He took it with both hands, his thumb feeling the warmth where her breasts had pressed against the leather. He opened the book with care—rough handling could split the old binding apart—and stared at the title page. Had she guessed? How?
“The Jew of Malta. I found it an hour or so ago.” He nodded, his cool fingertips smoothing the musty pages. Then he read the date, but he hadn’t the heart to tell her. He looked up from the worn pages to her bright eyes. “It’s old,” she went on. “Probably a nineteenth-century forgery and worth something because of that, but the date says 1587 and I think that’s wrong.”
“It is. It came out in 1589.” He should have bitten off his own tongue.
Her eyes widened. “You have studied him then?”
“My namesake? Why not? Yes, I know all about Kit Marlowe.” He sighed. The past hovered like a crouching animal. He knew everything.
She perched on the edge of the oak table, watching him. “I read him some in college. I majored in English before I went on to train as a librarian. Marlowe fascinated me. So talented and mysterious. Who was he? Did he write Shakespeare? What really happened in the tavern at Deptford? It’s as good as a soap opera.”
“Will Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Kit Marlowe wrote Marlowe. And there’s nothing fine about betrayal and treachery.”
She started at his sharp words. “You have studied him then.”
He forced his shoulders into a shrug. “You could say so.”
She wasn’t finished. “It just seems like a mystery novel. So young and talented and dying in a brawl and such an odd injury….” She chopped her sentence off and bit her lip, looking at his face, then turning scarlet. “I’m sorry that was tactless.”
He laid the book on the dusty tabletop and took her shoulders in his hands. “Dixie,” he whispered, “it doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”
Her teeth worried her lower lip. “I didn’t think. I was just running on. It’s such a coincidence.” She paused, her face tight with remorse. “I’m so tactless. I just…”
“Forget it. People have called me a lot worse. The kids in the village call me ‘Pirate’ behind my back. It doesn’t matter.”
“What happened?”
She wasn’t asking about the inn at Deptford. But she was. And she’d never believe the truth. “It happened a long time ago—when I was young and playing dangerously. With one good eye, I have eighty percent of my vision. It’s little more than an inconvenience.”
Her white teeth still pulled at her soft lip. In a minute she’d draw blood. He couldn’t let her. The scent of her blood would drive him crazy. He traced a finger over each curved eyebrow, smoothed her cheeks, tilted her chin, bent his mouth to hers and eased her lips away from her teeth.
Warmth and sweetness. She tasted like honeysuckle nectar on a June night. She curved warm into him like sunshine on marble. Her tongue met his and she moaned like aspen trees sighing in an afternoon breeze. She was everything that life had to offer and he was four hundred years dead. He pulled away gently, brushing his lips on her heated forehead. With her, he almost felt like a man again, and that would be dangerous for both of them.
“If we’re not careful, we’ll forget why we’re here,” he said, stepping back, just a half step.
“Why are we here?” she asked, her eyes glinting as her mouth twitched, her lips still swollen from his kisses.
“Flirt!” he said, still holding one hand but stepping back to arms’ length. “The men in America must be desolate without you.”
She laughed without a trace of amusement. “It wasn’t quite like that.” She pulled back her hand, as if a memory hurt. “Now, what did you want to look for?”
She was right. Keep it casual. He only hoped he could.
“I’m interested in paranormal and magic.” He ignored her rising eyebrows, although his thumbs itched to smooth them. “Anything on witchcraft, magic, sightings, vampires.” He tucked the last in as an afterthought.
“You believe in all that stuff? I thought you were kidding last night.”
“I’m prepared to believe anything I haven’t disproved.”
“Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll look. If you really want me to.” She made no attempt to hide her surprise. But then she never seemed to hide anything. She was open as a rose in summer and just as fragile.
Together they searched the stacks and assembled a small mountain of books on the wide library table. “Quite a collection,” Dixie said, giving the heap an uncertain eye. “You won’t get through it all today.”
“May I presume on your hospitality some other day?”
She shrugged. “Whenever. I’ll be here, or at least in and out. You can’t phone I’m afraid, but the books are yours if you want them. I’m not into that stuff. I’ll get them valued.”
He held out his hand. “Agreed.”
“Shall we settle the deal with a cup of tea?”
He shook his head. He’d only just absorbed the coffee. His body couldn’t handle any more. Not in daylight. “I’ll skip it.”
She left to fix tea, and he found a corner away from the last afternoon sun. In a couple of hours it would be dusk.
“See you tomorrow,” he said as he waved good-bye, a tall lean silhouette in the dusk. Dixie left shortly afterwards, leaving all the lights on and the shutters open. The house shone like a beacon across the village green, but it should keep unwanted visitors away. She planned a long shower to clear the grime and dust away, and then a nice quiet supper at the Barley Mow. And she’d make a point of not thinking about how Christopher kissed.
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