by Anne Mallory
He raised a brow.
She snatched the book back. “You are trying to lure me.”
“Lure you?”
“Yes.” She hugged the book to her chest. “Stop it.”
“I don’t know of what you speak.”
“Sirens.”
“I think you have the wrong book.” He leaned back and knocked the top portion of a stack down with a flick of his wrist, somehow keeping the bottom half stable. The twenty or so books on top fell in an avalanche, toppling the stack next to it and threatening the one after, crashing to the floor in awkward heaps, set adrift on a sea of pages.
She half rose. “Your lordship!”
He ignored her cry and idly flicked another book off the top of the stack, letting it crash with the others. He picked up the next one, surveyed the cover, then offered it. She took it without thought, glancing down.
“The Odyssey?”
He tapped the cover twice, the tremors vibrating up the book and through her fingers.
“Sirens.”
She stared at the cover, then up at him. “Do you do it to everyone?”
“Do what? Offer a book?” But his lazy posture belied a coiled thread, like the core of a willow when it was anticipating a wind.
“Try to seduce them?”
He relaxed into his chair, an odd reaction. She would think a person challenged abruptly would tense. “Is that what you think I am doing? Seducing you?”
It was ludicrous, of course. Everything about it ridiculous. A viscount with means and attraction—an overly virile presence. And she a lowly bookworm with little of either. Yet there was something bone deep within her that stated it the truth. Something even beyond the book buried in her room—the licentious text he had given her.
“Yes. I do.”
He smiled. A feline smile full of nocturnal secrets. “Why, Miranda. I’m shocked.”
“You are hardly shocked, my lord. I think you highly amused.”
His smile grew languid. “I am at that.”
His amusement vied with some distinctly male satisfaction. And there was almost a fondness there that she didn’t understand.
“You consider me some sort of challenge?”
“I consider you the answer to a question that resides in my very soul.” His eyes held hers, an intensity there that she didn’t understand.
A knock sounded at the door. The viscount didn’t so much as glance away.
He waved in the direction of the door without looking, but she glanced over to see Jeffries bow and disappear back through. She turned back to see the viscount still watching her.
“I think you are needed,” she said. She needed him to leave. Needed him to get out and stop putting strange, illicit thoughts in her head.
“And here I thought it would take far longer for you to admit to it.”
“By your staff.”
“Only?”
“Yes,” she said firmly, squishing down any thoughts to the contrary.
“Pity.”
He continued to watch her, one finger tapping the arm of the chair in thought.
“Lord Downing? I’ll think the saying that madness runs in the wealthy is true if you continue to sit there and stare at me like that.”
She half expected him to take offense, but instead he simply smiled. “Shall we initiate a challenge?”
“What? No,” she said quickly, automatically sensing danger.
“You don’t even know what I was going to suggest.”
“I’m sure that it would be to my disadvantage. Knowing what I do of you from the papers.”
His eyes tightened momentarily. “Ah, an even greater incentive then. I duly need to be brought to heel, don’t you agree?”
She stared at him.
“Ever since I heard you nattering on about looking beneath the surface, I’ve been slightly adrift.” He tilted his head toward her. “You will show me what you mean. If you can.”
“What I mean?”
“Try to convince me that the Serpentine is not boring. That the theater is not full of the same idiotic play. That the breeze in late spring shows a whisper of the gods.”
She stared at him. That last bit was almost…poetic. She touched the cover of the Odyssey. “I am not the one you should be asking. That is what I said about Eleutherios’s work.”
“Fine. We’ll use that.” His lips curved. “Use that rattle-pate guide to show me all of these strange and wonderful new things.”
There had to be a catch somewhere. “And?”
“And I’ll use it to seduce you.”
She continued to stare at him, as if he had rendered her incapable of movement, frozen her with a Medusan strike.
His lips curved fully, and he raised a brow. “You are the one who initiated the challenge, in truth. In your bookshop.”
“I—I did nothing of the kind.”
“Oh, you certainly did. Besides, there is much for you to gain by accepting. If you succeed…” He drew his finger along the arm of the chair. “I may be able to find a copy of The Bengal. And perhaps a cuff designed by Tersine.”
She disregarded the outrageous offer of diamonds and focused on the more pertinent piece of the bribe. The Bengal? Her uncle would push her into a hack and direct her to show the viscount whatever he wanted if she could obtain a copy. He would sit on top of the carriage and call out directions to wherever they needed to go. And her uncle disliked traveling by carriage only slightly less than she did.
She could see by the viscount’s face that he was well aware of her uncle’s desire. But she could barely breathe seated next to the man now. And she was to offer herself up as a conquest?
“How would you measure my success?” Her mouth moved without the express permission of the rational part of her mind. Something else, her own desire perhaps, curled around, covering her good sense like a tendril of ivy creeping over stone.
“Well, that is dependent on you. Me? I’ll be working to have you whispering to the gods.” He smiled. Slowly. Fully. All lovely lips and chiseled features. “We’ll see who bends first.”
It felt as if her heart would beat clear of her chest at any moment.
“You are going to seduce—” She cleared her throat forcefully. “Try to seduce me?”
“I thought I had been quite direct on the point.”
“But that is ridiculous.”
“You don’t care for people saying what they mean?”
“The notion of your seducing me is ridiculous.”
“I might take that as a blow to my confidence if I had any concept of humility.” The look in his eyes, full of the lazy strength he always projected, said that he was deliberately misinterpreting her words. “I might fail.” He waved a hand. “Then you will be all the richer.”
“I, I can’t.”
“You don’t want the copy of The Bengal? I’ll tell you what. I will give it to you just for agreeing and seeing the challenge through for a week. And the cuff too. I’ve heard all the ladies desire one.”
Her uncle would kill her for refusing. But everything about the proposal and the silken way he uttered the seemingly casual words screamed, “Danger! Crumbling cliff ahead!”
She swallowed. “Where would I wear such a piece?”
“Wherever you wish.”
She stared at him. She’d just mosey on down to the market with a fortune in diamonds dripping from her wrist.
“No hidden strings attached as long as you accept the challenge. Just one measly week.”
When she continued to stay silent, he leaned toward her with an intensity she couldn’t define. “Do it for me,” his husky voice wrapped around her. “Try and teach me what you see.”
The syllables, the heat, caressed her skin, looking for ways to lock her inside.
“Very well.”
Had that been her breathless voice accepting?
He smiled, and her heart thumped in her chest. “Excellent. I can’t tell you how pleased that makes me.”
&n
bsp; He leaned toward her another few inches. She remained frozen in place as his lips grazed her ear. “I promise that I will make the bending very pleasant.”
Each word curled inward. Her chest felt unexpectedly heavy—lifting and straining against her dress, which suddenly felt one size too small. His cheek brushed hers as he slid back, the edge of his mouth touched the edge of hers. Her eyes closed of their own will. A corner of her stone rationality crumbled as she wondered what being kissed truly felt like. Would it be like the wonder of finding a new, beloved book? Or the awe of seeing fireworks lighting the sky?
She felt the edge of his mouth curl. “Such temptation that I can’t resist,” he whispered, the words barely audible above the pounding of her blood, around the dampened perception of everything else in the room that wasn’t him.
If he but turned a hair to the left. If she but turned one to the right…
He rose suddenly, a swish of warm skin, then cold air. “Shall I send some men to help you?”
She let out her breath, eyes jerking open to blindly stare at the books littering the floor. Had she just accepted a challenge to be seduced by one of the most notorious men in the land? And then almost literally caved within the prologue of the contest?
“I believe I might need to reorganize first,” she said as well as she could manage. Reorganize, in both body and mind.
“Ah, I must make up for my carelessness with the stacks. I’ve caused you extra work.” The deliberate misinterpretation of her words struck her again, even through the haze. Signaling the games he might play to win.
Though there was something off in the tones of his voice. As if he hadn’t been entirely unaffected by what had just occurred. “I’ll return at two.”
“What? No,” she said quickly, looking up.
“I insist.” He dragged a finger across the back of the chair as he walked backward toward the door. “I am responsible for the chaos after all.” His lips curved as if there were multiple meanings to his statement. “Until we meet again, Miss Chase.”
He turned and sauntered out, and she was left to stare in his wake, feeling more like she had been sucked down and pummeled by Charybdis rather than dashed against a rock.
Had she truly accepted his mad challenge? And what on earth would she do with it?
She took in the greater mess on the floor that he had created. Swirling in the vortex. And she, floundering without a paddle.
She pulled over a chair, stepped on it, reached up, and shakily pulled the first book off a towering stack. Work. She could work. She’d think about what she had done—and what she would do—later. Later, when the essence of the man wasn’t still clinging to the air around her.
Thankfully, the stack stayed soundly in place, even with the jumbled spines jutting this way and that and her suddenly clumsy fingers fumbling the leather. She grabbed the next three volumes as well and stepped down, thanking her long practice with library ladders for not making her already shaky limbs pitch her to the floor in a tangle of skirts.
A French tutorial, a domestic household guide, a Greek classic, and a religious tome stared back at her. How in the world had these books been arranged? She looked around the room. She could almost believe that someone had shuffled them up on purpose.
But that would be silly.
She looked back at her unsteady hands.
Silly.
She shook her head, and her eyes unwillingly sought the clock. It was not yet ten. There were at least three hours to go before she needed to recheck.
She lasted three more trips up the chair before she looked again. Ten fifteen. She’d likely expire before the two o’clock hands wound around for the sheer way her heart was beating. She didn’t think it was supposed to be pounding so erratically.
She deliberately turned away from the clock and set the book in her hands down with a thump.
It was a tortuous first thirty minutes, but then the rest of the morning picked up pace as she concentrated on her task. Mrs. Humphries, the housekeeper, brought her a tray of food and politely inquired as to whether Miranda needed assistance. She gratefully accepted, and a few men and women rotated in and out, in shifts, doing as she directed. Watching her when they thought she wasn’t looking.
The food was perfect. The spread of fruit, cheese, and bread allowed her to graze while she worked. She heard the empty tray being moved near the door. She looked up to see that the two servants who had been standing near, helping her, had slipped away.
She projected around the stack of books in front of her, “Thank you.”
“Already thanking me, and I just arrived.” The husky voice, once more steady and confident, wrapped around the stack like the fine stockings that clung to the illumination hidden in her armoire. “I could become used to your lips draped around those syllables. Shall we see what else they might beautifully adorn?”
Chapter 5
Dear Mr. Pitts,
A strange new acquaintance has me asking all sorts of questions of myself. Perhaps you can help me straighten my thoughts. Why would a man pretend interest?
From the pen of Miranda Chase
Her pulse picked up speed when the viscount appeared, freshly changed but still maintaining the same style of stark clothing and insouciant regard. He raised a brow at the books circling her, spread out in all directions. “Alas, I see you have other tasks at hand.”
But all she continued to picture were draping lips and his fingers buried in her unbound hair. She tried to curse the illumination, curse her broken armoire, but the image just overrode everything else in her mind.
She opened her mouth, but nothing emerged for a second. “It will take me more than a few days, my lord.” She looked down, trying to think instead of allowing the spreading wings in her stomach to control her fuzzy thoughts. Where was everyone? There had been people in and out all day. “I hope your pocketbook will survive.”
“I will manage somehow.”
But would she? “I should hope so. As you said, you have created this mess.” She motioned to the books on the floor.
“One of my many talents.” He sank into a chair, long legs crossed before him. “I am at your disposal. Feel free to use me well.” His mouth quirked.
She swallowed, trying to dispel the image of how he could be used according to the text in her armoire—especially splayed back like that.
With all of these images and thoughts, a challenge was hardly even necessary. She needed to get herself together. To not fail all of womankind by simply succumbing like a hapless dove. “That is unnecessary. Your staff is quite helpful. And surely you have some engagement to attend?”
“My staff is suddenly completely occupied. And I cleared my afternoon.” He spread his arms. “Just for you.”
She tried to calm the sudden rush of emotions. Exhilaration, fear. Of herself. But then all she needed to do was be patient. He would lose interest soon. It didn’t matter that he had expressly given her that illumination. She had read all about him. Knew that he was quick to chase and quicker to find new, more lively game.
As long as she stayed smart, she could have a bit of fun—for when he wasn’t fuzzing up her head, she had a feeling the viscount would amuse her greatly. And she could seduce him to the writings of Eleutherios.
She just had to prevent the loss of herself in the process.
“I am going to be busy organizing for the rest of the afternoon. Perhaps you would like to rethink your challenge and come to your senses tomorrow?” she quipped.
“Oh, this is the clearest my senses have been in a long time, Miranda.” He smirked and slouched farther into the chair. “And there will be no changing my mind.”
“You must be quite bored, your lordship.”
He tilted his head. “I don’t think you quite comprehend how much so.”
Well, at least he was honest.
“But then I met you,” he said.
Or not. “I hardly think myself so witty or pretty to have captured the notorious Vis
count Downing’s attention.”
He smiled. “Then I have all of the advantage, do I not?”
She didn’t know how to respond to that.
He motioned for her to continue her task. “When you need help, just say the word.”
She looked at him doubtfully, then bent and lifted the first five books from one of her piles. She trudged over to the set of shelves on the farthest left and laid them on top.
She returned and grabbed the next five, repeating the action.
“A most unique way to organize a library,” he said, lounging back and tapping his chest as he gazed at the haphazard vertical stacking. “Taking the volumes on the floor and putting them in the same position on the shelves. Makes them art then, I suppose.”
She spared him a quick glare as she took another five. “You are wickedly droll, Lord Downing. However do you survive with such wit at your disposal?”
He smiled. “It is most troublesome.”
She began to stack the next shelf and received a mocking whistle in reply.
“Already beginning anew?” he tsked.
She decided to ignore him and continued her trek. Back and forth. Setting up the shelves so that each category would have a space. Just enough to get the books into the right areas, then she could reorganize each section individually. It required more trips this way, doubly so because she was doing it herself, but her mind was better able to progress by having smaller concrete tasks.
It would also allow her to weed out duplicates. She had already found multiple copies of particular titles spread between piles.
She spared a quick glance to see the viscount still sitting in the chair, one leg hooked over the arm, swinging. He looked as if he would be perfectly happy to observe her all afternoon. She wondered what exactly he did during the days usually. She had always thought that in between deciding the fate of peons like her and attending galas, the wealthy had to do something. She didn’t quite have the gall to ask yet. However, she was rapidly working up to it with each new quip from the bowels of his plush chair.
“How exactly are you organizing?” he asked.
“I am organizing by subject according to the breadth of each, then I will go by alphabet.”