7. In Which Luke Notes the Tension

Aunt Amelia was sitting at the table with Grace when Luke Ashburton returned with a crate full of books. Grace could see his relief that the older woman was there—someone he could exchange simple pleasantries with.

As he and Amelia spoke, she stole the opportunity to observe him up close. His sea-gray eyes were slightly bloodshot, with bluish circles beneath, and his hair had gotten less obedient as the day progressed.

He was, she knew, captaining the ship in the other room. Had been, since before her arrival—since the moment they’d put out the fire. Lord mercy, the man must be exhausted.

He glanced her way as he spoke—but then his gaze caught. Surprised by what he saw there.

She looked down at her work, feeling a blush spread. What was so terrible about Luke Ashburton seeing her as she was? She was a kind person, and open—too, perhaps—and people interested her, and in those rare moments when he wasn’t being a pigheaded monster, he interested her—

No. No he did not.

She only realized that Ashburton had said goodbye when she heard his footsteps walking away. She looked up—to find Aunt Amelia peering at her disapprovingly.

“I know you’re hard at work, dear, but try to stay enough on the earth that you’re less shockingly rude,” her aunt said. “Come, let us change for dinner. In the spirit of pretending to be civilized.”

Grace wasn’t hungry in the least. Numbly, she followed her aunt.

The professors had planned to return to the exhibition hall after dinner, but it grew clear to Luke that they were too exhausted to be of much use. He suggested everyone turn in early, and attack the work, refreshed, in the morning.

Luke heard Mrs. Wilmington encouraging her niece to follow suit. “We all need rest, dear,” she said, and Luke marveled at how the woman could make a word like dear sound so forceful and disapproving.

Luke knew he should sleep, too, but did not fool himself that it would come. And so he bid all goodnight, and headed back to the exhibition hall.

Luke wasn’t sure how long he’d been working—two hours? Three?—when he became dimly aware of slamming noises in the library. He rose from his work and headed there.

To find Miss Chetwood sitting on the table, legs dangling off the edge, three or four books of mathematics on the floor. Some a good distance away, fallen open. As though thrown. Forcefully.

Adding to that impression was the fact that she had another book in hand, and was in the process of raising it over her head to hurl it as hard as she could.

“What did they do to offend you?” he drawled, and she gasped and twisted where she sat, to see him in the doorway.

“Lord mercy,” she hissed. “Do you always terrify the soul out of people?”

“Only when they’re abusing innocent books.”

“I’m sorting them.” She snapped. “Those don’t have the answer. Any one of the other thirty thousand might yield the clue that wins the day.”

“Night,” he corrected. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I thought you were asleep,” she shot back. “I went upstairs so my aunt would relent. Then I slipped away.”

“You’re good at that.”

He hadn’t meant it, but as soon as he said the words, he knew she would hear a cut about her past behavior with men.

She seemed to freeze. The knuckles of her hand, gripping the book, were white.

“I only meant you succeeded in doing it all very quietly,” he said, “up to the moment you began terrorizing the reading material.”

She gave him a hard, piercing look. “Of course. Though you could just as easily have meant all the many, many times you saw me in an alcove.”

“Miss Chetwood—”

“Mr. Ashburton,” she interrupted, “can it really give you so much pleasure? To so continually remind me what you think of me?” Her eyes were furious. She’d been angry before he entered the room, and he’d certainly only escalated matters.

“You misunderstand me,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Hurt me? Yes, you did. I enjoy doing it to you, so I recognize the impulse.”

He wasn’t sure how to answer without sounding insincere, or worse, mocking. But here, now, in the empty, late-night dim of the library, so tired he could taste the fatigue in his mouth, he wasn’t particularly proud of the way he and this woman continued to interact. The thoroughness with which he seemed to bungle even the smallest attempt at civility.

“Miss Chetwood, surely we can aspire to a single conversation from which neither of us emerge bloody, limping, or missing several teeth.”

“ Can we?” She gave a derisive laugh.

Suddenly there was no anger in him anywhere. Just heaviness. “You are a lady, and betrothed, and—”

“Don’t do that,” she interjected, harsh. “‘ You are a lady, and betrothed.’ And as soon as I believe you speak in good faith ... casually, you will add, ‘ Pity, all those nasty rumors about why he’s marrying you’—”

“I wouldn’t—”

“Of course you would.” He heard her voice fray. “It’s what you are thinking right now. That I trapped St. George.” She leaned forward. “Would you like to hear a secret? That is precisely what I did.”

Luke was enough taken aback that he found himself staring at her. “Do feel free to tell everyone you know,” she said. “If the ton turned on me as one, I would rather feel I’d earned it.”

She was livid, that was clear. But underneath that, there was no satisfaction, no pleasure in her confession.

“I won’t repeat it,” he said quietly.

She shrugged. “As it suits you.”

“I can’t help but observe that you don’t seem happy about it. This so-called trapping.”

“I’m to be a viscountess. I can hardly contain my ecstasy.”

“You did not mean for it to happen,” he countered.

She sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose as if to impatiently banish an ache. “Mr. Ashburton, I am no victim. I am exactly the worst things you think of me . And I am tired of fighting with you.” Her voice cracked again. “I don’t think I can spare the energy.”

The sentiment resonated so deeply in Luke that for one mad moment, he wanted to laugh. Or punch a wall.

“We could call a truce,” he said. “I am as tired as you are.”

Her brow shot up, and she seemed to be considering it.

“No,” she finally said. “Because I would abide by it. I do not trust that you would. Do you not have work to do?” She slid off the table, and returned to her seat. “I shall refrain from further violence, so as not to disturb you.”

“Appreciated,” he said. And went back to his work. Feeling as though their entire conversation had been a test, and he’d failed it.

I am exactly the worst things you think of me.

Luke did not know what to make of Grace Chetwood claiming this, even as everything in her demeanor screamed that she had not compromised herself in order to secure a viscount.

Notably, she had all but confirmed that the compromising itself had happened. Randolph St. George was charming enough, but not, certainly, the sharpest blade in the butcher shop. Luke found it difficult to imagine her falling so in love with the mediocre fop that she’d risk ruination to lay with him. Not if they’d had a single conversation not screamed over aggressive chamber music in a crowded room.

Come to think of it, they very well may not have had any such conversation.

On the other hand, Luke had witnessed firsthand Miss Chetwood’s capacity to focus on blunt and titles to the exclusion of all other information. To, in fact, gleefully declare a prospective suitor’s personality entirely irrelevant to the enterprise of marriage.

Discovering this about her was exactly what had led to the slap.

The ball at Dawnridge House, where said slap occurred, had been the largest event of that season. A fortune in flowers, oversweet drinks, terrible music, all the ton in its ugliest fashionable attire. Luke had come with friends. He wasn’t looking for Miss Chetwood. Why would he? One week before, he’d spied her kissing the black-haired gentleman in that alcove. Surely, she was off the market, or close to it.

She was in attendance, and it was impossible to miss her, thanks to that giggle and a frothy, translucent pink confusion of a gown. She was dancing with a gentleman he knew slightly, a wealthy heir and so-called poet whose main interest in the arts was in affecting depth for the purpose of seducing ladies.

Luke had imagined Miss Chetwood’s dark-haired lord would appear and claim her for a waltz. That man did appear, but she seemed to have no interest in spending time with him. In fact, she disappeared from the dance floor.

Luke knew he should be focused on his own enjoyment of the ball. Or at the least ... he should stop watching Grace Chetwood.

But he could not resist listening in, just for a moment, when he found himself standing behind her and her friend Clara Abernathy near a refreshments table.

He heard snippets. Fifty thousand and inheritance and some debate comparing two heirs. And then, with evident delight, Miss Chetwood pointed to a number of men in rapid turn, rattling off precisely what each was worth, including the names of every property they were set to inherit. Her friend was impressed. As was Luke—it was a genuine mnemonic feat.

It also gave him a dark, acid feeling in his gut. Particularly when Miss Abernathy pointed out that one gentleman was, in short, “the most boring man alive,” and Miss Chetwood shrugged, repeated the financial figures, and giggled that it rendered all else beside the point.

As a beautiful young woman from a respected family, that she would marry well was unquestionable. But he’d imagined her driven as strongly by curiosity, and emotion, and a desire to find a man with depths to match her own.

Now, Miss Abernathy was assessing a gentleman almost eerily like Luke in circumstance: an introspective younger son, neither hideous nor extraordinarily dashing, who moved in rarefied circles but did not himself live lavishly, and who had dedicated himself—admirably, Luke thought—to the pursuit of social reform.

“He is unusually passionate in his work,” Miss Abernathy mused. “Which could mean he would be so in courtship.”

“Leading to what, exactly? Living in a little flat, boiling your own tea? Sewing his loose buttons back on? Lord mercy, can you imagine?”

“I could if it were a love match.”

“If you’re going to insist on falling in love, Clara, I think it is your duty to do your very best to fall in love with a duke.”

“Every duke I’ve met this season has sixty years, at a minimum.”

“Well, put a bit of effort into it,” Miss Chetwood said, and they both dissolved into giggles.

Why did it bother Luke to see her acting the callous marriage market assessor? He was no contender for her hand. The conversation he’d overheard made that triply c lear. So why allow it to grate upon him?

And why did it pain him to consider that those depths he thought he spied in Grace Chetwood might not actually exist?

Luke told himself that he left the ballroom to view the house out of architectural curiosity, and not because he’d seen Miss Chetwood slip away with the alleged poet.

He wasn’t following them; it was coincidence that he saw them slip into the library.

He wasn’t peering through a crack in the door. Merely walking past. And happening to spy Miss Chetwood melting into a kiss with the poet.

Luke walked away, fast.

He had no moral objection to kissing. Yet it made him feel foolish to see her do it with a second man, affecting that giggling, curious, innocent-yet -game demeanor.

You let yourself be extremely stupid about that woman . He had walked away with one thing in mind: a strong drink, to wipe the slate clean of his fascination with Grace Chetwood once and for all.

Standing over a checklist in the exhibition hall, distracted by the silence emanating from the library, Luke marveled that two years had passed, and yet the woman elicited precisely the same uncomfortable mix of reactions in him. He wanted a stiff drink. He wanted to step closer to her. He wanted to call her out for calculated provocation. He wanted to study her closely enough that he discovered the precise root of his powerful, unrelenting fascination with her. And then he wanted to use that information to excise said fascination once and for all. Surgically, if necessary. He was grateful that the timeline for finishing the exhibition was so tight. He would keep his head down, working. He would throw any unmanageable surfeit of feeling into the iron box. And then it would be over, and Grace Chetwood would leave.

It was sometime past midnight when Grace sat up to stretch her cramped neck, and saw that Ashburton was leaning in the doorway. His hair was even more askew. He’d been working in his shirtsleeves, rolled up to the elbow.

Immediately, he held his hands out in a gesture meant to convey harmlessness. “I was stretching my legs. I only just got here. I hadn’t been looking in your direction long enough for it to qualify as a stare.” She looked at him without speaking. “I didn’t expect to see you still here. In all seriousness, you might consider sleeping.”

She shrugged a shoulder. “I shall work through the night. You’re still here, so I assumed you might be of similar temperament.”

He nodded slowly, and ran his hand through his hair, which pushed it into an only marginally more presentable shape. “I wish sometimes that my keel were more even, when it comes to my work. But I prefer to gather force, push hard, expend myself completely, and collapse once I’m entirely spent.”

He hadn’t meant it provocatively, she knew. But they both heard it. It hung in the air.

She gave a little laugh. Then regretted it. Stupid giggle.

“Well. Back to work, then,” she said.

“I’m a fair hand at algebra,” he said. “If you want help.”

She shook her head. “If we set every person at Bexley Hall to it day and night, we won’t have done all the problems in these books in time. My task isn’t truly the mathematics so much as to figure out what I am looking for .”

She saw his expression as he took that in. Understanding that there was no clear path from where she sat to the answer. Only work, and patience, and tolerance of the absolute unpredictability of it all. “Oh, don’t fret, Mr. Ashburton. This is what the earl put me through in every letter I received from him since age twelve. It is only ... more difficult, with far higher stakes. I shall muddle through, and I do have faith that if the clue is there to be found, I will not miss it.”

He looked at her, then, in a way that was so ... not unfriendly ... that it confused her. “You rather remind me of the men I work with in the field,” he said, thoughtfully. “Much of the work is often, simply ... to refuse to be overwhelmed.”

She shrugged. “Perhaps I ought to have been a man.”

Now his expression became almost sympathetic . “Perhaps you should have.”

This is a trap . He’s pretending to understand. He’s luring you into a false sense of security.

“Well. Let me know if you find some way I can help,” he said. The simple sincerity if it concerned her. No— alarmed her. She felt as though she were losing the capacity to understand when he was insulting her.

Erring on the side of presuming malice seemed the only way to inure herself. “A fascination, how you employ that kindly tone, as though you were not the sort of man who takes pleasure in cruelty—”

“I don’t.”

“Oh?” She let her voice rise into its most falsely-sweet register. “And what would you call lapping up salacious, third-hand rumors like a thirsty dog, then brandishing them in the cause of humiliating women you hardly know?”

His mouth tightened.

Immediately, she felt a stomach-twisting mix of feelings—a sharp burst of pleasure; an uninvited hum of guilt; braced worry that he would now strike back, and harder.

A long moment. He said nothing. Now, she couldn’t read his expression at all.

He took a step toward her, observing her calmly. “Murder me where I stand if you must, but my assertion of earlier today stands. You’re tense, Chetwood. And it won’t help your work.”

He’d adopted a gruffer tone, as though addressing a male colleague.

She shrugged tightly. “I don’t precisely have a choice, Ashburton.”

“Don’t be daft.”

She heard herself emit a sound of annoyance she’d never made before. It was very nearly a growl.

“You see? If you’re going to work like one of us ... work like one of us.”

“And what, pray tell, do you mean by that?”

He crossed his arms, a loaded smile curving up his mouth. “Go. And relieve it.”

“Relieve ... ” he could not be saying what she thought he was saying.

But then he said it so bluntly, it brought instant, scalding heat to her cheeks. “Please tell me you know how to give yourself release, Chetwood.”

Her mouth had fallen open. No . She would not give him the satisfaction of gaping—this was naught but a new tactic to gain the upper hand. She straightened her spine. Dignity. She would meet his insidious plot to steal her equilibrium with dignity .

“While I can’t imagine a situation that could make it any of your business,” she replied, voice friendly, “I know very well how to pleasure myself. Until I’m quite gasping for breath.”

She caught it—the flare in his eyes that he covered as quickly as he could.

And so she continued, enjoying the increasing effort it took for him to appear unmoved. “It so flushes me with heat that I find it best to be entirely naked for it. The cool air on my nipples only enhances the experience.” She did not miss his breath catching. “One would think a bed the most comfortable place to indulge, but I find I often crave a hard floor under my back. I confess I do forget myself, and tend to make quite a lot of noise. Sometimes I have to bite my own hand to keep quiet. The ... other hand, obviously.”

Now his mouth was slightly open. He looked entirely taken aback. Stunned , in fact.

Grace didn’t know where the words were coming from—she’d never spoken sentences like those in her life . But given the effect she was having—given that she was winning —she felt inspired to say more. “The issue I have with your kind suggestion is this: I don’t wish to waste too much precious time, and I find it so difficult to stop at one release. The second tends to be so much deeper. Don’t you find? Or perhaps it’s easier to stroke myself properly, because I’m so very, very wet from the first one.”

She’d officially scandalized herself. She was surprised she hadn’t sunk into the earth. Her cheeks were going to burn off her skull from the sheer embarrassment—no, the sheer thrill of saying all of that out loud .

He swallowed hard. He wanted to parry, she could see. But she’d robbed him of the capacity.

His eyes dipped from her face to the exposed skin of her décolletage. She could only assume she was as deeply flushed there as on her face.

She could discern that his mouth had gone dry. His pupils had dilated. The front of his trousers could not hide the swell inside them.

I’ve made him hard with just my words, she marveled.

She raised her gaze to his. “Perhaps it is you who are tense, Ashburton.”

“Perhaps it is,” he said quietly.

He took a few steps closer. Until he was standing over her, arms still crossed. Not looming , precisely—there was nothing threatening in it. It was more that everything became very sharp, clear. She could hear him breathing. See the emerging shadow of his beard. He smelled like coffee and Indian sandalwood—the same soap Charlie had sent her once, that she never used, just held to her nose sometimes and breathed in the clean, slightly masculine scent. How did it smell so much better , emanating from this man’s skin? She knew a strong urge to lean closer, breathe him in more deeply.

His gaze lingered over her mouth. No part of him was touching any part of her, and yet she felt it everywhere. She felt lightheaded.

“Were you volunteering to assist me with it?”

Oh, how she wanted to say yes. For a moment, she thought she had said it.

Luckily and alas, she’d managed to keep her tongue.

It was time to bring this to a close. Before she lost control of it completely.

She stood. Now, it was her turn to step close enough to discombo bulate him. “You may speak to me like I am one of the men, Mr. Ashburton. I rather enjoy it,” she murmured. “But do your best not to allow my charms to entirely distract you from the most basic behavior of a gentleman.”

A snap of anger in his eyes—she’d called him out, and he knew it.

But then, he seemed to consider what she was saying more thoughtfully.

He took a step back. “You’re right. The hour is late. I forgot myself.”

A strange mix of emotion flooded her. Surprise, that he’d own up to it with sincerity. And a dash of disappointment that he’d moved away.

“Understandable. My apologies for provoking you.”

He smiled then, seemingly in spite of himself. “Don’t apologize.”

“But—”

“I liked it.”

With a polite tilt of the head, he walked away.

Grace stood there, acutely aware that he’d been right in the first place.

She was excruciatingly tense.