Chapter 7

I f Victor did not put more distance between them he would do something dastardly. “Do you like this room, Miss Snow?”

“It is the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen,” she told him frankly.

“It’s shiny.” He shrugged it away. “Would you be willing adjourn elsewhere? For I admit the room does nothing for me.”

Every hour since he had returned had offered some new humiliation, and now tonight he had survived a veritable bouquet of them. She had seen his weakness, not just before food but before the memories he was unable to banish.

For two days this had still been his dead father’s house. Mrs. Hopp had been mourning, not beside his father’s shrouded body, but in a parlor downstairs surrounded by family portraits and silver. He suspected the legacy of his title meant far more to her than him.

He’d had the corpse removed to the local church. They’d buried him yesterday, in a cloth-covered coffin decorated with nails. Victor had not held a funeral.

Perhaps that was why he felt every room of the house was haunted by memories of his father belittling him, taunting him, and yes, starving him.

Victor remembered when food had begun to revolt him. He didn’t know why his very bones rebelled at the thought of putting it in his mouth, much less swallowing it. He knew it was a weakness, yet he could not simply overcome it at his father’s orders.

He could stay awake and alert without food, as his father had forced him to do many times, sometimes for days. But he could no more eat watery eggs than he could fly.

He glanced at the platter of scrambled eggs à la Francaise . It repelled him.

He ought to have given orders about the meals. He was too used to hiding in his room with bread and fruit. In America, in Ghent, he’d simply paid to have provisions brought and fed himself. Rarely was he able to get a piece of meat cooked to his satisfaction, but it had not been impossible.

He’d never felt like the Earl of Hartwick’s heir, nor did he feel like an earl now. He’d eaten edges of the food served last night and not taken the time to wrangle with Mrs. Hopp before going into the city today to see a solicitor and find a newspaper.

Dismissing her would not change the tenor of the house; all the servants gave him odd looks. They always had and always would. But there were more people in the world than just himself.

He had not acted quickly, and so he was indirectly responsible for the kindest, loveliest lady being subjected to vile abuse. As if she were the kind of midnight tart his father had ordered to the house the way he ordered kegs of ale.

Miss Snow was a lady, whatever her circumstances, and he was not like his father.

And she was so indulgent. “I’ll dine anywhere you like. But as the food is laid here, perhaps you would be willing to eat here briefly, then adjourn wherever you’d prefer?”

To bed, was his immediate silent thought. Good lord, she was beautiful, she was kind, and she was luscious. He wanted every part of her more than he had ever thought possible.

It had not been difficult to play the monk to his father’s libertine. Women were suspicious of a man who would not dine with them, and he had no model on how to speak to them but his father’s.

This woman was easy to speak with, to dine with, and he suspected she would be even easier to lay with.

She mistook his silence. “I only had a care for the servants, as they must already carry everything back to the kitchen, and it is Christmas Eve.”

“That it is.” He’d forgotten again. Now he felt like celebrating. “Let me ring for someone.”

“I’m right here, my lord, right here.” Mrs. Reed, the cook, hurried through the door as if she had been hiding behind it the whole time.

It didn’t matter. Victor felt light. He could do anything with the household that he pleased. These were his servants. This was his house.

It was his title, and it belonged to him.

For the first time he wondered what he could do with it.

“Mrs. Reed.” He felt almost giddy. Giddy wouldn’t do. He pulled his attention back to earthly matters. “Please bring a platter of all the choicest bites to the library and have Mr. Cargill add a bottle of claret. Miss Snow and I will not require anything else, and the rest of the dinner may go to the kitchen for anyone celebrating Christmas Eve.”

“Yes sir,” she said smartly, and curtsied. “And my lady.”

The lady sat straight in her seat. “I am only Miss Snow.”

She was a by-God angel. And he had neglected to see to her. So light did he feel, freed of the weight of disapproval that pressed on him in this house, he felt ready and able to do anything. He would certainly see to her now.

“Yes, ma’am.” Mrs. Reed bustled out looking smug, of all things.

It must not have been pleasant serving under Mrs. Hopp.

“All right then. Shall we retire?” He heaped the rest of his food on his plate and swept it up with one hand, offered his elbow to Miss Snow as she rose.

“You ordered a choice platter for the library.”

“For you,” he explained, keeping hold of his plate. He noticed that somewhere in there, he’d finished the cake.

She copied him, picking up her plate and fork and balancing them in one hand to slip the other into the crook of his arm. “Lead on,” she said with a twinkle in her eye that betrayed the explorer hidden in the guise of a meek little woman.

He did.

It felt entirely different to show the house to someone as if it were his. It was his. “The music room has an excellent pianoforte. I prefer it to the harpsichord.”

“Do you?” She peeked inside for only a moment, staying at his side.

It was an intoxicating habit.

The hallway was lined with oil paintings collected by his grandfather and great-grandfather, weapons mounted on plaques, and a few old tapestries succumbing to moths. He should do something about those, he thought.

Everything in this house was his.

Except her.

“Do you like to dance? There is an excellent dancing studio.” He stopped that train of thought. His father had only known two kinds of women: the kind with high noses and titles, and the kind whose blouses somehow managed to fall off when they lifted their arms. Neither would be suitable company for Miss Snow should the new Earl of Hartwick arrange a ball.

He could do that, if he chose.

Yes, it would be packed with sorbets and trifles and other things he could not eat; but this was his house. Mrs. Reed could feed him aside.

And who would question Lord Hartwick in his own home?

If his father could tyrannize, so could he.

Then he realized tyranny would be forcing everyone to eat the same dry bread and meat he preferred. He suppressed a smile.

“The courtyard is a bit small for pall-mall games, but the garden at the rear of the house is wider.” He would show her the stables, the rookery, everything. “Do you enjoy hunting?”

“What, with pistols?” She did not look alarmed, only curious.

“With falcons. Many of the ladies hunt by falcon. There is still quite a bit of game in this area.”

“I’ve never tried.”

Indeed, Isabel had never heard of such a thing.

The farther they went into the house, with every new amusement he mentioned, she thought over and over to herself, I would be the most boring mistress in the history of Britain.

Clearly the business of amusing people was extensive.

Until she moved to London, Isabel’s idea of risk had been sewing cross-stitch patterns without drawing them first.

The risk tonight had come out of worry for Lord Hartwick, and it had clearly paid. He looked younger, happier, his deep-set eyes wider till she could see, when they passed lit candles, that his eyes were a beautiful mix of sea green and golden brown.

She could easily spend an hour simply staring at them and tracing their patterns. Food was no longer so necessary. Nothing was, really.

It was easy to ignore how clearly he knew her station. He spoke and led her through the house familiarly, as if they had been childhood friends, but without consciousness that they were alone. Obviously he did not want a chaperone. Isabel didn’t either.

When her mother had insisted on remaining in the parlor when her suitors came to call, she’d given Isabel the unseemly impression that had she not been there, one or the other man would have fallen upon her neck and possibly rent her throat.

She’d once had the sensation with Mr. Wheelock that it was true.

But there was no chaperone here. She was thoroughly compromised, unsuitable for marriage to anyone in a curate position with a nice little house near the church; since that was her life’s aspiration, she had nothing left to imagine.

Except the feel of this man’s arms around her.

She wondered again about the last Lady Hartwick. Had he been in love with her? How had they not had children? For surely if he had them, he would have mentioned them by now.

Did he already have another mistress? One who took no interest in his well-being, only... well, only pleasured him in bed?

Was that what he liked?

Questions like these plagued her as they wandered about the great house, Isabel only half-hearing details of this room dating to that king or what the peculiar felt-covered tables in the gaming room were for.

After what felt like long wanderings, they reached the library.

Isabel had expected to feel as comfortable there as she had in the book shop. But it was entirely different. There, books had been dismembered, only a few bound in cloth and boards in order to be touched along with samples of the leather, watered papers, and gilt a person could select for their own volume.

Here, richly finished volumes marched in ranks along oak shelf after oak shelf, facing each other across the room like soldiers. The rest of the room reflected the age of the house, polished, its plastered ceiling criss-crossed with dark planks. One supported a vast crystal chandelier.

Isabel could not stop staring at the glittering arrangement of crystal. “Could it fall?”

“Doubtful. Does it alarm you?” Lord Hartwick barely spared a glance at the thing, only rose to move the little serving table with their plates out from under it. When she moved to sit by it, he turned a plush chair to give her a more comfortable seat.

“Not alarm. Awe,” she told him honestly.

He sat across from her, his hand carelessly plucking morsels of food from his plate. Isabel imagined it wandering as carelessly over her skin, and felt her belly tighten.

She no longer feared submitting to a man’s baser impulses.

She had never before felt these sensations in her skin, in her fingertips. Her damp stocking was forgotten; all her skin felt warm. She longed to touch the curve of his lip; it called to her, she could barely take her eyes from it.

But she also wanted to feel his hands on her shoulders, on her back, on her breasts. She had never wanted such a thing before. Now the soft skin there positively ached for his notice. She was burning for him to touch her.

It frightened her, but it proved second by second that she had made the right choice.

She could never be the mistress of a home like this, but of him? That she could do.

The only problem now was she had no idea what a mistress would say.

“Ah.” He reached with a long arm to an ancient oak sideboard. “And here are your pages, Miss Snow. You’ve been so kind to attend to my supper, let me entertain you while you eat yours.”

“Reading while dining?” It felt almost as scandalous as what she imagined him doing with his lips. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

His gaze flicked to her face, then dropped to her plate. “It is a day for discovery,” was all he said, before he skipped to the paragraph where she had paused in the bookshop and began to read.

It felt as intimate as a remembrance from an old friend.

Victor had never attempted to entertain anyone by reading. But Miss Snow deserved the effort.

He tried to vary his voice with the rises and falls of the story, sounding as lively as he could. He tried to keep his eyes on the printing, but couldn’t help watching her savor every bite she put into her mouth. He saw it even when he wasn’t looking; the vision of her lips closing around the tines of the fork had etched itself indelibly on the back of his eyelids, in the depths of his brain, and indeed around the base of his spine.

It spread heat across his belly till he was glad he should not have to stand up.

The exhaustion of the past months of hard work and then days of panicked travel caught up with him. He let it peak and run out of him like water. There was no past, no future; only this bright moment here with this sweet woman, who listened so attentively to his voice.

Her lips parted. So divided was his attention between her and the page that he saw it instantly. He paused.

A little frown drew her brows together. She said, “Go back to the beginning. Where they were wondering if she spoke English.”

“You’ve forgotten already?” He knew he sounded too severe, too dry, for proper wit.

But she seemed to understand his mood. Her own quiet smile appeared and disappeared. “The section haunts me. I wonder if I heard correctly.”

The loose pages flapped in his hands; he had to curve them back upon themselves to keep them firm enough to read.

“You must resign your demoiselle, as Mr. Riley calls her, for a heroine,” whispered the young lady to Mr. Harleigh. “Her dress is not merely shabby; ’tis vulgar. I have lost all hope of a pretty nun. She can be nothing above a house-maid.”

“She is interesting by her solitary situation,” he answered, “be she what she may by her rank; and her voice, I think, is singularly pleasing.”

“Oh, you must fall in love with her, I suppose, as a thing of course. If, however, she has one atom that is native in her, how will she be choked by our foggy atmosphere!”

He had passed by the similarities when reading, but now her interest in the passage was clear.

“And is it so?” Miss Snow said when he paused, wondering what to say to reassure her without being a cad.

“Is what so?” He needed more time to think.

“Any solitary woman is interesting.”

He could try joking again. “Certainly if she cries out in agony on a beach in the middle of the night during the Terror.”

Her fleeting smile appeared and disappeared again, but she persisted. “Is that all that caused him—or rather you—to speak to me in that bookshop?”

His inclination to smile faded as well. “A villain accosted you.”

“And you pretended to be a husband with ownership of me. I do not complain!” she rushed to add. “You surely understand that I must live my life beyond this day, and I would like to grasp all that’s happened. Is it true that I should expect such interest simply for walking out of doors alone?”

Victor had to think. His instinct was to reply as clearly and honestly as a good contract. But contracts existed to put both parties on equal footing, and as a woman, his guest could not assume she could have that.

The whole affair was too far from his experience for him to say anything useful.

More than anything, he wished she would not associate him with the other man in the shop, that she would only like him.

The thing was probably impossible. He’d rebuffed the other man out of his own ire, his own need to appear righteous.

A righteous sham. For right here, right now, he wanted to sweep this woman into his arms and devour the taste of every inch of her skin and do exactly the things other men wanted. He wanted it all adorned with her willing, enthusiastic cries. He was not sure himself how different he was from any other man right now.

He could not admire these wild yearnings, so base, so like those of unworthy men; yet they were his. He was not so worthy.

“The shopkeeper mistook us for married,” prompted Miss Snow, “and forced you into the pantomime. Was that the difference? The other man’s interest was crude, but yours merely a game?”

Victor frowned. Glanced at the bottle of claret. It was still full, still bore its crystal stopper. He wished for a bit of its support right now. His childhood had wrapped him in icy scales he wished to shed. But to become what kind of man?

“Madame.” He turned his plate. “A game, like a contract, is the meeting of two equal parties. In no way was that man my equal.” In the moment, Victor realized that it was true. He could simply have turned the man away. Something in him had driven him to claim ownership of his Miss Snow. He had wanted the toothsome cake of a woman, and claimed her. He was a ruffian.

But she could have simply turned him away once her attacker had gone. He would have given her that grace, which was at least one difference between him and the other cad.

It was her disadvantage, as an interested party, that she must perforce wait for such grace to be given.

But he had, and she had not turned him away.

He hadn’t thought of that before.

Trying to sound warm, he added, “I enjoy conversation with you.”

God, now he was both pathetic and stuffy.

He must explain himself better. “I am no gamesman. If I were, what points were mine? If I rescued you, you came here and rescued me and won the point back.”

They exchanged a look that spoke of a shared moment in time. He had never had that with anyone before.

It emboldened him to go on. “I liked talking with you. The game was yours, and I enjoyed it. No! Never worry.”

For she hid her face behind her hands.

Without noticing himself, Victor vaulted from his chair to kneel by hers. It would be too forward to touch her hands, and he was trying to prove himself not a ruffian, but he wanted to. Wanted to kiss her knuckles, one by one, till her hands fell away and he could touch her face. “It had to be your game because I do not know how to play.”

He had never had a playmate, or a lover, or even a friend.

Right now he could only imagine one person filling all those roles. He could not remember a time before he knew this woman.

Trying not to alarm her with his nearness yet unable to move away, when she did not speak, he went on as best he could. “You made it easy for me to stay by your side, and I was grateful, because that was where I wished to be. Leaving you was so incredibly difficult.”

She peeked through her hands. Her eyes were large, the gray in them bright in the candlelight. She pressed her fingers to her lips. He wondered if those impossibly small fingertips were rough. He wanted to touch them and find out for himself.

As if she heard his thoughts, she touched one fingertip to his lips, silencing him as she had silenced herself.

Victor had to fight to keep his eyes from drifting closed with the pleasure of that one soft touch.

Her voice was faint in that way he’d already come to realize meant she was forcing out each difficult word. “Is that what you liked in your wife? Conversation?”

“What wife? I have no wife.” Please keep touching me.

“I know, but when you did.”

She sounded so certain. When did she hear this lie?

“Madame.” Addressing her that way when they were a hands-breadth apart was ridiculously formal, but his speech was his speech. “We have not been introduced. I am Victor Adell, Earl of Hartwick for perhaps seventy-two hours. And you are?”

“Miss Isabel Snow,” she said quietly, eyes darting around his face as if trying to divine the rules of their new game.

But Victor was done with games.

“Ah. Isabel is a lovely name.” Did he sound a cad? He was driving himself mad. “Perhaps you will accompany me.” He stood and offered his hand.

She rose and took it.

In contrast to their chattering earlier tour, this time he led her in silence.

The wide sweeping staircase had been built for crowds of courtiers in panniers, the processionals of dukes and kings.

Three hundred years of earls had led their ladies up these stairs, and Victor felt the weight of that history for the first time as he led Miss Isabel Snow the same way.

His father must have felt this moment very differently. He had yoked himself to a wife for money and influence, and said so openly all the years she was dead; likely he’d said the same when she was alive.

That man had never led a woman upstairs he might love, because he had never been capable of loving.

Victor thought himself different.

The carpet in the upper halls was a bit worn, but still colorful. It brightened the heavy wood walls. Victor wanted to ask if Miss Snow cared for them. Would she prefer one of the new houses with soaring marble pillars? He wanted to know.

But they had other matters to settle first.

The great chamber was to his left; he turned away from it. There his father had lived and died.

Instead he turned to the massive chamber on the right, the one that looked out on the front lawns and thence to the modern new road along their edges.

Miss Snow said nothing as he opened the ancient iron-bound door and led her within.

“Here,” he said, waving his hand past the small fire and the furnishings to the wall ahead, “is the last Lady Hartwick.”

Slowly, Miss Snow stepped toward the vast portrait.

It stretched from floor to ceiling. The lady in it was dark-haired, like Victor, with the same serious brow and firm chin. Her eyes were a little too deeply-set to be called strictly pretty. They looked even more incongruous under the vast pink wig she wore and over her wide gown covered in ruffles.

But her intelligence was obvious.

“My mother died shortly after I was born. I have never married.”

His guest examined the grand portrait the same way she examined books. Slowly, taking her time to absorb the details.

Finally she turned back to Victor. Those soft, bright eyes had a look in them now that was much more personal. She knew things about him. “I’m sorry that happened to her. And to you.”

He wanted to know so many private, personal things about her.