is my face. Nothing more, nothing less. And I’m no beauty.”
Her vehement denial gave him pause. He’d read her diary entry, but that had been written by a young girl in a fit of passionate humiliation. Surely she’d realized by now how lovely she was.
“Clearly, you won’t believe anything I tell you. You should have your portrait painted. Maybe then you’d see the resemblance.”
She turned away. “I’ve no interest in having my likeness painted.”
And he shouldn’t have any interest in telling, or showing her, how attractive she was. This conversation was far too intimate for a simple business transaction. It was time for some lighthearted banter, to regain the earlier footing of their interactions, and then it was past time for him to leave.
He framed her face with his hands in the air. “If I were an artist, I’d paint you reclining on a velvet divan with your hair unbound. Rather like that dairymaid we saw earlier. I think your hair is long enough to have much the same effect.”
“Wright!” His name came out somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “I’m not having my portrait done and certainly not in the style of that most objectionable frontispiece.”
The dairymaid had been reclining on a bed, her hair streaming over her bare breasts, and her arms outstretched to test the girth of the two enormous pricks being offered to her by the two farmhands.
Her gaze dropped to the bed and then lifted to him. “Perhaps . . .” Her voice had gone throaty and soft. “Perhaps we should go back downstairs.”
There was nothing between him and Lady Beatrice except some teasing banter and professional services rendered.
And a bed.
A large, comfortable-looking bed. Her coppery hair would look stunning spread across that coverlet.
Don’t look at the bed.
He’d had enough fantasies about her involving desks. He didn’t need to replace those with images of her on this enormous bed hung with a very suggestive shade of pale pink velvet.
He cleared his throat. “I think that would be a good idea.”
He waited for her to flounce toward the door and out of his life.
She stayed. “Do you want to know the real reason that my friends were staring at you like that?”
Don’t answer that question . . . “Tell me.”
“I told them about our conversation. How you insulted my dictionary and said it wasn’t much fun.”
“I don’t think that’s the reason they stared. I think you told them that you thought about kissing me.”
“That’s preposterous. I’m not a ninnyhammer. I’ve never imagined kissing you. I’m not imagining kissing you right now.”
The last said in a husky whisper accompanied by a heated gaze upon his lips.
“You’re definitely imagining kissing me right now.”
“Don’t you wish that were true?”
This conversation was all kinds of wrong and veering toward wicked.
Somehow the distance between them had melted away. It would be so easy to tumble her down upon the bed and set to work destroying that carefully constructed tower of hair. His
fingers itched to unravel her copper curls and test their silken texture between his fingers.
“If I kissed you right now, princess, it wouldn’t be a safe little taste. I’d kiss you so well that you’d remember it for the rest of your life.”
“Does that line usually work?”
“I’ve been remarkably successful. We all have our skills. I repair ships and houses . . . and I give unforgettable kisses.”
“So do I,” she whispered. “Hypothetically. But I know you would never take advantage of me.”
“How can you be so certain? You’re alone in a bedchamber with a notorious rogue.”
“A rogue with a moral code. I asked the housekeeper at Thornhill about you, and she told me that you were an incorrigible flirt, but an honorable one. As far as she knew, you’d debauched no innocents at the estate. Therefore, I’m quite safe with you.”
“Is that a challenge, princess?”
Damn it, he was going to have to kiss her now. He needed to kiss her so that he could forget about her. Because now, with this new episode of almost-kissing in front of a big, soft bed, he’d have fodder for years of fantasies to come.
He cupped her chin and tilted her face toward him and . . . the shop bell rang, a faint tinkling sound.
A warning bell.
He dropped his hand.
“We should go downstairs,” he said gruffly. “I thought the bookshop was closed.”
Her hand rested against her belly, her bosom rising and falling rapidly. “Perhaps Isobel or Viola forgot something and they are back to collect it.”
She walked swiftly to the door.
The moment was gone. The danger had been averted. He could make his escape, and not a moment too soon. What was it about this prim, bookish lady that ripped his resolve to shreds like a gale tearing at a canvas sail?
When they reached the showroom, Mrs. Kettle rushed toward them. “They just entered the shop without warning. I tried to ask them to leave, but they began walking around as if they own the place.”
“Where’s Coggins?” Lady Beatrice asked.
“He went to buy more candles,” said Mrs. Kettle, her eyes worried.
“I’ll handle this, Mrs. Kettle,” said Ford. “You may go back to the kitchens.”