‘I don’t even want a friendship. I just want the evening to end.’
He shook his head. ‘You should get something pleasant from the encounter. The foremost thing about conversation during social events is to turn the talk to the other person. Things they’re proud of. Don’t ask curious questions, but caring ones about their life. You will make bonds of friendship with the kind-hearted people. And with the vipers, you can’t let their distance bother you. They will come to you later if they want, or they never will. Don’t fret about it.’
‘The bonds feel strangling. They make me think of escaping the room.’ She half twirled again and he caught her, taking her in his clasp and holding her just as he would a little bird. She felt as fragile as any fledgling, but he’d seen the strength in her and he wished for her to remain close.
‘Shush those defeating fabrications. Instead of a captive bear, then imagine you are game being hunted, but you also have an empty belly, sharp teeth and luscious claws.’ He pulled up her hand, drawing her fingertips along his cheek, feeling empowered by her as much as he hoped he gave her support. ‘These delicate fingernails are not where your claws are. They are in your head, resting, sheathed—a bite disguised as a purr. Your strength is in learning to use your wits and yet not skewer anyone.’ He pulled in a breath. ‘It is the intimate joust of human conversation and competition.’
‘The only reason I had someone to talk with besides Mother was because the Duchess was concerned about the scars on my face.’ She spoke into his shoulder, not wanting to observe his pity.
‘You’ve no scars on your face.’
‘Please tell the Duchess, but I doubt you can convince her of something so ludicrous.’
He took her shoulders and turned her to the mirror behind her. ‘Tell me the truth of what you see. You’ve a perfect face. None would fit you better.’
She squinted. ‘Perhaps in this darkness.’
‘Underneath the brightest sun. You would outshine it.’ He couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see herself as he saw her. If she did, she would have the confidence she needed.
She rotated, slowly, facing him, or perhaps he was so aware of her movements that his mind had captured every nuance of her actions, slowing them.
She stayed in the reach of his arms, studying him in the dimness.
She must be on her tiptoes...her mouth was gliding so close. Or perhaps his lips had moved nearer to hers. He wanted to taste the perfection that she couldn’t believe, but which he could feel hovering about her, a caress of beauty that he wanted to touch, hold and savour.
She grasped his lapels and his hands naturally caught her waist. He had no choice. Rachael might topple on to him if he didn’t. Arousal thrummed in him and he gave in to the sensation of his body bursting to life.
She touched his shoulder and stilled, except for her eyes.
She didn’t take her hand away.
Falling into a kiss was easier than telling her goodbye. His lips brushed hers. Liquid. Warm. The edge of a crevasse. A ledge he would happily jump off of to be with her and he must not think such a thing.
He mustn’t.
But he did.
He cupped her head and she pulled herself closer. Just as he was dropping into desire that could consume him, he stopped, reminding himself of the promise to her mother.
She took his wrist and held his palm to cup her face.
His thumb brushed her lips. ‘I shouldn’t return here.’
‘You have to. I need you to further my survival in the world of society and of business. I get scared.’
Tentative lips touched his and he remained completely immobile. He attempted to be the perfect gentleman. He didn’t kiss her, yet he could taste the sweetness and savour the bloom of rosebud lips.
She retreated, puzzlement in her eyes and a bit of hurt.
He couldn’t bear for her to think he rejected her. He pulled her to him.
Their lips met, warm on warm and heat on heat beneath their moisture and the explosion of sensations. He clasped her, holding her upright and using the strength from the kiss to keep her in his arms.
Lips tasting of honey, a body fanning his desires with the vibrancy of thousands of bees’ wings.
He couldn’t stop her and wouldn’t. The kiss lengthened and grew into a second and a third and mounted to a fourth.
He wanted to be alone with her. Somewhere no one could interrupt.
Then he held her tightly and stepped to the wall behind him, feeling the waves of desire pushing at him, a pulsing crush against his body, yet he did not let it influence him. He didn’t know if sweat broke out on his brow, or if it was all on the inside of him, yearning to be released.
When he saw the longing in her face, he shut his eyes. It was the only way he could control himself.
Looking at her, he took his feelings, the situation and perhaps even the moon into his power. He needed that much strength to keep the moment chaste.
He couldn’t release her, or she would be burrowed against him.
This wasn’t right for her. He couldn’t ruin their friendship. She was too innocent to understand. She’d courted a man who didn’t want her to call him by his first name.
He took her face in his hands and the world stilled while he gave her a brief kiss on her lips, the springtime flavours of her infusing him with longings stronger than he’d felt before.
Forcing himself to do the right thing, he looked into her darkened eyes. Words of love rose to the forefront of his mind, startling him with their intensity.
He could not offer her meaningless phrases and he didn’t know the truth of them or if they were words generated to please her. He wanted nothing more in the world than to reassure and comfort her, but not at her expense.
‘I must leave. It’s late.’ He remembered his last words to her mother. ‘I reassured your mother that I would only stay for a few private words.’
‘But I don’t want you to leave.’
She was freshness and lightness and summertime, and he was far too jaded to be involved with a woman of such perfection.
He’d leave the sublimeness of caressing her to the husband she would some day wed. Just as long as it wasn’t that dolt Tenney. She would be best not to associate with Devlin’s friends either. None of them was worthy of her.
He imagined again her lying on that mossy bank.
Devlin would skewer Tenney if he tried to lead her on a path of lies again.
He would make sure to be careful after the next event she attended and he would not visit her afterwards. And how invisible was his carriage parked on the street? He must leave.
He had to leave and stay away, because next time, leaving her would require more strength. It would require more strength than ten men had.
He was only one man. ‘I should be going home.’
She put a hand at his cravat, pulled the loop and slipped it into a firm knot. ‘Think of me when you untie that tonight.’
‘I assure you. I will.’
* * *
She shut her eyes and leaned against the door after she’d locked it, and wished he’d not asked her mother if he could visit, but had asked her instead. Rachael wouldn’t have extracted any promise from him.
Her mother’s lecture had lasted longer than Devlin’s visit and had consisted of a hundred or so warnings all delivered in an ambiguous, meandering speech, but she’d ended by waving her hand in the air as she left, with the final admonishment of Rachael not repeating the same mistake twice.
Rachael had no intention of it.
With Devlin, she preferred to make new mistakes.
That knowledge troubled her, because she had been able to put Tenney behind her so easily. Devlin’s presence had instantly banished Ambrose’s significance in her mind. The Viscount was potent to her senses in a way Tenney had never been and s
he wasn’t certain anyone else would be.
She would have to guard her emotions where he was concerned. For survival. She had escaped a mire so easily, but with him a romance wouldn’t be easily forgotten. It would never been forgotten and she wasn’t sure she was in his league.
She tried to remember seeing him out at an event and perhaps she had. In fact, she was sure of it. He’d had a woman at his side and all she’d seen was his profile, and it had captured her imagination. She’d not known who he was. No one had told her his name. But thinking back, she was certain it had been him. He’d been the forbidden fruit with a devilish attraction and she’d closed her mind to it.
Put it far, far from her memory so she wouldn’t be tempted to think of man who brought sunlight into the eyes of onlookers.
A man who attracted the attentions of all the unmarried ladies who would cluster in his sight so that he might notice them.
She’d not planned to be one of those women. Known there was no future in it and only wanted a man who was constant.
Obviously, she couldn’t trust herself where choosing someone to care for her was a concern. She would be better off remaining unmarried and settling on business. Far safer than attaching herself to, and believing in, someone who couldn’t be constant.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Rachael waited in the back room while her father spoke with Grimsley. She pretended to be examining the necklaces, but in reality, her awareness remained on the men.
Grimsley ran a hand over his cropped silvery hair while explaining to her father that he planned to visit a silversmith who’d trained in France, hoping for some new designs, but her father was reluctant. Grimsley conversed longer about what had sold and what wares they needed for replacement, and her father’s feet kept slanting closer to the door.
She stared across the silent street. Two people perused a window across the way, but no one seemed particularly interested in her father’s wares. No one had even been inside while her father and Grimsley communicated.
‘Do you mind if I stay behind?’ she asked her father. ‘I’d like to spend the morning with the Grimsleys.’
Her father tapped his silver-tipped walking stick on the floor. ‘But I’ve plans... You can only examine the wares so long.’
He tapped his cane again. ‘I know I said you could help, but it’s much too complicated for you. And I don’t want you disrupting Grimsley’s day. Besides, people might mistake you for staff.’
‘I’ll mostly stay in the old apprentice’s room where the ledgers and fixtures are stored. Something to take my mind from the broken betrothal,’ she said, throwing that out so her father could latch on to it.
‘Well, if you put it that way, I can understand. But you must promise to stay out of Grimsley’s way.’
‘I will,’ she agreed, dashing a kiss on his cheek and nudging him out. She didn’t want to give him a chance to change his mind.
Grimsley reminded her of a merry elf, but he was losing the twinkle in his eyes. He slipped the ledger her father had studied under the counter. ‘Are you sure you want to linger, Miss Albright?’
‘I heard you tell my father what had sold the last week and I decided to discover if I could understand what people like. Why they purchase what they do and how many sales you have in a month.’
‘It’s not a pleasant way to spend a day, especially for a young woman such as yourself. Rather tedious, I’d expect.’ He thumbed away a speck of dust on the counter.
‘It might not be.’
‘Well, the details can be rather cumbersome.’
‘I want to learn for myself.’ She crossed her arms and met his gaze. ‘After all, I might take over from my father some day and I want something here to take over.’
‘You...um...think there might be problems?’ he asked. His face sobered, losing its elfin quality. ‘And you’re still interested?’
‘More so.’
‘Don’t you think you should leave this to me and your father? You should be protected from doing this work. It’s not right for a woman to have to worry about business matters when she has a household to manage.’
‘I may never have my own family. If I need to, I will hire a good housekeeper. I’m sure you’ve heard that Tenney and I are not going to marry.’
‘I did. It concerned me.’
That jolted Rachael.
He heaved in a breath and his shoulders sagged. ‘It’s not all a pretty sight, I’m afraid to say.’
‘Then we’d best get started.’
He gave a brief nod and brought out the ledger, tucking it under his arm. ‘I’ll get my daughter to watch the front and she can call me if a customer comes in and the bell rings while we’re busy.’
After fetching his daughter, Grimsley took Rachael to the storage room and retrieved another ledger. Once he opened the book and began speaking, his words tumbled out faster and faster.
She didn’t ask questions, but just listened, absorbing.
Then his speech took on a normal pace and he sighed when he turned the last page.
‘I don’t understand how you get these calculations,’ she admitted.
‘You can learn,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it proven with my wife and daughter. My wife has known me all my life and when I started learning arithmetic, we would talk about it. She caught on as well as I did.’ His cheeks expanded. ‘Better in some cases.’
Rachael examined him. ‘Your wife can understand these numbers?’
‘Of course. It’s not hard once you understand the mathematicals. Do you know the multiplication tables?’
‘Mother didn’t think they’d be necessary.’
‘Once you learn them, the figures will all start making sense to you. I’ve a book I’ll share and you’ll just need to study it. My wife learned them. It makes it easier for her to keep records for the household.’
‘I’m sure it’s easier than making conversation with people I don’t know.’
‘That’s part of being responsible for selling the wares also. It’s all easier after you practise enough. The hard part seems to be getting the customers to stop here.’
‘Practise,’ Rachael repeated and relived the unpleasantness of past soirées before shoving them from her recollections. If she could learn mathematicals, like Mr Grimsley’s wife, then she could manage a dance.
She understood that her father’s belief that business knowledge was beyond her hadn’t stopped her, nor had Grimsley’s initial reluctance, yet people she didn’t know in ballrooms smothered her courage if she didn’t fight to keep strong.
She assessed why. Her father and Grimsley might doubt her, but they wouldn’t disparage her with whispers. Strangers could easily reject her. She would have to silence her own doubts in herself to be able to deal with—and ignore—the opinions of others. The fear inside herself.
It was her own insecurities keeping her conquered...nothing else.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rachael put aside the book from Grimsley and selected the one on her bedside table that she’d taken from the shelf in the sitting room. She ran her fingers over the worn cover. She liked this volume much better than the one she’d chosen when she was with the Viscount. That one had been about pirates and she’d not liked the brutal tales at all. She’d only chosen it because it was close at hand.
But this tome was different.
Her grandfather had penned his name inside the front cover. Her father’s name was directly under that. Her grandfather had died when she was too young to remember him, but as she read the book, it was as if she’d begun to understand his thoughts. As if she could imagine him underlining the page and speaking the words to her.
Her father had told her that his father had said it was a disgrace to disrespect books by writing in them, but this was one he’d planned to pass on to his grandson and that it had guided his life. If it
ever got into the wrong hands, he wanted it known that it was his book.
Her grandfather had taken the inheritance from his father and purchased wares, and he’d worked hard, rented several other buildings and the family’s fortunes had increased. Her mother had claimed her father-in-law was a taskmaster who never seemed to stop working. In fact, she muttered that he’d been furious when Rachael’s father had wanted to marry her and he had another potential bride in mind for his son...the daughter of a man who imported teas.
She read the title again. She doubted Devlin would ever consider reading such a book, but he could likely talk someone who’d studied it into telling him the best parts of it.
Rachael retrieved her pen and ink.
Underneath her father’s looping handwriting, she wrote her name. The rest of the page was blank. Just like her life had been. She flipped through the pages. But not any more.
Thinking of Tenney didn’t force her into the world to meet people, but the encouragement of people around her did.
She couldn’t motivate herself based on revenge.
But imagining her grandfather giving her advice from beyond the grave inspired her. She’d searched through the pages, trying to read each scored section once and then twice. Messages that her grandfather had planned to pass to a grandson, but now she studied them.
She put the book away to prepare for the night’s event. A business endeavour in fine clothing. A duel not to the death, but to the life of a venture.
* * *
When her hair was in place, her lips stained and everything about her appearance double-checked, she dismissed her maid.
Fluffing out her sleeves, she contrasted the feel of the garment to that of her day dresses.
Her sleeves were scratchy against her shoulders because buckram underneath made them flounce out. The scratchiness made her feel that her dress was armour-strong and she carried it well.
When she looked in the mirror, she could at least recognise herself more easily than she had before.
Harlequin Historical July 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 39