Master of Love (5 page)

“People lose their positions over false accusations of thievery.” The note of rebuke in her voice gave the impression that she was thinking of someone in particular. She squared off her book piles with ferocious energy—English scientific treatises in one stack, French poetry in another.

“You are, of course, most correct,” he said gravely. “I do apologize for my poor taste in jest. And so why will you not look at me?”

She paused in her stacking and half turned toward him, eyes down. “I have no desire to appear rude, Lord Rexton, but I think it best that we confine our discussion to matters pertaining directly to the library.”

“I won't sack you for speaking your mind, if that's what has you worried. In fact, I far prefer honesty between us.”

She blushed, although the look she flashed his way held nothing of maidenly coyness. “It's rather beneath you to be fishing for compliments, isn't it?”

“Fishing for compliments? Whatever do you mean, Miss Higginbotham?” His lips curled in satisfaction. This was more secure territory.

“I am sure you are not unaccustomed to women finding themselves distracted by your looks.” She resumed working her way briskly down the table—more Greek tragedies, several stacks of Latin works, and something that looked suspiciously like French erotica before she quickly hid it under an edition of Voltaire. “I simply do not wish to become sidetracked from the important matter for which I am responsible.”

“The sight of me could sidetrack you from your work, my dear? What an intriguing idea.” He kept pace beside her down the table.

“I didn't say that! You do
not
distract me, is what I said.”

His petty side took delight in her narrowed eyes and pursed lips, which showed he was back to annoying her. Her struggle to contain her irritation was vastly more amusing than anything he'd seen at the theater lately, and much preferable to her scared look, which only made him irate with whatever fates plagued her. “But you implied, I think you have to agree,” he practically purred, “that you
could
be distracted by me, if you let yourself.”

She turned fully to face him, and he felt again the sizzle from the snapping fire in her silver-gray eyes. “I'm sure my great-aunt Mildred could find herself distracted by a man with your looks, along with every other female from your scullery maid up to Queen Victoria herself. But somehow we members of the female race must still contrive to go about our daily lives! There! Is that what you want to hear?”

He grinned at her provocation. “Are you by any chance accusing your employer of conceit, Miss Higginbotham?”

She drew a deep breath and went back to thumping at her book piles. “Oh no, my lord. I feel certain an ideal of male virtue such as you could never be guilty of conceit.”

He saw with pleasure he'd been wrong. The nervous tension and vulnerability she radiated were real, but so too was the core of strength to her. She was simply too smart and too determined to let him get to her, despite the cost evident in her stiff back and tense mouth.

He was beginning to quite like his new librarian.

A knock at the library doors startled them both. Graves entered, bearing the coffee tray, his butler's way of saying that if messages were to be passed about coffee and carriages, he was to be in on it.

“Where shall I set the tray, my lord?” His deadpan expression and sepulchral tones—as a boy, Dom had called him Gravestone—communicated Graves's displeasure over the library's being turned so topsy-turvy.

She hurried to make space on the table. “I'm afraid we'll have to stand to take our coffee.” She looked around, with a small grimace, at the piles of books occupying all the chairs. “I seem to have taken over the seating.”

“Not a problem, I assure you,” Dom said. “However, some temporary shelving and worktables to help sort the collection might be in order. Graves can see to it for tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Graves. That would be useful,” she admitted. It was not lost on Dom that she addressed his servant and quite ignored him.

“Certainly, Miss Higginbotham. I shall make arrangements directly.” The butler bowed toward her. “The carriage is being made ready. It will await you in front when you are prepared to leave.”

“Most efficient as always, Graves.” Dom waved him off, surprised to realize he was impatient to be alone again with his new librarian.

The butler merely looked at him and lifted an eyebrow a fraction of an inch as he departed. Damned if Dom cared to know what
that
meant.

“Shall I pour?” she asked stiffly as she stood looking down on the silver and china. He could see no more of her eyes than a half circle of dark lashes against pale cheeks.

“Please,” he replied, suddenly wanting to watch her perform the ritual.

She hesitated a moment, clearly still provoked, before she began to prepare their coffee. “Sugar or cream?” She bestowed on the task the same careful concentration he began to suspect she applied to all her undertakings. He accepted both—although he far preferred his coffee black—simply to prolong the pleasure of watching the delicate bones of her wrists and long fingers move over the tray.

“You seem quite awake now, but I suspect a cup of coffee will help ensure you are fully revived from your slumbers, don't you?” He tried out his most devastating smile as she handed him his cup. She'd have to look at him now, or risk dropping it on the rug.

“Your solicitude is most touching.” Was he mistaken, or did the bite to her tone mask a catch in her breath as their eyes held?

Heartened, he kept on his tack.

“Miss Higginbotham, I'd like to apologize”—he hitched one hip on the table, pushed aside a pile of books, and moved in closer—“for my rude comments at luncheon. They were most uncalled for. I'm afraid I can be quite the idiot sometimes. Not at all the intellectual type, such as yourself.” There—flattery and a rueful grin usually did the trick; he sipped in satisfaction.

All it got him, however, was her tighter mouth and narrowed eyes as she drank and then set down her cup. “I confess I find you rather difficult to fathom, Lord Rexton. I can't tell if you care for these books or not. As regards myself, you're either inappropriately flirtatious or, as you admit, unprovokedly rude. And then you offer apologies. Yet we all know viscounts don't apologize to the help.”

He winced as he placed his own cup on a pile of German philosophy. The coffee was ruined anyway. “I see you're not quick to accept an apology, nor to forget an ill-considered phrase.” Time to turn the charm on full. He hadn't spent a lifetime having the lessons of a lothario drilled into him to be defeated by the pique of an impoverished book dealer with her back up. “What if I promise to be on my best behavior from now on?” He tilted his head to the side, gave her a lopsided grin, and leaned forward to gather both her hands in his for a warm squeeze.

A startled breath expanded the neckline of her gown most nicely. This was not a woman accustomed to being charmed. Even so, she didn't give in easily.

“If I may be so bold, I'm not sure that promise translates into much. I'm informed you have a rather notorious reputation.” Although her words were tart, there was a gratifying breathiness to them and she was slow to pull her hands away.

“
Reputations
”—he said slowly, struggling to rein in his bitterness—“as you perhaps have cause to know, are sometimes unfairly exaggerated.” He dropped her fingertips with a last caress, feeling her chapped and roughened skin. This past winter had been hard on her, in more ways than one.

Her brow furrowed, but before that damn compassion—or worse, pity—could come back into her smoky eyes, his demons made him drawl, “Of course, sometimes they're quite deserved.”

Protected again by her tightened mouth, he steered them back to safer ground. “You had some questions for me, Miss Higginbotham?” he asked innocently.

She abruptly swept past him, back toward the open trunks. “Yes, my lord, if we've settled all that, there are some matters pertaining to the collection we need to discuss.”

They hadn't settled anything, but he rose to follow her, suppressing a smile. She, too, was done with personal talk, diving back into the work at hand and retreating behind the security of her own mask. It was her way of dealing with her nervousness around him, he could tell, as well as communicating her displeasure, untrustworthy scoundrel that she took him to be.

She paced over to a work space burdened with open ledgers and sheets of paper covered in lists. “What exactly is your interest in this library?” she asked briskly.

Back to dangerous territory. He'd told no one about his secret passion for books, although he knew Uncle George and his sister had their suspicions. Now here was his prickly chit of a librarian, just up and asking. He tried for deflection. “The Avery family has had a long history of support for scholarly endeavor, even before my father established his fame as a philosopher. Besides our ongoing patronage of the British Philosophical Society, I sponsor Trinity's philosophy tutors, whom you met at luncheon today, and in particular Mr. Thompson. He's a bright young man, but his parents died, leaving him impoverished and without any particular connections; I've been talking with the Board of Governors at Trinity and hope we can get him elected fellow and tutor there next year. Danvers pays them all a small quarterly stipend; we provide lodgings at Rexton House when they come down to London and underwrite their costs for research travel, such as attending the Edinburgh conference.”

“All most admirable, but not quite to the point, I'm afraid,” she said, tapping one foot. “What I'm after is a better understanding of how you intend to use these books. It would help in my organization of the collection.”

So much for deflection. “What exactly would you like to know?” he asked carefully.

“How often do you plan to consult the books, and are there certain tomes in particular you want easily accessible? Do you enjoy reading, my lord?” Her puckered brow took on the air of real puzzlement.

“You sound skeptical of that possibility, Miss Higginbotham.”

“Not at all,” she said too brightly. “I would read all day if I had the leisure, but I'm an odd bird in that regard. Most noblemen maintain a library simply because it's expected of their station. Few read much at all.”

It was his great secret. He felt a sweat break out under his collar, the childhood anxiety start to churn his stomach, at the truth that he wanted only to spend his time in the library, reading and writing philosophy. He'd have given his right arm to have been allowed that path in life. Such had not been his fate. From earliest age, his father had viciously mocked Dom's interest in study and dismissed him as his mother's golden-boy Cupid. When he'd tried to be taken seriously as a scholar at the University of Cambridge, he'd soon learned it wasn't only his father and the childhood tutors the man had hired who found the idea of him as a dedicated student absurd. The faculty at Cambridge had heard the gossip and ignored him on arrival, laughing that it'd be a waste of their time to educate a lordling whose talents so obviously lay in the bedroom. He'd thought to show them all, but his first philosophy essay on Plato only got him hauled before the dean on charges of plagiarism—they insisted he couldn't have written anything so original and learned himself.

An empty-headed pretty boy was all he'd ever been allowed to be.

The way this slip of a woman Callista dared make public her love of learning filled him with envy and sorely provoked his old demons of shame. He'd buried his true self behind the Master of Love lie, in order to pursue his real interests in concealment. But now here
she
was, dangling her unusual intellectual proclivities for all to see.

Walpole's story at table about the young-buck lord who'd fancied himself Plato had almost made him lose his lunch, although at least that poor bastard's father had helped him. If Dom's secret ever got out, if such were ever to happen to
him
—laughed off the lectern, ridiculed by all—it would be his worst nightmare.

The secret life he'd crafted must never come to light.

He stalled. “Are you always such a bookish sort and always so serious—no laughter, no teasing?”

She considered him patiently. He was still avoiding her question of course, redirecting it back on her, and in a less-than-flattering light. Her shoulders rolled back, as if accepting the burden. “Yes, I suppose I am. If you wish, my lord, I shall endeavor to lighten my demeanor.”

He stared at her grave countenance before barking with laughter. “Are you teasing me now, my dear Miss Higginbotham? Is that the hint of a smile curling those enchanting lips of yours?” He reached out to trace their luscious curve, but she batted away his hand as a blush bloomed crimson across her cheeks. “You could give Graves a run for his money in a straight-face competition.”

Flirtatious banter it was going to have to be. This Callista was too delightful to resist. He knew he could count on her never letting her guard down to prevent any of his flirtation from proceeding beyond the harmless. Nor, he told himself, would he actually fall so low as to seduce her. So surely a little friendly flirting was harmless? It was, after all, what he did best, what society expected of him, and what he'd long ago perfected.

He had a sudden sense she might be just what he needed—and far more than he deserved.

She recovered her composure by picking up one of her ledger books to hide her blush as she bent studiously over its pages. “There is another problem. I have made a rough preliminary count”—she tapped a quill against the open ledger without looking up—“and worked some calculations. Even if we cull all the doubles from the collection and tightly fill the shelves, there is not nearly enough room in the library for all the new volumes.”