Gabriel nodded. Would his life feel different if the footman had said, Good Evening, my lord? He thought not.
There was a light showing under the library door, so he walked in. Rafe's library was of the ancient, tired, and slightly moldering type. The carpets were almost as threadworn as Rafe's own clothing. The books were expiring slowly into powdery heaps of dust that marked the fingers and collected in the corners of the bookshelves. There wasn't much of luxury about the room, and yet it spoke of years of Holbrook dukes, reading or not reading, sitting here smoking pipes and cheroots until the ceilings were blackened and the books smelled vaguely like wood fires.
She was seated at the library table, her head bent over a sheet of foolscap. His heart hiccuped. He'd made a promise to himself to stay away from this enticing and proper young lady. She was too cool, too out of reach, and entirely too beautiful for him.
"It's late, Miss Pythian-Adams," he said, breaking all his own promises.
She looked up and rubbed her eyes unself-consciously, as if she were a mere girl of five or six. Tendrils of bronze hair curled about her neck and temples, fallen from an elegant, winding arrangement on her head.
"I must send the actress taking the part of Mrs. Loveit her role. She seems quite anxious about it. Rafe gave me a note from her today."
"Loretta wrote Rafe a note?" Gabe asked without thinking.
Miss Pythian-Adams didn't miss anything. She glanced up at him, and then said: "Yes, Miss Hawes inquired about the play, so Rafe passed the letter on to me."
Gabe stared at her face. She had the chiseled perfection of a saint, the kind of clear beauty that one saw in statues—not lush Italian statues, but the ascetic northern saints. He'd forgotten that she knew that Loretta had once been his mistress.
"May I help with the copying?" he said, sitting down without further ceremony. He was a degenerate man who was bringing a former mistress to the house of a nobleman. It could hardly be worse.
"Actually, I would be grateful for the help," she said, with a little, exhausted sigh.
"You read the lines, and I'll write them down."
She read, and he copied all the impertinent, silly lines of the hysterical Mrs. Loveit.
"He shall no more find me the loving fool," Miss Pythian-Adams said.
Gabe looked up to find that her eyes were on his face. Her mouth was set in a line of deliberate composure as if she would—she would what? Laugh?
"She was never my loving fool," Gabe said conversationally, blotting the foolscap. "We had a brief, if foolish, encounter. And I truly did knock her down with my coach, Miss Pythian-Adams."
"I have no need of these details, Mr. Spenser. Surely I would never ask you to clarify."
"I think those eyes of yours see many human foibles, do they not?"
"These are the only eyes I have, and there are certainly many foibles to be seen," Miss Pythian-Adams said with some dignity.
Gabe couldn't help it. He liked baiting her, this self-contained gentlewoman. "And what do you think of my foibles?"
She looked like a cat in the light of the candles on the table. "I think…" She closed her book. "I think you are a beautiful man, Mr. Spenser."
His mouth fell open.
"I expect that you use your beauty to make your way into delightful situations. If I understand the matter correctly, Miss Hawes is unlikely to have suffered by your attentions, be they ever so brief."
Gabe felt as if he had been struck to the ground by a large rock.
Miss Pythian-Adams composedly opened her book and read the line again: "He shall no more find me the loving fool he has done."
Gabe hadn't the faintest intention of picking up his pen.
"I regret if I overset you with my assessment," she said. "I greatly prefer clarity in conversation to social niceties."
"I am honored," Gabe murmured. He'd been a fool again. Miss Pythian-Adams's little smile revealed an original and interesting personality, and had nothing at all to do with being a member of polite society. "I have underestimated you."
"I was not aware that you were interested enough to make an assessment."
The little smile that curled on Gabriel Spenser's mouth was, if he but knew it, very close to that smile he admired but a moment before.
"I think one could describe my feelings as close to fascination."
"Indeed," she said, closing her book again. "In that case, perhaps I should retire, Mr. Spenser."
"We are unchaperoned."
"Yes." Unhurriedly, she rose. And he rose. "There is nothing fascinating about me," she said.
Gabe felt slow-witted around her, but even a fool can understand an invitation of that nature when it is proffered. He walked toward her, seeing her green eyes widen, but didn't manage to enumerate her fascinations before he had her in his arms.
She melted against him with all the urgency of Mrs. Loveit, and he pulled her to him with all the flair of Dorimant himself. But that kiss… a kiss that went on far too long, that took them to a sofa in the corner, that tousled his hair and turned her knees to jelly… that was a kiss which had nothing of Loveit or Dorimant in it.
But it had much in it of Gabriel Spenser, Doctor of Divinity, father of Mary, uncertain and desirous. And much in it of Miss Gillian Pythian-Adams, who thought never to meet a man who wasn't a fool.
She wasn't so much a fool that she could not admit her own mistakes.
Chapter 27
In Which Imogen Learns Something About Marriage Beds… and Other Beds
"I can't believe it," Imogen kept saying, shaking with laughter. "I just can't believe it."
"Mmmmm," Rafe said, hauling her out of the theater.
She half ran, half trotted after him, small specks of cream spinning from her garments.
"I can't go home like this!" she said, laughing.
"Nor get into my hackney like that either," said the driver, who was standing before his coach. "That's pie, that is."
Rafe fished out a sovereign.
The driver took it, but still shook his head. " 'Twill ruin my seats. Stink up the place, I shouldn't wonder. There's milk in that. Milk rots."
Rafe gave him another coin. "I'll take you as far as the Horse and Groom," the man said begrudgingly. "I'll not be taking you all the way past Silchester. You can wash at the pump in the back."
Imogen clung to his arm as they waited for the grumbling driver to spread out a horse blanket. Imogen had taken the brunt of the pie: it had slid down her left shoulder.
Rafe climbed in and then held out his arms. "You'll have to sit on my lap," he said.
Imogen hesitated for a moment and then climbed in. Of course, she would sit in his lap. Of course, he would visit her room later that night. It felt as inevitable, and right, and delicious as anything in her life.
A moment later she was nestled on his knees. He didn't say anything, so she said, "Where is the Horse and Groom?"
"I don't know."
"I've never washed at a pump, have you?" She couldn't stop the feeling of being about to laugh.
"Yes, I have. It will be quite chilly." He paused. "Of course, we could take a room."
"A room!"