‘I’ve put it about that you are here to assess my library collection. It’s quite extensive and it hasn’t been catalogued since my grandfather had it done half a century ago.’
The grin he flashed filled her with satisfaction. She’d thought long and hard about the ruse she’d use to welcome a visiting male into her household. ‘Very nice, Annorah. You painted me with the sheen of a scholar, a bookish sort, which will certainly allay suspicions that I have ulterior motives for your person. You’ve given me a project that requires me to closet myself away with you daily and, best of all, you’ve given me the perfect reason to be seen escorting you about the countryside. No one would expect you to keep your guest all to yourself.’ He winked. ‘I know how country folk work; a newcomer is cause for excitement and must be shared.’
Annorah felt herself blush under his praise. They turned away from the folly and headed back towards the house while he continued.
‘As for us, Annorah, we will not speak of such arrangements again. You and I are to dedicate ourselves to becoming friends. We cannot be bothered with anything as base as a business transaction.’ He wrinkled his nose in a show of humorous distaste that made her laugh.
‘All that aside, though, we must be serious for a moment.’ He turned and faced her, bringing them to a full stop, the house in view over his shoulder, a reminder that when they returned to it the ruse would begin in truth. The point of no return began at the garden’s edge and her body trembled with the knowledge of it.
He took both her hands in his, his grip warm and strong, his gaze sincere. ‘We are about to embark on a wondrous and intimate journey together, Annorah Price-Ellis. I am honoured to share that journey with you. It will change us both. You have no doubt given it much thought, but I must ask one last time—are you ready? Is this what you truly want? You’re not forced to it in any way either implied or explicit?’
This must be what it’s like to stand at the altar and look up into the eyes of the man you love, knowing he feels the same. The thought had come to her out of nowhere and without reason. She knew logically he must be compelled to ask for one last show of consent. She knew, too, that there was nothing about love or marriage or altars behind his request. But that knowledge did nothing to dispel the impression they were taking vows of a sort, pledging themselves to one another, even if only for a short time. After tonight, he would always belong to her, always be with her in a way no other person would. For the rest of her life, she would carry a piece of Nicholas D’Arcy in her soul, as her first and perhaps only true lover.
Annorah nodded, her voice quiet in the still of a summer’s late afternoon. ‘I am ready.’
Nicholas raised her hands to his lips. ‘I am, too.’ He gave her a reassuring smile. Perhaps he’d heard the tremor in her voice. ‘Rest assured, Annorah, I know exactly what you want.’
Chapter Three
She wanted the wedding night, the honeymoon; the pleasure of lovers learning one another for the first time, savouring one another in both body and mind. It was one of the more difficult scenarios to enact. The trick was to create an intimacy that went beyond the physical without exposing oneself to feelings. He dealt in sex, not intimacy, by preference.
Up in his room, Nicholas opened his valise, the one piece of luggage he’d not let the footman assigned to act as his valet unpack. Nicholas surveyed the tools of his trade with a contemplative sigh, laying them out on the dressing table in his room like a surgeon preparing his scalpels and saws: the tiny glass vials of scented oils, the expensive imported sheaths from France made of thinnest lambskin, the silk ribbons, the soft feathers. Often, he used them as much for him as his clients. All were designed with one goal in mind: physical pleasure. They were his insurance that he could please even when he wasn’t all that interested in a woman. With the right woman, though, they could be extraordinary.
There was no question of delivering the physical adventure Annorah sought. The other, the sharing of a mind, would be more difficult. He was a guarded person by nature. Drawing others out had been an early acquired skill of his. It had served double duty as a means of learning others and as a means of protecting himself. When people were busy talking about themselves, they had little time to wonder about him.
Nicholas tucked the items into a bureau drawer, carefully hidden among cravats. Librarians did not carry feathers and ribbons with them. He smiled. A librarian? That was a new one. He’d pretended to be a lot of things before, whatever his clients needed. In the process, he’d become an adept chameleon. In this line of work, a person did a lot of pretending, which wasn’t all bad especially when the fantasy was better than a reality full of debt and worry and even guilt.
There was no place for those feelings here. He pushed those thoughts away and shut the clasp firmly. His mental efforts would be better spent planning his strategy. He would not need these tools this evening. She was not ready in spite of her words to the contrary.
He’d sensed her nervousness from the start, as if she couldn’t believe someone had actually answered her letter. He’d touched her immediately and often after that, bowing over her hand with a kiss, keeping a hand on her at all times as they strolled. She’d been skittish and he’d feared she might change her mind, a prospect he could not afford now that the money had been mentally allocated in his mind by the time he left London.
He understood full well the power of touch to ensure acceptance. In his experience, people were far more likely to do what he wanted if he touched them while asking. By the time they’d returned to the house and he’d garnered her pledge, she’d started to thaw.
Not that she was cold or that she wasn’t pleasantly disposed towards him. He’d seen the race of her pulse when she’d sighted him in the hall. He’d noted the blush on her cheeks in the garden when they’d discussed the iris. She knew very well the way of things. But the codes of decency had been drilled into her head over the years and, as much as she wanted to cast them off ever so briefly, it was proving to be more difficult than she’d likely anticipated. Well, he could certainly help her with that. What he really wanted to know was why? Why had she written the letter?
Nicholas moved to the bed and stretched out his long form, tucking his hands behind his head. He had two hours before dinner and he needed to use them to think. He mapped the evening in his head like a general before battle. Tonight’s arena would be the dinner table. That was easy enough. There were myriad ways to stroke the stem of a goblet, to cup its bowl, to eat one’s food and drink one’s wine that stimulated sexual interest, all the while talking, drawing her out, getting her to relax, to think of him more as a man than a machine who’d been sent to fulfil a need.
His goal tonight was twofold. For her sake, he wanted to dispel any sense of artifice about their association. For his, he wanted to figure out what had driven Annorah to write such a letter. More than that, why had such a letter even been necessary?
A request of this nature was not made idly. He thought of the pistols packed in his bags and ran through the usual reasons. Was this an act of revenge on her part? Would there be people who would resent her decision? It would not be the first time a woman had tried to avoid an unwanted marriage in this way. These arrangements were seldom straightforward.
The letter itself had been unremarkable. He’d studied it line by meagre line on the way here. There had been little to offer in the way of clues. The line about enjoying the countryside had made him laugh at the irony. The word quiet was a bit more insightful. What did it signify? Was she a recluse? Did she actually prefer the solitude of the country, unimaginable as such a concept was? Simple deduction made that an easy scenario to discard. It was hard to imagine a recluse, someone who deliberately shunned the company of others, requiring a conversationalist. Upon arrival, he’d been proven correct. He had to discard that notion even if the logic hadn’t fallen short. She might have been nervous, but she wasn’t a recluse.
Nick considered another option. Had she been forced into seclusion? Was she someone who had been abandoned to anonymity? Someone