by Lauren Royal
“Ellen?” Rose asked.
“My sister,” he explained, rubbing the back of his neck. “Graves!” he called. The butler reappeared. “Will you send someone to Whittingham’s to seek out Ellen? Should she be there, I wish to see her directly.”
“Of course, sir.” The butler went off, presumably to fetch and instruct a footman.
“Well.” Kit set the book on a small marble-topped table in the entry. “I hope you enjoyed the grand tour.”
“I did.” In truth, Rose was overwhelmed. She’d never imagined a commoner could own such a lovely home. And Kit not only owned it, he’d designed it. He was responsible for the pleasing proportions of each room, the tasteful wall and window treatments, the spare but perfect accessories.
All it needed, she thought absurdly, was flowers. Yes, beautiful arrangements of flowers would be the crowning touch. Her fingers itched to design them. She’d use silver vases in simple, classic shapes to match the house.
Mum lifted the book. “It’s a shame you cannot read Latin.”
“Not just Latin. All foreign languages elude me.” Kit flashed a self-deprecating smile. “I’m astonished I managed to pick up English.”
“Rose could read the book to you. Couldn’t you, dear?”
Rose was still planning her flower arrangements. Red, she thought, would suit this entry perfectly. The black-and-white floor called for something bold.
“I desperately need to lie down,” Mum said, “but why don’t you stay here and translate this book for Kit? I’m certain he can find someone to escort me home.”
“Stay here?” Rose echoed, wrested from her vision of the multicolored arrangement she’d create for the lovely dining room.
“It’s early still, and you have nothing else to do until court this evening. It would be a kindness.”
She collected her thoughts and considered. Rose was not known for being kind—a perception she’d been trying to remedy. Inside, she’d never felt like the spoiled, selfish harridan others apparently saw, though she did understand why her recent behavior might encourage that view. Particularly her behavior toward Lily and Rand.
All this was to say: Rose could stand to do someone a kindness.
And besides the fact that she didn’t have anything else to do, she suspected translating a book about architecture might prove a fascinating challenge. She needn’t hide her unfeminine intellectual curiosity from Kit. Last summer he’d watched her work with Rand to decode Rand’s brother’s diaries—he already knew she had brains. Besides, he was just her brother-in-law’s friend and—now that he was building the greenhouse—her father’s hireling. What did she care if he thought her unfeminine?
“Rose?” her mother queried.
“Very well.”
Kit’s eyes brightened, suddenly looking more green than brown. “Graves! It seems we’ll be requiring dinner, after all.”
THIRTEEN
BEFORE ROSE could change her mind, her mother had departed, and she and Kit were in the beautiful paneled dining room, a lovely dinner of beef in claret and carrot pudding set before them.
To her surprise, she found Kit very good company.
“It’s odd,” she realized in the middle of their meal. “You’re quite easy to talk to.”
A forkful of carrot pudding halfway to his mouth, he laughed. “Do you always say exactly what’s on your mind?”
“Usually.” Unless she was with someone she thought of as husband material; then she had to watch her words. “Do you not find it odd at all? After all, we hardly know each other.”
“Perhaps we should get to know each other, then.” He sipped thoughtfully from a goblet of Madeira. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Red. Why?”
He met her eyes. “Color can say a lot about a person.”
“Oh, yes?” She took a swallow of the sweet wine. “What do you suppose red says about me?”
“I imagine that you’re strong-willed…and perhaps a bit daring.”
She liked that description. “What’s your favorite color?”
“The clear blue of a summer sky.”
“But your bedchamber is red,” she remembered.
“So it is.” He smiled and didn’t elaborate. “Do you prefer sweet or savory?”
“Pardon?”
“To eat. Sweetmeats or real meats, which is it?”
“Oh, sweets, most definitely,” she told him, relieved to be on a different subject. Enjoying this game, she eyed a cherry tart one of his serving maids had placed on the table. “But I’m not passionate about it.”
He raised a brow. “Passionate?”
Feeling herself blush, Rose was certain he’d taken her statement the wrong way. “Violet’s sister-in-law, Kendra—she’d have a wedge of that tart on her plate already. She always eats dessert first. In case she wouldn’t have room for it later.”
“Ah.”
Rose swallowed more wine. ”And you? Sweet or savory?”
“Give me a hunk of beef any day.” He speared a bite of meat and popped it into his mouth. “Which do you enjoy more, Christmas or your birthday?”
“My birthday. It’s mine alone.”
He sipped, looking amused. “But Christmas is a time for sharing.”
“Exactly.” Two could play this game. “What’s your favorite book?”
His eyes narrowed as he considered. “The Odyssey.”
“Homer’s Odyssey? In Greek?” she added teasingly.
He laughed, tipping his wine glass to her. “George Chapman’s version.”
“Homer’s is more poetic.” She scooped up her last bite of the buttery carrot pudding. “Why do you like it?”
“Odysseus faced terrible obstacles, but he persevered and triumphed in the end.” Kit set down his fork. “I admire that sort of man, that sort of success.”
He sounded very serious. “He did it for love,” she reminded him.
“For his wife, Penelope, yes. She waited for him twenty years.”
Though Rose dreamed of such enduring love, she couldn’t imagine waiting twenty years for anything. “Penelope was more patient than I.”
“What’s your favorite book?”
“Aristotle’s Master-piece,” she said without hesitation, even though it was a scandalous marriage manual. It seemed she could tell him anything. “I learned quite a bit from that book.”
“Did you?” That brow went up again, making her wonder if he knew what the book was about or if he assumed it was Aristotelian philosophy. But his thoughtful expression didn’t give him away. “Musically,” he asked, “do you prefer instrumentals or songs?”
“Songs. I love to sing. I sang in the parlor after Lily’s wedding, do you remember?”
“I left early,” he reminded her. “I must have missed you.”
“Oh.” Absurdly, she felt disappointed. “Do you sing?”
“Not where anyone can hear me.” His eyes looking very green, he sat back and twirled his goblet between his palms.
“My turn,” she said, focusing on the pewter cup. “Red wine or white?”
“Red. Most definitely red. It’s richer, deeper, more complicated.” He fixed that vivid green gaze on her. “And you? Red or white?”
“Champagne,” she said, feeling like she’d just sipped some.
“Rare and expensive. It fits.”
Her face heated again. “The bubbles tickle.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but then apparently changed his mind. “Are you early to bed or late to rise?” he asked instead.
“Both,” she admitted with a chuckle. “But that’s about to change. Last night I was so early to bed, I have no idea what time the court festivities ended. Do you know, or did you seek your bed beforetime, too?”
“I never sought my bed at all. I had work that kept me there through the night.”
Her jaw dropped. “You haven’t slept?” She began to rise. “I must leave you to get some sleep, then. Although my mother’s heart was in the right place when she sugg
ested I read to you, she was clearly unaware of the circumstances.”
He rose and helped her to stand, his hand warm on her arm through the thin silk of her violet gown. Her skin seemed to prickle underneath.
“I would have you stay and read,” he said. “If you’re finished with your dinner, we’ll adjourn to the drawing room.”
“But you must be exhausted—”
“Think of it as a bedtime story, then.” When she laughed, his eyes glimmered in response. “Honestly,” he added, “tonight will be soon enough for me to rest. I’m accustomed to keeping long hours when a project demands it.”
She thought about his words as she let him guide her into the light-flooded drawing room. The people in her life had no demands that would keep them up all the night—or at least none they hadn’t put on themselves. She had nothing in common with Kit Martyn.
But despite that—despite herself—she liked him. His ease, his self-confidence, his quick sense of humor. In fact, she liked him a little too much. She felt uneasy when he was too close.
When he fetched the book and sat beside her on the pale moss green settle, she briefly considered moving to a chair. But considering they needed to work from the same book, that would be silly—not to mention insulting.
She took the volume from him. “‘Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum,’” she read aloud, “which means, ‘Perspective in Painting and Architecture’ by Andrea Pozzo.”
“Just as I thought,” he said, reaching to open the cover and flip pages.
She caught a hint of his scent again—the same mix of frankincense and myrrh that she remembered him wearing at Lily’s wedding. It was woodsy and masculine and made the champagne bubbles dance in her stomach, no matter that she’d been drinking Madeira instead.
She’d have to see if she could duplicate it in Mum’s perfumery. Perhaps the Duke of Bridgewater would like some.
“See here,” Kit said. “There’s a sketch of how to properly mount paper on a board for drawing. I’ve done it, but I couldn’t tell what to do after that.” Rising, he strode across the room to a desk and lifted a piece of wood with sheets of parchment tacked to it. “What does that page say?”
“To the lovers of perspective,” she translated. “The art of perspective does, with wonderful pleasure, deceive the eye, the most subtle of all our outward senses…”
While she read, Kit collected an inkwell and quill and wandered back to sit beside her.
She turned the page. “This section is called ‘Explanation of the lines of the plan and horizon, and of the points of the eye and of the distance.’” She read on, turning the Latin into English as she went. “That you may better understand the principles of perspective, here is presented to your view a temple, on the inner wall of which…”
With quick, precise motions, he sketched the lines of the classic Greek temple pictured beside the Latin words. He nodded as he followed her translated instructions, adding a man—tiny, as fit the proportions—standing before the structure with its high, arched windows.
“Let me see,” she said when she’d finished reading the page.
He set down the quill and turned the sketch board to face her. “What do you think?”
“It’s lovely.”
“Just lovely?”
“Well, you’ve drawn it skillfully, of course.”
He smiled. “It’s a perfectly proportioned structure. Can you see the way the arched windows echo the arches in the rest of the building? A true thing of beauty.”
If she couldn’t quite appreciate the structure itself, she couldn’t help but notice his enthusiasm. “You find buildings beautiful.”
“Not all buildings, but the well-designed ones.” He cocked his head, piercing her with those all-seeing eyes. “What do you find beautiful?”
A little flutter skittered through her, but she ignored it. “Are we back to playing the getting-to-know-each-other game?”
“Tell me. Beauty is…”
“Oh, flowers, jewelry, rainbows—”
“No. Not what others find beautiful; what you find beautiful. For example, this curve of cheek to chin”—he reached a long finger to trace along her face—“is a thing of beauty.”
She shivered.
“Tell me,” he said softly.
Your eyes, she thought. Your voice, when you talk like that. Your ideas…
“Flowers,” she repeated aloud. But then she added, “When they’ve just been kissed by the rain.”
He nodded solemnly. “What else?”
“Children’s laughter.”
“And?”
“The sun reflecting off the Thames at dusk.”
He seemed to be staring at her mouth. “Very good.”
Her lips tingled. “And my sister, playing the harpsichord. Even more beautiful when Rand sings with her.”
Kit nodded again. “He has an incredible voice.”
“Yes, he does.” And it didn’t hurt anymore to think of him as Lily’s husband.
“How about,” Kit suggested, “the first blade of grass that pushes through the ground in the springtime?”
“Oh, yes.” She’d never thought of it before, but a blade of grass could be a thing of beauty.
“Church bells ringing through the fog.”
“Fog.” She nodded. “Tendrils of fog creeping over the rooftops of London.”
“The fog in London?” Laughing, he picked up his sketch board and ripped off the top sheet of paper. “Perhaps we’re getting carried away. Read on, please.”
She hesitated a moment, wishing the game could continue. “‘Figura Tertia—The Third Figure.’ The delineation of an oblong square in perspective…”
FOURTEEN
KIT SKETCHED while Rose read all that long, pleasant afternoon.
And the longer he spent with her, the more he wanted her.
Rose was much more than just a pretty face. He’d known that, somehow—known it in his gut before he’d even really known her. But now he knew for sure.
“You’ve never seen these buildings,” she commented after translating nearly a dozen of the Latin explanations. “In person, I mean. Have you?”
“No.” He placed the sketch board facedown on the table and stuck the quill into the inkwell. “I’ve always dreamed of traveling abroad to study the classical buildings, but”—he smiled sheepishly—“I don’t know how I’d communicate.”
“I’ve also never been outside of Britain.” She flipped through more pages, her dark eyes lingering on the drawings of classical buildings. “I’d dearly love to go to Italy—to travel anywhere, really, where I could see the world and try speaking the languages I’ve learned to read and write.”
“How many?” he asked.
“I’ve never counted.” She lifted a shoulder in an elegant shrug. “Ten, eleven…maybe more. You get to a point where new languages become easier, where the words and grammar parallel ones you already know.”
“You get to that point,” he said, making her laugh.
She was charming in that easy dismissal of her abilities. And kind, too—willing to sit with him all day and patiently translate his book.
And she shared his dream, to travel. Although it was clear she wasn’t talking about traveling with him, Kit couldn’t help but think of her mother’s matchmaking intentions. With such a talented wife at his side, Kit would gain access not only to knowledge like that of the Perspectiva Pictorum, but to the whole wide world beyond England’s borders.
Not that he was really looking for a wife.
“You must have done well in school, though,” she said, startling him from his musings, “in order to get where you are today.”
He shook his head to clear it. “I was a good student. I had to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“I lost both my parents in ’sixty-five—”
“The Great Plague?”
“Yes.” That year of horror. “Did it not affect your family?”
“We went off to
Tremayne, an estate my family owns near Wales. We were safe there. Isolated.”
“We weren’t,” Kit said succinctly. “My father was a carpenter, my mother a secretary and housekeeper for a local noblewoman. They owned no land; we had no place to go.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Do you miss them terribly?”
“I did, but it’s been twelve years. My sister, Ellen, was but four when they died. She doesn’t miss them like she might if they’d passed when she was older.”
“But you remember your parents well.”
He nodded. “Oh, and she remembers them, too. I talk about them often—I’ve tried to keep them alive for her. My mother was the daughter of a cleric, and she taught us how to read. My father taught me how to build. They were good people.”
Not that that had saved their lives. The few titled families in the area had escaped before falling ill, but common folk like the Martyns hadn’t any choice but to stay behind. Kit and Ellen had survived, but their parents had not.
The Martyns, Kit had resolved—what remained of them—wouldn’t be left behind ever again.
Leaning closer, Rose laid a hand over his. “What happened after they passed on?”
“I was thirteen and did my best to care for Ellen, but we had no income, after all. We were alone in our tiny cottage. We nearly starved.”
Her fingers tightened on his, and she leaned closer still, swamping him with her floral scent. “Oh, Kit…”
He shrugged off the sympathy. It would do him no good. He’d long ago learned to face life’s problems and work toward solutions. Wallowing in self-pity got one nowhere.
“When my mother’s employer, a widow called Lady St. Vincent, returned to Hawkridge after the danger had passed, she felt great remorse for having left our family behind. To make amends, she took in Ellen and sent me to Westminster School. She saw to it that I was made a King’s Scholar and promised to send me on to university if I did well. So I did,” he concluded simply.
He’d been given a chance in life, and he hadn’t been about to waste it.
“Did she follow through with her promise?”
“Indeed, she did. She sent me to Oxford, and not on charity, either. She paid my expenses and made sure I was treated as well as the best.”