Master of Love Page 11

  Capitulating—she wasn’t sure exactly to what—she dropped with a sigh onto the bench beside the lilacs. The red bricks of the back garden wall radiated the warmth of the sun. The golden late-afternoon rays slanted long and low across the London rooftops into this hidden corner of the garden. He sat beside her on the small bench, still holding her hand, pressed along her side. The touch was so comforting she allowed herself to pretend it was all perfectly normal and proper.

  “In some of the ways the world values, I realize my father was not the strongest man.” She raised her face to the sun and closed her eyes. “He was gentle and passionate about learning. He named my sister and me after nymphs of Greek mythology and taught me how to read Greek in the original. He loved a fine book more than he loved making money off it and he didn’t manage finances as well as he parsed Latin. In the end, that did hurt his family. But on the other hand, he was one of the strongest men I ever met in ways that count the most: he loved my sister and me, and our mother. I remember, as a small child, running into his study”—she smiled sadly, opening her eyes—“and no matter what he was reading, even if it was some wonderful new book, he would put it down and pick me up for a hug. He treated every concern I had—a scraped knee, a missing doll—with grave seriousness. He never made me feel less intelligent for being a girl. He had his failings—we all do—but he and my mother believed in me and gave me the world.”

  He rubbed a thumb slowly across the back of her hand. The soothing rhythm and steady presence of him so close at her side—quiet, listening—allowed her to go on. “We’ve had a hard time since his death, but I don’t blame him.” She prayed that it was true, that her bouts of midnight tears were from exhaustion and worry, not anger at her dear papa. “Inheriting the title complicated our lives. It’s considered disgracefully beyond the pale for peers to be in trade, as you know”—she shot a look at him, a man so privileged in both beauty and wealth—“but his barony, unlike older landed titles like yours, came with no income or rents. Without land, a title means little. If it means the holder can’t earn a living without social censure, it can lead to financial disaster. My father was just starting to grapple with how he could take up his seat in the House of Lords and still run a book-procurement service when he began to fall seriously ill. He’d get so short of breath”—her own breath quickened at the memory—“but the doctors said there was nothing to be done. His heart was failing. I was desperate and insisted on a season at Bath. In the end, I think it only tired him further and imposed new expenses. In truth, his health had begun to fail even before we left Paris. I just didn’t want to admit it.”

  “But your father must have known,” he said quietly, reaching for her other hand to loosen her clenched fingers and rub circles into the palm. “Did he make no plans for your care and financial security?”

  “He was quite anxious about our finances. But I’d been handling almost all the correspondence and bookkeeping for years by that point.”

  He stilled. “You mean you didn’t tell him how precarious things had become?”

  “He was dying!” She surged to her feet, arms crossed tight and back stiff to him. “There was nothing he could do! I promised him I’d continue our business and support the household.” She remembered how hard she’d worked that last winter to convince her father all would be well—and to hide her own fears. “His last correspondence was a series of letters sent to his entire network of contacts, recommending me to their trade.”

  “Did it work?”

  She didn’t answer at first, just stood and let that honey-smooth voice roll down her tense back. He stood as well and began to knead her shoulders. Coward that she was, it felt so heavenly she couldn’t bear to make him stop. She dropped her head and felt him curl over her to catch her humiliated murmur: “Father couldn’t predict so many people would refuse to deal with me. It didn’t make sense to him, that the world would waste the intelligence of half its members by not valuing the skills of women. Clients who’d been happy for me to order and deliver their books when my father was alive thought it shameful for me to do the same once he passed away. A month after we buried him, it was clear I’d be lucky if ten percent of our buyers ever did business with Higginbotham Book Dealers again. A month after that, I began to sell off the silver plate.”

  She clenched her eyes shut against the sting of tears. “I even tried dressing as a young man for a while. I made myself into ‘Callum,’ a Higginbotham cousin, down from Shropshire to join the trade.”

  “What happened?” he asked quietly. His big body against her back radiated a different kind of heat than the brick wall—enticing, dangerous, magnetic in its pull. The urge to lean back into his strength was almost more than she could resist.

  She laughed humorlessly. “A stupid farce, the failure of my own vanity. I wouldn’t cut my hair, and it fell down from my cap when I was jostled over too big an armload of books. It was a final scandalous reason to refuse my trade.”

  He splayed long fingers up her nape, into the loose chignon Marie had looped there. “I’m glad you didn’t cut it.”

  “I might have to sell it yet,” she muttered darkly.

  “Callista, no!” He squeezed.

  She tried to step away, take back the words—“Only a bad joke, of course”—anything to break this odd mood bringing her far too close to this powerful man.

  But he would have none of it. He held her in place, cupping her within the curve of his much larger body. “Callista,” he murmured, lifting a hand to brush from her cheek the tear that had escaped, “you carry so much weight on these slim shoulders.”

  The gentleness of the gesture undid her. Anger, fear, and shame flared up fast from the tightly bottled well where she kept them tamped down.

  “You might as well hear the rest of it then,” she choked out against the bitter burn of more tears she refused to shed. “Have you guessed the story behind the servants? Mrs. Baines had been our cook since I was a little girl. When we returned to London, it took me weeks to track her down, but I finally found her living in a filthy lodging house over a third-rate coffee shop in Drury Lane. She was struggling to support both Margaret and Suzy. Margaret had been attacked by the drunken master of the household where she worked as a parlor maid. He dismissed her on trumped-up charges of thievery when she came to him with child. I moved them all into Bloomsbury that very day. Billy I found in the streets not long after Father died.” She wrenched out of his grasp and twisted around to face him, her chin stuck out defiantly. “Now you know all our shameful family secrets.”

  “My apologies, Callista”—he inclined his head gravely—“for misjudging your father. What he gave you was priceless: his faith in you and his love. I wish I’d had the same from my father. You’re a remarkable and gallant group, and you most of all.”

  Still trembling from the wash of hot emotion, she cocked her head at him. Many would have condemned her for exposing Daphne to an unmarried woman with a bastard child, not to mention a street urchin with a dodgy background. But Callista had been unable to turn her back on any of them. Together, they formed a household family—a little odd and ragged perhaps, but hardworking and devoted to each other. “I worry”—she shook her head slowly, fighting to get her breathing back under control—“that Daphne has lost so much and that her upbringing has become . . . rather unconventional.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, “but she still has much: her family home and you as her mother, to provide love and guidance.”

  “Yes, every girl needs her pirate lessons!” Callista rolled her eyes and huffed out a short laugh at the sight she’d presented on his arrival.

  “Indeed”—he smiled down at her—“you never know when a knave will come along to take advantage.”

  Her heart skipped a beat and something changed in the air between them.

  The man was entirely too potent, like a very heady Madeira. When she’d lived on the Continent, she’d met any number of rich and powerful aristocrats bent on building their li
braries. But she’d never before encountered any gentleman so classically perfect or so intensely charismatic. When he turned that Master of Love charm on her—even when she knew it to be no more than foolish teasing—it still made her panic and look away.

  She forced a light laugh, and her attention back to their conversation. “I am lucky to have them all in my life.” Despite the tribulations of the last two years, she still had family and home and interesting work, all on a glorious spring day.

  And a viscount in her garden, apparently flirting with her.

  If only it could last.

  If only it could mean something.

  “I think it is I who am lucky to have stumbled upon you.” He stepped closer and slid his hands up her arms.

  He’s going to kiss you! some woman’s wisdom warned. Sweet Jesus, the Master of Love was looking at her like she was his next victim, even after swearing he had no designs on her person.

  Surely she should push him away, turn and walk back to the house, but how—how?—to say no to this, to him? She held still, still as a doe listening for the hounds, felt the sun on her face, and to her shame, wanted it to happen.

  She didn’t know which was more terrifying: that he was about to kiss her or that he might not.

  The tip of her tongue came out to lick nervously at her lips as the breath hitched in her throat. His eyes flitted down to her mouth, and he lowered his head. When his lips brushed butterfly-light across hers, the world shrank to the warm breath between them.

  She tried to resist the onslaught of sensation, tried to hold on to a sense of herself as prim and proper. But her weariness and loneliness left her with few resources. And unlike his other lovers, she operated without a seasoned temptress’s arsenal of defense and counterattack. She knew herself no match against the pleasure this Lord Adonis had long ago learned how to give.

  With a growl, his arms tightened around her and pulled her flush against his tall frame. Heat surged within her. She suddenly understood his reputation for seduction. The Master of Love—good Lord, who could resist? With a little despairing moan, her edge of opposition gave way. She softened in his arms, surrendering her mouth to him. She couldn’t—simply couldn’t—push him away. In fact, she feared she was pushing up on her toes toward him, pressing into his deepening kiss, as a garden blooms into life after a long, deep cold.

  My God, he feels good.

  Hard and soft, dangerous and safe. Masterful and very male.

  But her rational librarian self wouldn’t allow total surrender of all good sense. How to explain what was happening here, why she was making such a fool of herself? What if Daphne were to see? Ashamed and confused, she broke off with a whimper and tucked her head into his shoulder.

  She felt an agony of embarrassment that he was toying with her. She couldn’t bear to be merely another in his string of conquests. But what was the alternative? Hold on to her pride, slap his face, never know what it was to kiss the lips of this gorgeous and intriguing man? Was that a better fate?

  He stroked her hair and whispered, “Shhh, Callista.” His big hands fell lower to rub soothing circles across her back, and she felt him sigh. He tipped up her chin and leaned back to look into her eyes. The corners of his sumptuous mouth pulled flat into a little moue that should have looked ridiculous on a grown man. He managed to turn it into a sensuous gesture that left her wondering what else his mouth could do. “You think I’m a fool, don’t you?”

  “Most often, I have no idea what to think of you, my lord.”

  “Do you think you might call me Dominick?”

  Could that be a wistful, lonely note in his voice? “Such an address would hardly be proper.”

  “Perhaps not.” He sighed again. “But I dare to hope we’re becoming friends.”

  “I can’t be . . . that kind of friend.” Lord knew she wanted to be. She felt, low in her core, a restless yearning she’d never experienced before. Her rational side knew the cost would be high. Perhaps it would be worth it? And yet she didn’t want to be one of his many. She wanted him to be hers alone. Idiotic, romantic dreamer, she thought, chiding herself fiercely, startled at the intensity of her feelings.

  “I know,” he said. “That’s not what I have in mind.”

  “Then what?” she cried, frustrated and confused.

  “Have you never been kissed before? Gentlemen must have fought duels to kiss a mouth this delightful. Do you know how often I dream about this sweet bow on your top lip?” He traced it with his fingertip.

  Fire danced across her flesh, and she found it very hard to think, beyond a vague awareness that he’d quite successfully evaded her question. “I . . . I’ve been kissed before. There was a young lawyer in Paris rather fond of me.” He’d perhaps been working himself up to a courtship when they’d had to move back to London.

  “And he didn’t follow you? The dolt.”

  “Well, he did have a practice in Paris based on the civil law. We have the common law here, you know.”

  “I’d never let a trifle like the common law stop me from courting you.”

  His quip left untouched the fact that he obviously wasn’t courting her at all. Something was growing between them, although for the life of her Callista couldn’t figure out what it was. She couldn’t bear to think she was merely his current conquest, and something about it didn’t feel that way. But what did she know? She had no experience to judge by and would be the worst sort of naïve fool to think it could be anything else. Yet when they spent time with each other and talked of books or dined, this thing between them felt good and real, like a slow coming together of two minds. And when he looked at her as he did now, his lazy smile curled down her spine and his brandied drawl stirred her blood to a slow burn.

  She felt an edge of panic flutter within—she was in far, far over her head, and without any means to get out.

  He held both her hands and leaned down to touch his forehead to hers. “Come out with me, Callista,” he whispered. “The Philosophical Society is sponsoring a talk on David Hume this Wednesday at the British Museum. Professor Jamieson will be lecturing at the Edinburgh conference, and the organizing committee is bringing him down from the University of Edinburgh to drum up interest. There’ll be a reception afterward, with many of the scholars you know in attendance. Please, say you’ll come with me.”

  And, like a fool, because she was beginning to fear there was little she would refuse this mesmerizing man, she took the leap.

  “Yes, I’ll come.”

  Chapter 8

  The late-afternoon lecture—“British Empiricism and the Scottish Enlightenment: The Influence of David Hume”—was more crowded than Callista expected. The buzzing audience settling into seats at the British Museum lecture hall consisted not only of gentlemen from the Philosophical Society and book collectors she recognized, but also a throng from the fashionable upper ton, including Lady Vaughnley and an exquisitely dressed Lady Barrington. The latter was on the arm of a widowed earl recently out of mourning; she gave Dominick and Callista no more than a passing nod.

  Dominick—more fool she, Callista now used his Christian name in her head, although never out loud.

  High society was apparently quite eager to see the notorious Professor Jamieson—infamous in their world not for his radical interpretation of Mr. Hume, but for the countess who’d left her husband and now lived openly with the University of Edinburgh scholar. When he began to speak, he dedicated the lecture to her—“my dearest Sophronia.” Sophronia, Lady Bentley, sat worshipfully in the front row of the auditorium and hung on the professor’s every word. The two clearly adored each other and had chosen, Dominick informed Callista after the lecture, simply to ignore the scandal caused by their affair. Lady Bentley was no longer received by the elite families among whom she’d lived her life, and Callista saw many ladies give her the cut direct. The countess, however, seemed neither to notice nor to care, beaming at her “Jamesie,” as she called the professor when Dominick introduced Callista to
them after the lecture, and looking amazingly content with her lot.

  “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Dominick bent his head to ask her as he led her away to the refreshment table for a glass of negus. “Is it love or philosophy that turns people into such fools?”

  “Surely that’s far too harsh,” she retorted, smiling at him over the rim of the spiced wine. Not even his cynicism could spoil her pleasure today. The lecture had been wonderful, brilliant and moving with the professor’s obvious passion for his lifework. And Dominick was the perfect escort: attentive to her comfort, humorous in his asides, a pagan god come to earth to squire her about. She’d had naught to wear save Marie’s blue silk, but her friend had produced a most elegant velvet half cape in a dark pewter to complement the gown. With a matching velvet ribbon around her throat and her hair up in a complicated series of ringlets that took Marie an hour to put in place, Callista felt as pretty and pampered as she ever had. She’d tried to insist to Marie that the lecture invitation formed part of her work duties, but her friend would have none of it. “It’s a social outing, chérie”—Marie spoke as if to a dim-witted child—“and I will not have you shaming Couture by Beauvallon by appearing in public like a dowdy English frump.”

  “Too harsh?” he snorted, smiling back. “Not harsh enough, if you ask me.”

  “Has your status as lothario jaded you to the point of such scorn?” she asked him tartly. “Even if you don’t believe in love, doesn’t your patronage of the Philosophical Society convince you of the value of that work?”

  “Philosophy is valuable enough, if you don’t let it take over your life,” he tossed off casually, steering her from the crowded room into the pleasant cool of the terrace beyond. “But love”—Dominick shook his golden head, burnished in the twilight—“will ruin you. Poor Lady Bentley has lost the esteem of her circle and become an object of ridicule. Half the people in this room are here tonight so they can gossip about her tomorrow. Professor Jamieson is regarded as too much of an absentminded eccentric to be held fully accountable. In his case, I think it is both philosophy and love that’s ruined him.”