She retracted her gaze from his hand and pretended to study the sheets on the secrétaire some more. They’d spoken on the telephone two days ago. She’d informed him that she’d decided to use a calligraphist to hand-letter the invitation, and he’d said he’d bring her some samples from a calligraphist he knew.
“I think it’s superb,” she said. She wrote a very fine hand herself, but the calligraphist was an artist. “Is it the work of a man or a woman?”
“A man.”
A man, was it? “And how do you know him?”
He’d stood by the writing desk while she perused the calligraphist’s samples. Her gaze once again slid across the papers to his hand, laid lightly at the edge of the desk. His cuff link was silver too, but without ornamentation, a rarity for him. And good Lord—she hadn’t noticed this until now—his shirt was not white, but the palest shade of green.
“We share a house.”
“A particular friend of yours?”
“We exchange books from time to time.”
She decided that this was as good a time as any. “Only books. You haven’t exchanged anything more significant?”
His fingers splayed and dug into the rosewood top of the secrétaire. Then he removed his hand altogether. “I beg your pardon?”
Oh, good. He was on the defensive already. She leaned her shoulders back and tilted her face up. Watchful eyes. Compressed lips. And was that a quickened pulse she detected, throbbing the veins of his jugular?
“I know why you had to leave England,” she said, drawing out her words, savoring the power they gave her. “So you need not pretend otherwise.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve always believed that I left England for an adventure abroad. Please enlighten me as to the true reason.”
He was guarded, but not nervous enough. She had a moment of doubt. To counter it, she rose and looked him straight in the eye. “And not because you were discovered doing the unspeakable with an Oxford don?”
She sensed the shock in him. A long pause of silence. He looked down. “It was hushed up. How do you know?”
She smiled a little, almost as much in disappointment as in triumph—at least now her obsession with the drawings would cease. “Nothing is ever completely hushed up. And I have my sources.”
He tilted his face and glanced at her from beneath his lashes. Her heart skipped a beat. It was a beautiful, almost seductive look. “Is that so?”
“You needn’t worry,” she said, trying to regain her upper hand—not that she’d ever lost it. “I won’t breathe a word to Mr. Somerset. I know how important it is to him to have a reliable staff…and how important it is to you to retain your livelihood.”
“Why, thank you, Miss Bessler.”
She did not fail to notice the sarcasm in his words. Her upper hand seemed not to have properly subdued him. “I shall expect you to conduct yourself with suitable decorum. It would not do to have Mr. Somerset’s reputation besmirched by association.”
“Could you elucidate as to what the proper decorum entails? Do I need to live in complete abstinence, or would you be satisfied with discretion on my part?”
“I wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than absolute discretion,” she said haughtily.
“You’ve any suggestions as to how I am to accomplish that?”
“There are places, are there not, for men such as yourself? Places where everyone allowed entrance has a stake in the discretion of everyone else.”
“I’m sorry to say I gave up those places years ago. The last time I went to one, I caused quite a scene.” He smiled. “Have you ever had two men fight over you, Miss Bessler? It’s not pretty—bleeding noses and dislocated jaws abound.”
“Two men fought over you?”
He flicked a speck of invisible dust from his cuff. “Two drunken fools. I prefer my courtship more civilized.”
She swallowed. She supposed she could see how he might rouse such passions. He was beyond comely. And there was something deeply wicked about him.
“But to return to your point, Miss Bessler, you may rely on me to be discreet. Not only because of my admiration for Mr. Somerset, but also because I’ve a passionate concern for my own hide and no desire to see the inside of a gaol.”
“No, I’d imagine not,” she said, shivering a bit. She’d not thought of the ghastly consequences of a possible prosecution against him.
“And to reciprocate your magnanimity…” He paused, as if considering. Then he smiled, and it was that smile again. “To reciprocate your magnanimity I’ll let Mr. Somerset discover for himself that your maidenhead is as lost as the Ark of the Covenant. I won’t breathe a word.”
She took an involuntary step back. “That is slander.”
“That is derogatory. But truth can never be slander, no matter how derogatory,” he said. “I work for a barrister, I should know.”