Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

A ll Leo could think about was kissing Lillian Gower.

This was getting ridiculous.

As he checked off his list of supplies, he caught himself staring off in his library at the chair where she’d risen like a nymph from a river, a nimbus of golden light cast upon her hair and skin.

As he sat with other Dilettanti in Brooks, chatting with fellow antiquarians about their findings and methods, he saw Lillian in his mind’s eye, kneeling in a bed of blooms, drawing the reproductive apparatus of orchids.

When he called at Gower House with his list of potential printers and found her glowing in her uncle’s library, book in hand, the urge to draw her close was well-nigh irresistible. He wanted to press his palm against her soft, round bottom. He craved the intoxicating taste of her mouth, sherry and citrus.

Every time he smelled geraniums, blood rushed to his groin. This was intolerable.

The only solution was to get his campaign underway. Leave and let the bets in the book be damned. He couldn’t sacrifice this opportunity to make something of himself, to make a find that would establish his career.

Besides, Lillian didn’t want him.

No: she’d kissed him back. She wanted him, at least in that way.

But beyond that, she had no interest in him. She was simply waiting until she’d turned her work over to a printer, then she meant to jilt him and go about her life.

And he had no right to stop her. He had nothing to offer a woman of genteel status—nothing like what she deserved—and he oughtn’t trifle with her affections, either. He’d uphold his end of their bargain—he couldn’t think of himself as a gentleman if he did not—and then he must remove himself, and pine from afar, and curse, for the thousandth time, the profligacy of his father and other forebears who had left him with little but a distinguished name, which he would again drag through the mud of London gossip when Lillian jilted him.

He wouldn’t add to the insult by making himself a fool.

London held over a hundred registered printers, Leo had discovered. Then there were those who ran their own presses, as Horace Walpole did at Strawberry Hill. Two publishers whom Lillian admired, Sowerby and Curtis, worked from their own premises, Sowerby from a room behind his house where he kept a shop of natural history curiosities, and Curtis from St. George’s Crescent, whence the Botanical Magazine was issued. But they were too busy with their own publications to take on additional work.

And as Lillian had not the means to purchase a press, nor make her own copper-plate engravings, she required a printer. None were willing to take a risk on an unknown female.

But a great many, it turned out, were willing to enter discussions with Mr. Westrop, presumed heir to the Marquess of Waringford.

For this reason, Lillian wore a scowl on her face as they stood in Queen’s Head Passage in the afternoon, with the shops of Paternoster Row behind them, the noise of the City all around them, and the majestic dome of St. Paul’s looming at the end of the alley. Lillian looked very smart in her redingote, the color of a nectarine, with ribbons threading her bonnet and her bag with its precious pages clutched in her kid gloves.

She studied the shop window, lined with books for sale and the occasional broadside. “I’ve heard of this place.”

“The Moor’s bookshop,” Leo said. “One can find the rarest of manuscripts here, as well as the highest quality prints. He is selective in the works he acquires, with an impeccable reputation.”

“He works with the Duchess of Hunsdon and helps supply her antiquarian bookshop.” Lillian anchored her bonnet against the wind. “She helped me procure a copy of Besler’s book on the gardens of Eichst?tt for Uncle’s collection.”

Leo wondered if the duchess’s bookshop was where Lillian had run across that scoundrel Ned Delaval.

“Shall we go in? If you don’t like this one, I’ll find others.”

Spending days with her was playing hell with Leo’s intentions to behave with restraint. He was Odysseus chained to the mast of his mission, but Lillian Gower was a powerful siren’s call. The velvet lappets crossing the bodice of her gown lifted in the breeze, and Leo fought the urge to grasp one and pull her to him, stealing a kiss from those raspberry lips.

He could not forget himself again. It would mean pain for both of them if he did.

She gazed at him with earnest eyes. “I appreciate this, Mr. Westrop. Very much.”

The softness in her tone reeled him closer. “I vowed to find a publisher for your florilegium, and I shall.”

“It is kind of you. Particularly when I know you are engaged with preparations for your expedition.”

She asked frequent questions about his plans, showing real interest, and Leo enjoyed sharing his ideas with her. Very often she mentioned something her parents had done, or packed, that had him revising his mental list. She’d taken him to a shop that supplied her parents and the proprietor, recognizing her, had abandoned his other customers to show Leo the back room where he stored the best equipment.

Pretending he meant to marry Miss Gower was, so far, the cleverest thing Leo had ever done.

It was also the most dangerous to his mortal soul.

Her face was close as he looked down on her. Close enough that he could drop a kiss on her damask cheek. He considered it.

“You might call me Leo, you know.”

He toppled into her eyes, those pools of blue, clear and vast as the sky of a Berkshire summer. “And you would call me Lillian?”

“It seems appropriate for those who are affianced.”

She shook her head. “You and I both know the truth of that.”

So much for his brief fantasy. Leo pushed open the door under the wooden placard advertising the Sign of the Scroll and with, a musical chime, ushered her inside.

The shop was tidy and well-kept. Light filtered through tall windows, motes of dust twirling in the golden shafts. Books piled and spilled over tall wooden shelves, with scrolls of parchment tucked neat as a beehive below. The shopkeeper, Mr. Masoud Karim, was tall, with a dignified bearing. Strands of silver shone in the dark hair showing beneath his turban. He wore a long cotton tunic with loose trousers beneath, attire recalling the traditional dress of his birthplace in Morocco, with comfortable leather slippers enclosing his feet. He nodded politely to Leo but advanced on Lillian with a broad smile.

“Miss Gower. I am delighted that Her Grace the Duchess of Hunsdon referred you to me. I saw the drawings you included with the baronet’s treatise on starry stonewort, printed in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society . Beautiful detail.”

“Thank you. They were only woodblock prints, and I thought my renderings rather rough, but they illustrated my uncle’s points.”

A becoming blush pinkened Lillian’s cheek. She glanced at Leo, and he wondered if the low growl in his mind had emerged from his throat.

“You did not tell me you were previously published,” he said.

“Under the aegis of my uncle only, which has made it difficult to strike out in my own name,” Lillian replied. “That and the sad fact of my femaleness, I think.”

“That did not stop Elizabeth Blackwell from publishing her Herbal.” Karim nodded toward Lillian’s bag, which she clutched to her like a shield. “May I see?”

“Mrs. Blackwell engraved her copper plates herself,” Lillian murmured. “And then hand-colored them. I am not quite so brave or talented as to attempt intaglio printing myself, though I expect to add the colors at the end.”

“After printing, but before binding,” Mr. Karim agreed, holding out his hand for her leather-bound folio. With some hesitation, Lillian handed it over.

Mr. Karim then had the great fortune of being the first man to view Lillian’s completed sketches. Leo envied him the privilege. He had asked to see her work, and she had shown him some pages but not the entire book—did she not trust him?

Or perhaps she did not think Leo able to appropriately judge the quality of her undertaking. The full florilegium was an honor reserved for Mr. Karim himself. The bookseller thumbed through the pages while Lillian held her breath, watching his face.

Leo wondered what he needed to do to win Lillian’s riveted attention. He’d had it when he kissed her, but otherwise? He wanted to know where he stood with her.

“This is the most splendid depiction of the Cypripedioideae that I have seen, Miss Gower.”

“You know your orchids,” she breathed.

Karim chuckled. “I studied up only to impress you, after the duchess mentioned your work to me. Have you thought of examining the entire Orchidaceae?”

“That would be an immense undertaking. A life’s work. I would adore it,” Lillian said, and a note of sadness, or hesitation, threaded her honey voice. She gave the lappets of her redingote a nervous twist. “To be honest, I thought of beginning only with the calceolus, but my uncle encouraged me to branch out further. It is only a small book, I know, but I did not undertake the printing myself as I…I am not confident I would do it up right.”

This hesitation did not at all match the young woman Leo knew her to be, who went toe to toe with him in their discussions and didn’t back down from a challenge. He would have said, before they stepped into this shop, that Lillian Gower had a backbone of tempered steel. Whence this doubt in her own abilities, particularly concerning something he knew she loved?

He wanted to draw her aside and question her, but now was not the place. And he wasn’t certain he had the right.

But didn’t he have the right, as someone who cared for her?

Yes, he was coming to care for her. Very much. And it had to do with far more than the wildflower look of her, or her luscious shape, or the way that, even when she was standing in perfect innocence conversing with a shop owner, he wanted to kiss her.

“I can engrave the copper plates,” Karim said confidently. “My son is learning a new technique called chromolithography, which would add the colors in layers, but I believe the superior approach would be to do engravings and have you color the pages yourself, Miss Gower. This is exquisite work.”

The pink circled her collarbones and moved lower. “Thank you.”

“I said as much myself,” Leo put in, but she did not spare an admiring glance for him.

Soon the matter was settled with great satisfaction on both sides: Mr. Karim would proceed with the engravings and printing, then return the pages to Lillian for coloring, and he would then send the whole out for binding. Lillian handed over a pouch of coins—Leo had offered to help fund the project, but she refused—and once more they stood in Queen’s Head Passage, with Lillian’s scowl transformed to a beatific smile.

Leo held out his arm for her and was gratified when she took it, though Paternoster Row, where they had left his curricle, was only a few steps away.

“Lillian—Miss Gower. You are an exquisite artist. Even I can see that, with my untrained eye. Why have you no faith in your accomplishments?”

She fiddled with those velvety lappets once more. Leo had the strongest urge to draw one end across her skin and see what she would do.

“My accomplishments are not remarkable, in the grand scale of things.”

He frowned in puzzlement. “You know a great deal about botany. You organized your uncle’s library with authority.”

“Authority over a very small realm.” She faced the street. “Will that be your carriage? Your tiger is very dashing in his livery, for all that he is young. Wherever did you find him?”

He recognized she was firmly steering the conversation away from herself. “It is more like he found me. I was kicking about Somerset House one day after a friend in the Society of Antiquaries admitted me to their rooms to use the library. We went to a new restaurant in Maiden Lane, Rules, as my friend had a taste for oysters. I walked home through Covent Garden, and this one insisted on being my link boy to light my way and protect me from thieves.”

He lifted a hand to beckon the boy over. The lad complied straightaway, guiding the marquess’s bay gelding, Atlas, in his traces.

“I wasn’t so certain he wouldn’t cut my pockets himself,” Leo admitted, “but I made it home safe and sound, and apparently, he liked my payment because he was at the kitchen door the next morning looking for any work I could give him. I believe he likes being my tiger best. How old are you, Augustus? The lady wants to know.”

“Ten and three years, sir, if me mother is honest, which I believe her to be, sir.” Augustus patted the nose of the horse. “He likes me, sir, which makes me the man for this position, now don’t it?”

Lillian smiled, no doubt at the swagger of this boy referring to himself as a man. “How do you do, Augustus.” She held out her hand for the tiger to help her onto the high step of the curricle.

Leo was pleased to see that she didn’t ignore the lad, as some ladies might a servant, or a boy with clear African roots, or both. Leo vaulted into the seat beside her and took the ribbons, and with pride in a job well done puffing out his striped waistcoat, Augustus clambered to his seat in the back.

Lillian twisted to address the boy. “Do you have family in town, Augustus?”

“Aye that, mum. M’father works at Gun Dock and m’mother at the brewhouse. The others do as they might.”

“How many others?”

“Five brothers and sisters, mum. A good round half dozen, m’mother says.”

“And what do they say about your employment with Mr. Westrop?”

“Don’t bite ’im, don’t cloy the lour, and don’t knuckle to any ill treatment,” Augustus said promptly.

“All excellent advice, I am sure.” She turned to Leo with a smile. “Where are you taking us, Mr. Westrop?”

Leo cleared his throat, touched and a bit ashamed. He’d been guarding his fobs and pockets, not yet convinced his new tiger didn’t mean to rob him. In less than a minute, Lillian had drawn out the boy’s history and laid all fear to rest. A boy whose mother would advise him not to cheat or steal from his employer, nor tolerate abuse, was a boy Leo would choose to trust.

“Our direction is for you to decide, Miss Gower. We might go up Newgate Street and past the prisons, in which Augustus has expressed interest, or we might travel through the Churchyard to Fleet Street and perhaps find a book seller or coffee shop we wish to patronize. Or we might visit Lincoln’s Inn Fields and enjoy the air.”

It was as good as saying he didn’t want to take her home yet, because he wanted the afternoon to spin out as long as possible. Now that printing of her florilegium had been arranged, he had no further excuse to dally in London.

She had no further reason to remain his betrothed.

Augustus leaned forward, eyes wide. “Lincoln’s Inn? ’Sthat where the mumpers and rufflers work? I hear the beggars pretend they’s crippled, then knock you down with their crutch and nip your bung.”

Leo tucked away a smile at the boy’s cant. “Half a century ago I believe you risked your life, or at least your pocketbook, to traverse the square, but since the rails have been put up, it’s quite safe for us to take Miss Gower for a turn or two. A pity Miss Giles isn’t with us today. There are some impressive buildings about the square that she could admire.”

“Aunt Giles wanted her at home to take calls. She believes she can yet interest Hester in the social round. I ought to be there to support her.” Lillian tucked her lower lip beneath her teeth, fingers worrying at her empty bag. “You needn’t spend your time in frivolities with me, Mr. Westrop. I understand you have matters to attend to.”

There was nothing he wanted more than to spend time with Lillian. Wasn’t that an interesting realization.

“Surely you indulge the occasional impulse toward frivolity,” Leo replied. “I should think you of an age to be properly disposed to all manner of wantonness, play, and complete absurdity.”

“Perhaps that is true of my age, sir. But not me.”

As Leo navigated the snarl of traffic thronging St. Paul’s Churchyard—tradesmen, carters, visitors out to admire the great monument—Lillian leaned over and made a quick transaction with a young costermonger in her distinctive neckerchief and boots, calling out her singsong patter as she cradled a basket on her hip. Lillian straightened holding a twist of paper, which she opened to reveal pickled walnuts. She passed one to Augustus, then to Leo, and with some surprise, he took it.

“That was not a frivolous move?”

“Not at all, for now we have a treat to enjoy on our travels.” She bit into a nut and made a face. “I’ve never had one. Aunt would not approve of simply buying wares off the street, and particularly an indulgence.”

“Ah. So your aunt is the reason you are not frivolous.”

“It is more that my parents—” She took another bite of her walnut. “I do not know how to explain without sounding ungrateful.”

“They do not condone frivolity? You may speak freely with me, Lillian. I am not a teller of tales.”

She nibbled her nut as he steered them up Ludgate Street, then onto Ludgate Hill, passing the busy innyard of the Belle Sauvage and the looming hulk of Fleet Prison. She twisted to glance behind them at the dome of St. Paul’s rising from the end of the street, like the eye of God always upon them, and her elbow brushed Leo’s arm. She did not flinch or pull away at the contact, which he hoped was a signal of deepening trust.

“My parents.” She passed another nut to Augustus, who crunched it eagerly. “Are not very practical people. Or rather, they are extremely sensible about their realm of interests, and have little regard for what lies outside that realm. I am an eminently practical person, so it has often fallen to me to look after things, you might say.”

“I understand that feeling,” Leo murmured.

She regarded him with wide eyes. “Do you?”

“There is Fleet Market, if you require any more fruits and vegetables. Or perhaps corn? I am not very daring, either,” Leo said.

She handed him the last of the pickled walnuts. “You are organizing an archaeological expedition to study a legendary, nay, mythical place that has never before been explored. I can think of little that is more daring.”

He spared a glance at her, though the traffic commanded his attention, Fleet Street being full of coaches, wagons, carts, sedan chairs, and pedestrians crossing where they would. “Using your own funds to finance printing of a treatise about a unique and very beautiful set of plants, for the edification of the masses?”

“Hardly daring,” she scoffed. “Anyone with a pencil and colors, and access to a printing press, can create such a book.”

“But not the contents. That comes from your own expertise, which it may be many others do not share. You ought to take the occasion to celebrate. You could be as known as the next Elizabeth Blackwell.” Leo had never seen her Herbal , but he could ask Lillian if her uncle had the book, and therefore seize an excuse to call upon her one last time before he left.

The last time. A claw of something unfamiliar dug into Leo’s chest.

“As Mr. Karim noted, my treatise is rather on the slender side.” Lillian chewed her thumb and studied the passing shops, a lively assemblage of booksellers, printers, stationers, newspapers, taverns, and coffee houses, one sign advertising Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, rebuilt 1667. “A proper florilegium would have more illustrations on offer, more subjects of study. Mrs. Blackwell’s Herbal has five hundred plates. Perhaps I should not have been so eager to see mine in print. I could have done more.”

“Or you can regard this as well begun, and do as much more as you wish at a later date,” Leo said. “For now, you should revel in your victory.”

“Perhaps.” She was noncommittal in her answer, and he was reluctant to probe her silence. He had no right to know her secrets, and yet, he wanted to. He wanted to know every dimension of her, the veins of light and the veins of dark, the sunny gardens and the shadowed temples.

The man who won, truly won, Lillian Gower would be a lucky devil indeed.

They passed St. Dunstan-in-the-West, with its mechanized figures chiming the hour on the great clock, giants beating out the time with their clubs. He saw his time with her shrinking, shrinking.

What happened next was a blur. A dog darted from the pavement into the traffic thronging the intersection with Fleet Street and Chancery Lane. A cart horse shied and thrashed in its traces, overturning the wagon attached, which crashed into a passing sedan chair and assorted pedestrians. Atlas, the bay gelding, reared with a scream of outrage, and suddenly the curricle tilted in the wrong direction. Leo dropped the ribbons and threw his arms around Lillian, certain that in a moment they would be thrown to the ground and crushed beneath a tangle of wheels, hooves, and feet.

Faster than Leo’s eye could follow, Augustus was on the ground and at the horse’s head, snatching his bridle to steady him. The horse regained his feet, and the curricle righted. The roaring in his ears receded. Leo comprehended that he had clenched Lillian to him, tighter than a prayer, and beneath his arm her heart pounded as swiftly as his own.

“Shh. It’s all right. You’re safe.” Her hair smelled of lemons and apples, earthy and delicious.

“That was—what a tangle.” Her voice shook as she surveyed the chaos, people shouting, dogs barking, horses bellowing and stamping, while people scrambled to right themselves and thieves swarmed the wagon’s fallen wares, carrying away what they could despite the driver’s shouted threats.

Augustus handed the ribbons up, his brown eyes wide with excitement. “Best take him up Chancery Lane, guv, and out of this hubbub. Lor, but we near had a tipup!”

“We would have, without your quick thinking. Thank you, Augustus.”

Leo turned the curricle up Chancery Lane, where congestion was thicker, and the road needed improvement. Here the medieval character of the town was more in evidence, timbered buildings with their overhangs facing smooth edifices of brick. It was a tumultuous place, where the office of a rich solicitor might have a ladybird standing on his stoop, making her own solicitations to passersby. A pub reverberating with Whig rhetoric about freedom and man’s rights might stand beside a coffee house catering to the Tory conservatives clinging to the ancient law and the noblesse oblige of the aristocrat.

The red brick rectangle of Lincoln’s Inn appeared on their left, distinct in its Flemish bond facing and windows dressed in pale stone, and Leo slowed. The arched wooden doors to the courtyard of the Hall were shut tight, so he drove to the gate where the new Stone Buildings had gone up, majestic creamy brick and arched windows. Leo drew them to a halt, and Augustus jumped down to hold Atlas steady while Leo circled the curricle to help Lillian down. She felt firm and warm in his hands, a sure, solid weight in the world.

He wished he didn’t have to let go.

“Leo,” she breathed, staring at the gardens. “Mr. Westrop. This is lovely. Why are we here?”

“Do call me Leo. I need to steady my nerves and thought we could take a turn about the sights before I deliver you home. Come, we will look at the buildings first, then the gardens, and you might rule on which is the most impressive.”

Leaving Augustus with instructions to walk Atlas about the square, as boy and horse were likely safe from tampering inside the enclave of one of London’s oldest and most respected legal schools, Leo led Lillian toward the chapel. It felt natural to match his strides to hers, and she fit beside his body as if the space had been purposefully carved for her, her nose reaching his shoulder. She’d stopped shaking, and her face wore an expression of open wonder as she looked about them.

“Do not tell me you have an affection for this place,” she teased. “Your old barrows and ditches must be far superior works to any place so excessively modern.”

“Certainly. Behold the Stone Building. Scarcely decades old—such newfangledness. The chapel is practically new as well, built in 1620, if that stone is not there to mislead us. Did you know that when John Donne gave a sermon here, such a crowd came to see him that two people died in the crush?”

She shuddered. “I thought he was a love poet. Something about a flea? Or his mistress’s clothes.”

“You read the racy poems, then. He has some properly poetic lines. ‘If ever any beauty I did see, which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee…’”

That was dangerously romantic. It sounded as if he were wooing her.

She appeared not to notice. “Why did you choose this place to stop?”

“I’m fond of it. I considered pursuing the law merely to spend time here. It feels—serene.”

“Is the chapel above us?” she asked with some surprise as he led her through a brick archway into the cool, shadowed corridors of stone.

“So is the ceiling. Look up.”

He held her arm while she craned her neck, and a small gasp escaped her. The sound had the same effect as a breath of air on a small flame. His awareness of her heightened, and he felt extraordinarily pleased to have pleased her. He ought to have learned his lesson about exerting himself to please others, yet Lillian’s delight was as heady as fine wine.

“That’s beautiful. It’s so flowing, like the knots of fabric on a gown, yet made of stone. Remarkable.”

“And below your boots, the bones of the hallowed dead who have made a contribution to this institution. Look.”

She swept her skirts to the side, peering at the quilted pattern of stones under their feet. “It’s a graveyard?”

“Do bones bother you?”

“I was raised by archaeologists, Mr. Westrop.”

“But they do not always deal with human remains.” He paused. “Do you…have plans to see your parents anytime soon?”

“Nothing certain.” She glanced about the cool, quiet interior of the undercroft. “Could this entire building fall on us at any time?”

“Of course not. It’s stood for nearly two centuries, and will likely stand for centuries more. Does this mean I oughtn’t invite you to go digging about in barrows with me? They may turn out to be tombs. The tombs of great kings, full of treasure, but also, very likely, skeletons.”

“You see why I prefer gardens.” She tugged him toward one of the open archways and a patch of green beyond. “Broad, open spaces. Nothing to fall on your head save the occasional bird droppings.”

“Miss Gower, you scandalize me.”

“Well, it is a danger. Are these the gardens you promised?”

“There’s a lovely walk this way, in the North Gardens. Nothing but gravel that way, in New Square, where the obelisk stands. And beyond are the Fields, which I hear are home to—what did he call them? Mumpers and rufflers? Thieves and pickpockets?”

“And beggars who are feigning their wounds, I hear.” A smile puckered her lips at the corner, flashing those delicious dimples. “He is delightful, Lee—Mr. Westrop. What will you do with him while you are gone?”

“Pay him a retainer to resume my service when I return, I suppose. I expect to be gone the summer.”

She was quiet at this, but followed as he led them up a tree-lined path through what had once been the kitchen gardens of the Inns. Another thing to Lillian’s credit: she did not disdain walking. A healthy glow came to her cheeks at the exertion, but she made no complaint, merely kept pace with him, nodding at the other passersby who greeted them, students and teachers of the court going about their business, all of them, Leo didn’t doubt, envying him his fair companion.

He tried to remember why he had never considered finding a companion for his life. Why he had been so certain he was not made for marriage. Happy marriages seemed rare, it was true, so was that why he had put the thought so far from his mind? Yet other people achieved such things in life. A home. A family. The company of a charming and sensible woman. Children who inherited their mother’s dimples and blue eyes.

He caught Lillian’s quick glance up at him, though she looked away at once. “What did you mean when you said you understood?” she asked shyly. “About my parents, that is.”

“Ah.” He swallowed the taste of pickled walnut, threatening to rise in his gorge. All at once the happy dream he’d begun spinning grew transparent and wafted away like the illusion it was. This was why , he reminded himself. This was the reason that fancies of happy husband hood and lifelong companionship were not for him.