“All you care for, that is.”
His cheeks got so hot, they stung. “My work is my passion. I treasure this”—he gestured to the tools, the watch parts, spread across the desk—“more than, well…more than any…” More than any wench. More than I could any woman except you, I’m coming to suspect.
But that didn’t sound right at all. And she’d never believe him anyway.
Raine dropped her head, laughing softly. “I’m sorry. I’m being unkind. Teasing you when I should not dare to.”
Christian slumped back in his chair, uncertain where she was going with this. Women seldom admitted being unkind, especially when they were being unkind. “You are?”
“I don’t often get to converse in this manner.” She folded her arms along the desk and rested her chin atop them, giving him a candid perusal typically only circulated inside a bedchamber. “You see, clever conversation isn’t expected of a humble housemaid, isn’t requested or required. Just because I’m passive by necessity doesn’t mean I am in life.” Her lids fluttered with a sigh that almost had him reaching for her, which would be a mistake. He wanted to be her friend first. Needed to be her friend first. There was a reticence about her he feared had come from the debacle that had sent her fleeing from Tavistock House.
But Christian knew one thing. If he found out his cousin, a man he hadn’t talked to in ten years and barely knew, had touched Raine Mowbray against her will, he would kill him.
Calming himself, he picked up a winding wheel and flipped it between his fingers, better to have something to do with his hands than placing them on her person. “You can talk to me as I adore clever banter. I’ll not require but certainly request.”
Her gaze danced away from his. “I miss those conversations. I miss engaging my brain. My former employer, Countess Tavistock, let me attend lessons with her governess from the time I was in leading strings. Later, I acted as an informal tutor to her children in certain subjects. My education is lacking for a peer but advanced for a maid. Languages, reading, came easily.” Lost in thought, she chewed on her bottom lip, increasing his enchantment and his physical discomfort. “I think…I’m finding it easy to talk to you, which should not be. Or rather, doesn’t need to be for me to assist with your translations.”
He slid his hand across the desk, unable to check the impulse. His heart had begun to thump, images of what he’d like to share with her—mind, body, soul—flooding him.
She was watching, wide-eyed but accepting, about to let him touch her.
“Kit, have I found the most unbelievable—” Penny burst into the room, took one look at the intimate scene, and bumped back against the door. “Sorry. I’ve interrupted.”
“Kit,” she mouthed with a grin that lit Christian up inside. Then she flipped one of the five watches on the desk over and viewed the time. “Oh, goodness, I have to go.” Making a note on the letter to mark her place, she collected her papers in a tidy pile and laid the quill pen on top. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Same time. I don’t think it will take me more than three days, maybe four, to translate them. There are a few words I’m not sure of, colloquial speech, but the duchess has a German-language text in her materials for the children’s lessons which may help.”
Christian was out of his armchair like a shot and heading to the stack of books by the window. He knew Penny was watching the scene unfurl with undisguised interest, but Christian couldn’t worry about that and deliver Jane Austen. A bit winded from his effort, he intercepted Raine at the door. “You forgot this,” he murmured and pushed the volume into her hand. She wasn’t wearing gloves, and neither was he, and his thumb brushed her wrist, a desperate, exhilarating feeling flowing up his arm and into his chest. And settling. “Please,” he added when he’d never begged a woman for anything in his life. “We had a deal, remember?”
Her shoulder lifted, that ridiculous cap on her head bobbing as if she was going to refuse when her fingers closed gently around the book. Then she left him standing there, the sensation of touching her bare skin engraved on his senses like his name was engraved on his watches.
Penny stepped behind him, following his gaze down the deserted hallway, the only thing remaining Raine’s teasing scent. That, and the images racing like feral dogs through his mind. Some of them lewd, he’d admit.
How soon could he make that reality, he wondered?
“That gorgeous creature is our bluestocking?” Penny asked in dazed incredulity. “Remind me to consider the brainy ones in the future.”
“My bluestocking,” Christian corrected.
Penny jammed his broad shoulder against the doorjamb. “So that’s the way of it? Soft heart like yours, I knew it was coming at some point.” He sighed, the sound genuinely mournful. “Well, now we’re doomed.”
Christian looked away before his face betrayed him. His severe upbringing and everything he’d had to do to succeed had beaten any sense of benevolence out of him.
He didn’t have a soft heart. A generous heart.
Slightly more generous than Penny’s perhaps.
But for the girl on the veranda, he was willing to expose his—even if he lost it in the process.
Chapter 3
Christian was waiting for her the next morning, lounging in the doorway of the duke’s study like a panther stalking his prey. Teacup in hand, he took a leisurely sip and let his gaze roam the length of her and back. His calculated study was the most erotic thing she’d ever experienced—and all without being touched. She kept her expression placid, she hoped, as her chest flushed beneath starched cotton.
My, what would being kissed by the man, which she’d spent half the night contemplating, be like if his straightforward but pointed scrutiny scorched?
Most likely, it would be a disappointment, as the two careless kisses Raine had experienced to date had been.
“Are we ready to proceed with the project?” She halted before him, amazed her voice sounded steady with such wild anticipation seizing her. A stunned breath struck as she looked into his eyes and understood she felt much more than she should have. This was dreadful, an attraction between them a breach of an elemental tenet of servitude. A domestic did not, could not, foster feelings for a guest. A guest in a ducal home. A man notorious enough to be written about in the gossip sheets. A man known for his profligate lifestyle and his magnificent timepieces. A man well above her station.
A man who would break her heart into a thousand pieces if she let him.
He raised a dark eyebrow and sipped from his teacup. “Are you done?” he asked and turned to move into the study.
She tilted her head in question. “Done?”
“Your face, just then, was like one of my watches when I crack open the casing. A lot of moving parts.” His deep voice drew her into the room, where he added with a cunning look thrown over his shoulder, “I apprenticed with a very brilliant horologist who once told me, deliberation can arrest innovation.”
She settled in the armchair before the desk, her stack of translation materials where she’d left them the day before. Christian’s tools were perfectly placed, as well. A precise row, an exact arrangement from largest to smallest. Interesting. A conscientious man with the things he cared for. “Go with your gut. Is that what you were supposed to take from that charming bit of horological wisdom? For a man, I’m certain that’s excellent advice. Women are not often afforded the opportunity to rise to such a challenge, Mister Bainbridge.”