As an Earl Desires (15 page)

 

Damn him! She'd known he was a threat, had
begun to hope he wasn't. But her fears had been
justified.

She'd run from the house without a shawl or
cloak. It hadn't seemed that cold outside, only cool in the
autumn air, but she was shivering as she sat huddled in a distant
corner of the garden. Hidden away…just as she'd done at
the children's home when the teacher there had ridiculed her
because the marks were unfamiliar. Letters he'd called them.
They could have been someone's idea of an odd painting for
all she knew. She couldn't decipher them. No matter how long
she stared at them, they made no sense. Scribble. Black and
hideous.

“Camilla?”

Ah, damnation, how had he found her? She thought
she'd come far enough into the gardens that he wouldn't
follow.

“Go away.”

“I can't.”

He knelt beside her.

“Please, I'm fine. I simply grew tired
of walking. I'll return to the house soon.”

“You're not fine. You're
trembling.”

He removed his jacket and placed it around her
shoulders. The warmth was luxurious, and his scent surrounded her.
She'd always taken such delight in the way he smelled. But
she could find no comfort in his nearness now. He wasn't
stupid enough to believe any of her earlier babblings, and well she
knew it.

“Camilla—”

“He called me dim-witted,
ignorant.”

“Who did?”

“The teacher who taught those of us at the
children's home. ‘Read!' he commanded.
‘Read!' How could I when I'd never held a book.
Because I was eight, he thought I should know how. He was the
ignorant one, to think knowledge came with age, rather than
experience.”

“You're not ignorant,
Camilla.”

“I saw the look on your face, saw the disgust
in your eyes—”

“Because you were being dishonest with me,
not because you couldn't read.” He
grabbed her shoulders and jerked her around so she was forced to
face him. She saw no disgust now. She saw something far worse.

“Don't you dare pity me,” she
hissed.

Slowly he shook his head. “Admiration is not
pity.”

She released a brittle laugh. “Do you think
you can fool me? Do you think I don't see the
truth?”

“No, I don't believe that you
do.” Bracketing her face with his hands, he held her steady,
leveling his face with hers, holding her pinned in place with the
steadfastness of his gaze. “Drop the damned barriers that you
use to protect yourself and look into my eyes. Truly look into my
eyes, and see what I see when I look at you.

“A woman whom I trust to advise me on matters
of which I am totally ignorant. A woman who has the ear of the
Prince of Wales, a man who will one day be king. A woman who is
charitable in nature, but wishes for no one to know, so she
receives no credit for her good works. A woman who pretends to be
hard and callous, because she has the ability to care so much but
has been hurt so often that she shields herself from the
world…and from me.”

“You're a teacher!”

He stroked his thumbs across her cheeks.
“Then let me teach you.”

Tears blurred her vision, threatened to choke her
as they gathered in her throat. “So you can ridicule me? Lose
all respect for me?”

“I will only lose respect for you if you pass
up the opportunity that I'm offering you. I can teach you to
read. You are one of the smartest women I know. And I would never
ridicule anyone who attempted to learn, even if they struggled, I
would respect their efforts.”

“What if I can't learn to read? What if
I am truly stupid?” It had always been her worst fear.

He gave her a warm, caring smile. “If I
believed that for even a moment, I would have never challenged you
in the study. I would have pretended that you'd picked up the
right letter. I would have let you hold on to your illusion. I
believe in you, Camilla, even if you don't believe in
yourself. All I'm asking is that you believe in me and my
abilities to teach.”

She turned away because it hurt so much to look
into his eyes. She'd never had such faith directed her way.
What if she disappointed him or caused him to doubt himself? If she
hurt him?

“Trust me, Camilla.”

She looked back at him. “I do, Archie. It is
myself that I don't trust. What if I let you down?”

“As long as you give me a chance to teach
you, you won't.”

Sniffing, she nodded. She'd never been so
terri
fied in her entire life. “All right.
I'll let you try, but I don't want anyone to
know.”

“Of course not. It'll be our little
secret. But that means we'll have to celebrate privately once
you've succeeded.”

“I hear no doubt at all in your
voice.”

“Because I have none.”

Then his mouth was on hers as though he could
instill his confidence with the slow, provocative movement of his
lips. He'd taken this whole discovery as though it were
nothing more than an inconvenience, easily dealt with, easily
fixed. But he would soon learn otherwise. What could Archie offer
her that she'd not had before?

Then he deepened the kiss, and she was no longer
thinking of lessons or letters or how exciting it would be to open
a book and have the opportunity to read to him for a change. No,
she was thinking that if he were as skilled at teaching as he was
at kissing, that he might indeed succeed where others had
failed.

The chill of the afternoon gave way to the warmth
of passion, swirling through her as lazily as his tongue swirled
through her mouth. No hurry. Never in a hurry when kissing.

She became vaguely aware of her hair tumbling
around her shoulders, his feral growl as though he'd
accomplished some goal. She thought she should take him to task for
taking advantage of
the moment, but he was
going to teach her to read…

He was going to teach her to read.

She pulled back, aware that they were both
breathing heavily.

“When do we start?” she asked.

“Immediately. I've just given you your
first lesson. The letter O. The shape of a mouth just before it
kisses.”

She laughed. “Be serious.”

“I am. I'm going to teach you as
you've never been taught.”

 

Like naughty children, they sneaked away in the
afternoons to what would have been the children's wing of the
manor if the heir had survived or Camilla hadn't been barren.
The wing contained a room in which she was fairly certain her
husband and those who'd come before him had been initially
taught before they went off to elite schools.

Archie had acted as though he'd found
treasure when he began looking through the books on the shelves.
“These are very elementary books,” he'd said.

“Elementary?” she'd asked.

“Easy reading.”

For someone who knew how to read perhaps. For her
they were indecipherable. Well, except for the letter O. She was
able to point it out, although
doing so would
often distract her because she'd begin to remember the kiss
Archie had given her in the garden. She was fairly certain that
teachers weren't supposed to be intimate with their
students.

But it was so very hard for her not to imagine that
intimacy when Archie's love of learning was so apparent
whenever they came to this room. She was beginning to understand
why he was as curious as he was, why he asked so many questions and
studied everything he saw. He simply loved learning, and more, he
loved sharing what he knew.

“Today, I want you to read a sentence to
me,” he said, getting up from behind the desk where she
assumed the tutor would have sat.

“I didn't think you'd taught me
all the letters yet,” she reminded him, her stomach
tightening with dread that she'd fail her first test.

“I haven't.” He sat beside her.
“But all the letters I've taught you are in this
sentence. All you have to do is make the sound of the letter, and
you can read the word.”

He set a piece of paper in front of her and
pointed. “Here's the first word.”

She studied where he was pointing. He'd
taught her a few simple words, one-letter, two-letter words. How to
tell when a word began and ended by the space surrounding it.

She cleared her throat. “A.”

He moved his finger over to the next word. Three
letters. A challenge to be sure.

“First tell me what the letters are,”
he ordered.

“C-A-T.”

“Very good. Now sound them out.”

She did so—keeping her thoughts a
secret—until a word began to form that she dared to say
aloud. “Cat?”

He grinned, leaned back, and crossed his arms over
his chest. “Exactly right. Move on.”

She placed her finger under the next word since he
apparently had no plans to do so. “Had.”

She moved her finger to the next one. Easy.
“A.”

She pressed her finger beneath the final word.
Wrinkled her brow and shook her head. “I don't
know.”

“What do you think it is?”

She shoved the paper away. “What I think it
is doesn't matter. It's obviously wrong as it makes no
sense.”

“Tell me what you think it is.”

“You'll laugh.”

“I won't.”

But he would. He placed his hand over hers and
squeezed. “Have I laughed once since I've begun
teaching you?”

“No.”

“Then why would I laugh now?”

“Because I don't know what it
says.”

“Tell me what you
think
it says.”

She glared at him. “A cat had a
hat.”

He grinned broadly. “That's exactly
right.”

“It can't be, Archie. It makes no
sense. Cats don't wear hats.”

“Sometimes sentences don't make
sense.” He placed his elbow on the table, his chin on his
palm, and studied her as though she made no more sense than the
sentence she'd just read.

The sentence she'd just read.

“Oh, my word.” A bubble of unexpected
laughter escaped. “Did I read it correctly?”

“You tell me.”

“Letters don't lie, do they,
Archie?”

“Not outright, no. Sometimes they try and
trick us by not sounding as they should, but we'll deal with
those later. In this case, the words were as you read
them.”

“Oh!” She jumped up because she
couldn't contain the excitement. She began pacing around the
room. “I did it. I read a sentence. I actually read a
sentence.” Stopping, she held his gaze. “I'm not
stupid, Archie.”

“Of course you're not.”

“Who would have thought?” She rushed to
sit down and slapped her hand on the table. “Give me another
sentence to read.”

 

She was undoubtedly the most intelligent woman
he'd ever known. He wanted to find every person who'd
ever led her to believe she was stupid and pound them all into the
ground with his fists. And now that he'd opened the door, and
she'd walked through it, she was insatiable.

“Man,” he said, sitting at his desk. He
waited while she wrote it out at hers.

The problem he ran across was trying to stop her
from going too fast, from trying to grasp what was still beyond her
reach—those pesky words that didn't sound at all as
they looked. Sachse being one of them. Saxee was closer to its
pronunciation.

“Bake. As in, she will bake a cake,” he
said.

“I think I shall write out cake as well.
It's very much like bake. Will you give me extra credit if I
spell it correctly?” She peered up at him, such hope and
enthusiasm in her eyes that he so did not want to disappoint
her.

Having been so badly wounded before, she was easily
bruised now, so he worked diligently to expand her scope gradually
while shoring up her confidence for the times when words might not
come so easily. He was astounded by her capacity for
memorization.

“Relax, Archie, you gave me the word last
week. I know it is spelled with two different letters that sound
exactly the same. Honestly, if you don't
ever challenge me, how will I move beyond the
simplest of words? I want to be able to read the books in my
library, not the ones here in the children's
library.”

“Why did you purchase books if you
couldn't read?”

She shrugged. “I love the notion of books.
Someone took their thoughts, applied them to paper, and shared them
with the world. And some authors have such extraordinary thoughts.
I'd certainly never think to build a man from discarded parts
of other people. Rather macabre, yet fascinating. Don't you
think?”

“I read
Frankenstein
to you, didn't I?”

A look of wistfulness came over her face. “I
hope to read to you someday.”

Not likely. When she was proficient enough,
she'd no doubt be wed to another. She'd sent out her
invitations to a host of people, and they would soon have a
gathering of people whom they'd be entertaining.

“I look forward to it,” he said to keep
her spirits up so she'd not know the gloomy direction of his
thoughts. “Now, let's continue with the test.
Duke.”

She applied pen to paper, and he strived not to
think about the test that he would have to face in the near future,
giving her up to the very word he'd instructed her to
spell.

H
e'd opened her up to a world that knew
no boundaries. He'd shown her a book that contained every
word ever written along with its meaning. A dictionary. Incredible.
To have in one place every word that had ever existed. And there
were so many.

He was finally beginning to give her more
complicated words to learn, words with more syllables. She loved
them all. The small words, the big ones.

To look at the letters and to know in an instant
the word they'd come together to form. What she'd once
thought was so frustratingly difficult, now seemed so amazingly
easy. All because of Archie. Because of his patience. And he made
learning so enjoyable with his little games and
challenges and his sentences that made no sense but were fun to
read.

Sitting in bed, reading a book she'd taken
from the children's room, she thought she'd rather be
reading his silly sentences than this book about a boy and his dog.
She'd tried reading some book about pride but had gotten no
farther than “It is a truth…” before she'd
become stumped.

She'd skipped over the two words she
didn't know, and finished the sentence. It seemed the story
was about a man searching for a wife. A romance perhaps. Archie
never read those types of stories to her.

She would take it to their lesson tomorrow and they
could read it together. She rather fancied a love story.

Then she began to wonder why she should wait. The
clock had only just struck eleven. She wondered if Archie was still
awake. What harm would come from investigating?

She set aside the book about the dog, retrieved her
night wrapper from the chair, and slipped it on. Then she picked
the pride book off the night table beside her bed. Perhaps it was a
story about a woman with too much pride—such as she. That
notion made her want to read it all the more quickly.

She hurried out of her bedchamber and down the
hallway. A silly idea she'd had to put herself in
one wing and Archie in the other. As though distance
could keep her safe.

She stumbled with the thought. Safe, yes. She liked
safety, but he'd already discovered her secret, so what did
she fear now? Him and the power he could wield over her heart.

It was just a silly story. It would keep until
tomorrow. That was the beauty of books. The story was always there.
One had but to turn back the cover to find it.

Only she wanted to read it now, and she wanted to
let Archie know that even though it had difficult words,
she'd managed to get the gist of the idea. A man wanted a
wife. And as she and Archie were both searching for spouses, they
might enjoy reading the story together.

He'd brought her such joy, and she'd
brought him so little, she felt a need to make it up to him and
quickly. They would soon have guests arriving and she'd be
devoting herself to the Duke of Kingsburrow—Kingsbridge!

Yes, they should begin reading tonight because
they'd need to stop as soon as their guests arrived. She
continued on, picking up her pace, more comfortable with her
decision the farther away from her bedchamber she became.

She fairly flew down the stairs, rounded the
corner, and nearly jumped out of her skin as the butler moved out
of the shadows.

“Smythe, what a surprise! It's rather
late for you to be up and about, isn't it?”

He looked momentarily startled as though he
wasn't quite certain who'd spoken to him. She realized
too late that her voice hadn't carried its usual
tartness.

“I was making the final rounds,” he
finally said.

“And you're doing it splendidly. Do you
know if his lordship is in his chambers?”

“Yes, madam, I believe he is.”

“Jolly good. Back to your rounds, but
don't stay up too late. You need your rest.” And he
certainly didn't need to see her coming back from the
earl's bedchamber in the early hours of the morning. The
thickness of the book led her to believe that they would be reading
for quite some time.

The house was beastly large. It had never bothered
her before, but Archie might as well be on the other side of the
world. She was quite out of breath and ready to sit down by the
time she reached his bedchamber door. She considered knocking but
didn't want to wake him if he were asleep. However, if he was
in the sitting area before the fireplace, then she would join
him.

She opened the door a crack and was immediately
greeted by light. Ah, so he wasn't asleep obviously. She
swept into the room. “Archie, I was
wondering—”

And froze.

He came to a halt at the same time. He'd been
striding out of the dressing room and judging by the dampness of
his hair, she assumed he'd only recently finished
bathing.

And had yet to put on any clothing.

He was magnificent, standing there, facing her,
apparently as stunned to see her as she was to see him. She'd
viewed his chest before, but the rest of him…

My word
.

She didn't think she'd spoken her
thoughts aloud, but he suddenly came to life like a puppet whose
strings had been yanked. He crossed over to the bed, grabbed his
dressing gown, and slipped it on as though he had until dawn to do
so. Not until he'd covered himself and secured the sash did
he speak. “Camilla, I'd not expected to see you in
here.”

“I'd not expected to see you
either.” She sounded as though her voice came from the bottom
of a well, and only then, did she realize that she'd ceased
to breathe.

He angled his head. “Which begs the question,
Countess. Whom did you think to find in my bedchamber?”

“You, of course. I simply meant that
I'd not expected to see…all of you.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned
casually against his bedpost. “Why are
you here, Camilla?”

“I was reading”—she'd never
thought to say that about herself—” reading,
Archie.”

She stepped farther into the room. “But I was
having a time of it, not knowing all the words, and thought perhaps
you could help me with the difficult ones.”

He dipped his gaze to the book she held in her
trembling hands. When had they begun to shake?

“That's not a book from the
children's room.”

“No. It's from the library. I want to
read it.”

“It will contain many words you've not
yet learned. You'll find it frustrating.”

“Not if you help me. I thought we might read
it together.”

He shoved himself away from the bed, a secretive
sort of grin playing along his mouth. “I'd like that.
Come and sit on the sofa before the fire.”

“I'll simply step out into the hallway
and return after you're dressed.”

“I'm dressed
now
.”

“Barely.”

“Enough.”

He sat on the sofa and patted the cushion beside
him. “Come on.”

His gaze held a challenge, but kindness as well.
They were in their nightclothes, but
they'd be on the sofa and nothing untoward could happen
there. It was only the bed where danger lurked, and she certainly
had no plans to climb into it with him.

She felt her head nod as though she had no control
over it. She returned to the door, closed it, and tried not to
notice how its resounding click sounded like a death knell.

Taking a deep breath, she walked across the room
and sat on the sofa, as far from him as possible, her hip
practically hugging the side of the sofa as though it were a
lover.

“I can't help you if I can't see
the words on the page,” he said, and although he sounded
innocent enough, she thought she detected a bit of a dare beneath
the low rumble.

“I can simply pass the book over to
you—”

“And then I'll have to search for where
you were.” Lazily, like a cat lengthening its body beneath
the sun, he stretched his arm out along the back of the couch.
“Move closer.”

She glanced over at him. He was well and truly
covered, exhibiting no evidence that he was interested in anything
other than reading. She scooted over a bit, and his expression
clearly said, “Not enough.”

With a deep sigh, she moved nearer, straightened
her nightclothes, and tried to ignore the warmth of
his skin penetrating both the silk that covered his
thigh and hip and the silk covering hers.

“
Pride and
Prejudice
,” he said, quietly.

She jerked her attention to him, her heart thudding
as though he'd leaned near and whispered in her ear. Come to
think of it, he was terribly close, and she thought his breath
might be ruffling the fine hairs on the nape of her neck. Her braid
was trapped between her back and the couch, and she felt him
tugging on it.

“The title of the book,” he murmured as
though understanding her confusion.

“Oh, yes, I knew it was pride and
something
.” She looked at the
title and focused on the third word, cataloging it to memory so
she'd recognize it when next she saw it.

“I understand it's a story quite
favored by the ladies,” he said.

She turned back to him. Was he nearer? He was
holding the end of her braid, brushing the tip across his lips the
way a painter might apply a light coating of paint to canvas.
“Have you not read it then?”

A corner of his mouth curled upward.
“I've read it.”

“I envy you. You've read a good many
books.”

“You should never envy anyone without knowing
what price they paid to acquire the very thing that you
envy.”

“What price did you pay?”

His smile dissolved as though it had never been.
“Not nearly as high a price as you paid to be a countess.
Let's read, shall we?”

Reading was certainly preferable to rehashing her
desire—no her need—to gain a title, to hold on to it,
and to reach a bit higher. She opened the book and began reading,
quite quickly since she'd read it once before already.
“It is a truth…”

She peered up at him. He seemed to be looking at
the flames dancing on the hearth, the end of her braid held against
his lips as one might hold a lover's mouth.

She cleared her throat. He shifted his attention to
her and raised an eyebrow.

“I thought you were going to follow
along,” she said.

“I am.”

“If that were the case then you would know
that you are to fill in the next word.”

“Perhaps you should tell me what you think it
is.”

“If I
thought
it
were
anything
, I would have
said.”

“You can't memorize every word ever
written. You need to learn to decipher a word based on the sounds
that the letters make.”

She released a wearisome sigh. “It is close
to midnight. We are not having a lesson. I want to
read this story and I want you to read the words that
I don't know. A little like playing together on the
piano.”

“Universally.”

“Universally
what
?” she asked, wondering what in the devil
he was talking about.

“Universally acknowledged.”

“What's universally
acknowledged?”

He brushed the end of her braid along her cheek,
and she wondered why it was a more sensual fluttering when he did
it than when she did.

“The words you can't read in the book
are
universally
and
acknowledged
.”

“Oh! Oh, I see. I didn't realize
you'd returned your attention to the story.”

“I hadn't. My attention is still on
you.”

She was beginning to think that coming here was a
frightfully bad idea, but she couldn't seem to bring herself
to close the book and leave.

“Then how do you know those are the
words?”

“Because I caught a glimpse of them when you
first began to read, before I looked away.”

“And that's all you require to be able
to read them?”

“Yes.”

“Will I ever be able to read like
that?”

He stilled his hand, and she felt the power of his
gaze as it roamed over her face. “I believe
you can do anything that you set your mind
to.”

“I never want anyone to be able to guess that
I came into reading so late in my life.”

“Ah, yes, you are quite the ancient one,
aren't you?”

“Don't make light of my concerns,
Archie.”

“I'm not. And no one will ever hear
from me that you've only recently mastered reading. I will
warn you now, however, that you'd best not pick up a book
this thick in front of a gathering and expect to read it aloud word
for word.”

“I wouldn't dream of it.”
Although she had, on numerous occasions. Open a book and regale her
audience with her mastery of reading. Share a story with them. She
wanted to read to an audience the way a diva wished to raise her
voice in song during an opera. She returned her gaze to the book
and read a bit more haltingly than she would have liked, “It
is a truth…universally acknowledged…that
a…”

“Single.”

“Single man in…” She hated that
the really large words were so difficult.

“Possession.”

She'd know that word the next time she saw
it.

“Of a good…” she continued, then
stopped.

“Fortune.”

“Must be in want of a wife.”

“Therefore, I must be in want of a
wife.”

She snapped her gaze to his. “Of course you
are. You are in possession of a good fortune. And I am in want of a
husband because I am not in possession of a good fortune. Is that
another universal truth do you think? In regard to
women?”