Master of Love (13 page)

“When did you start helping him with his work?”

“I was around twelve when I began to serve as his clerk for some correspondence. He schooled me well in Latin and Mama taught me French and Italian, so I came to handle many of the foreign orders.” She paused to swallow hard. “It was after my mother died that I took over more of his trade.”

“You said your father was shaken badly by her death. Did you take over Daphne's care at that point also?”

She smiled sadly. “In many ways, I feel more Daphne's mother than a sister twelve years her elder. She was only four when Mama died. Daphne had caught a bad lung fever that fall. Mama nursed her through it, but then fell sick herself. I . . . I couldn't bring her back to health.”

Their steps slowed to a halt in front of the lilacs along the rear wall. Thick with blooms and wild from lack of pruning, the bushes swayed heavily in the breeze. They'd been her mother's favorite. Callista's breath still sometimes hitched in her chest at the terror of having so unexpectedly to take over her sister's rearing and the management of the household as well as her father's business correspondence. Even more frightening had been her father's lost vagueness until well past Christmastide as he came undone with grief. When he'd slowly returned to himself, as if from a long and distant voyage, he'd apologized in the new year, kissing her brow, saying, “But I knew I could count on you to handle everything.”

“It sounds like your father burdened you with a lot. And he left his family in rather dire straits.” His tone had grown sharper. He twisted a branch on the lilac bush. “Had he let his financial affairs decline so much you were forced to go into trade to survive?” The head of pale lavender snapped off, releasing a waft of perfume.

She glanced at him sideways and frowned. “That's not quite fair. I love the book trade and am good at it—or at least I would be if clients trusted me with their commissions.” She heard the bitterness in her voice and closed her eyes on a deep sigh. “My father didn't intend, of course, for us to live in such reduced circumstances. He'd hoped settling back on British soil with his new title would create opportunities. He wanted to provide dowries for Daphne and me so we could marry well. He had plans to rebuild his London client base, especially for foreign book sales, now that we had so many contacts among European dealers. That's part of why Lady Mildred moved in with us after our return, to be our chaperone and sponsor. As the new Lord Higginbotham, my father hoped their two titles combined could help launch Daphne and me in society.”

“But it didn't work out that way.”

“No”—her eyes skittered away from the penetrating intensity of his chocolate-brown gaze—“it didn't.”

Why was she telling him all this, letting him drag the whole sad story out of her?
Enough
—she turned, thinking to lead them back into the house, but he caught at her hand. He enclosed it warmly within his much larger ones and brought it up for a kiss. The gallant gesture was one she'd seen him perform dozens of times on the visiting ladies of Rexton House. But surely those ladies didn't feel this melting heat in the pits of their stomachs at the mere touch of his lips to their skin. The gesture felt different in other ways as well. When she risked another quick glance into those dark eyes, she had the oddest impression he'd dropped his usual mask painted with the self-assured Lord Adonis smile. Instead, his look seemed almost pleading. In place of his normal patter of compliments, he uttered but one word, more entreaty than command: “Stay.”

Capitulating—she wasn't sure exactly to what—she dropped with a sigh onto the bench beside the lilacs. The red bricks of the back garden wall radiated the warmth of the sun. The golden late-afternoon rays slanted long and low across the London rooftops into this hidden corner of the garden. He sat beside her on the small bench, still holding her hand, pressed along her side. The touch was so comforting she allowed herself to pretend it was all perfectly normal and proper.

“In some of the ways the world values, I realize my father was not the strongest man.” She raised her face to the sun and closed her eyes. “He was gentle and passionate about learning. He named my sister and me after nymphs of Greek mythology and taught me how to read Greek in the original. He loved a fine book more than he loved making money off it and he didn't manage finances as well as he parsed Latin. In the end, that did hurt his family. But on the other hand, he was one of the strongest men I ever met in ways that count the most: he loved my sister and me, and our mother. I remember, as a small child, running into his study”—she smiled sadly, opening her eyes—“and no matter what he was reading, even if it was some wonderful new book, he would put it down and pick me up for a hug. He treated every concern I had—a scraped knee, a missing doll—with grave seriousness. He never made me feel less intelligent for being a girl. He had his failings—we all do—but he and my mother believed in me and gave me the world.”

He rubbed a thumb slowly across the back of her hand. The soothing rhythm and steady presence of him so close at her side—quiet, listening—allowed her to go on. “We've had a hard time since his death, but I don't blame him.” She prayed that it was true, that her bouts of midnight tears were from exhaustion and worry, not anger at her dear papa. “Inheriting the title complicated our lives. It's considered disgracefully beyond the pale for peers to be in trade, as you know”—she shot a look at him, a man so privileged in both beauty and wealth—“but his barony, unlike older landed titles like yours, came with no income or rents. Without land, a title means little. If it means the holder can't earn a living without social censure, it can lead to financial disaster. My father was just starting to grapple with how he could take up his seat in the House of Lords and still run a book-procurement service when he began to fall seriously ill. He'd get so short of breath”—her own breath quickened at the memory—“but the doctors said there was nothing to be done. His heart was failing. I was desperate and insisted on a season at Bath. In the end, I think it only tired him further and imposed new expenses. In truth, his health had begun to fail even before we left Paris. I just didn't want to admit it.”

“But your father must have known,” he said quietly, reaching for her other hand to loosen her clenched fingers and rub circles into the palm. “Did he make no plans for your care and financial security?”

“He was quite anxious about our finances. But I'd been handling almost all the correspondence and bookkeeping for years by that point.”

He stilled. “You mean you didn't tell him how precarious things had become?”

“He was dying!” She surged to her feet, arms crossed tight and back stiff to him. “There was nothing he could do! I promised him I'd continue our business and support the household.” She remembered how hard she'd worked that last winter to convince her father all would be well—and to hide her own fears. “His last correspondence was a series of letters sent to his entire network of contacts, recommending me to their trade.”

“Did it work?”

She didn't answer at first, just stood and let that honey-smooth voice roll down her tense back. He stood as well and began to knead her shoulders. Coward that she was, it felt so heavenly she couldn't bear to make him stop. She dropped her head and felt him curl over her to catch her humiliated murmur: “Father couldn't predict so many people would refuse to deal with me. It didn't make sense to him, that the world would waste the intelligence of half its members by not valuing the skills of women. Clients who'd been happy for me to order and deliver their books when my father was alive thought it shameful for me to do the same once he passed away. A month after we buried him, it was clear I'd be lucky if ten percent of our buyers ever did business with Higginbotham Book Dealers again. A month after that, I began to sell off the silver plate.”

She clenched her eyes shut against the sting of tears. “I even tried dressing as a young man for a while. I made myself into ‘Callum,' a Higginbotham cousin, down from Shropshire to join the trade.”

“What happened?” he asked quietly. His big body against her back radiated a different kind of heat than the brick wall—enticing, dangerous, magnetic in its pull. The urge to lean back into his strength was almost more than she could resist.

She laughed humorlessly. “A stupid farce, the failure of my own vanity. I wouldn't cut my hair, and it fell down from my cap when I was jostled over too big an armload of books. It was a final scandalous reason to refuse my trade.”

He splayed long fingers up her nape, into the loose chignon Marie had looped there. “I'm glad you didn't cut it.”

“I might have to sell it yet,” she muttered darkly.

“Callista, no!” He squeezed.

She tried to step away, take back the words—“Only a bad joke, of course”—anything to break this odd mood bringing her far too close to this powerful man.

But he would have none of it. He held her in place, cupping her within the curve of his much larger body. “Callista,” he murmured, lifting a hand to brush from her cheek the tear that had escaped, “you carry so much weight on these slim shoulders.”

The gentleness of the gesture undid her. Anger, fear, and shame flared up fast from the tightly bottled well where she kept them tamped down.

“You might as well hear the rest of it then,” she choked out against the bitter burn of more tears she refused to shed. “Have you guessed the story behind the servants? Mrs. Baines had been our cook since I was a little girl. When we returned to London, it took me weeks to track her down, but I finally found her living in a filthy lodging house over a third-rate coffee shop in Drury Lane. She was struggling to support both Margaret and Suzy. Margaret had been attacked by the drunken master of the household where she worked as a parlor maid. He dismissed her on trumped-up charges of thievery when she came to him with child. I moved them all into Bloomsbury that very day. Billy I found in the streets not long after Father died.” She wrenched out of his grasp and twisted around to face him, her chin stuck out defiantly. “Now you know all our shameful family secrets.”

“My apologies, Callista”—he inclined his head gravely—“for misjudging your father. What he gave you was priceless: his faith in you and his love. I wish I'd had the same from my father. You're a remarkable and gallant group, and you most of all.”

Still trembling from the wash of hot emotion, she cocked her head at him. Many would have condemned her for exposing Daphne to an unmarried woman with a bastard child, not to mention a street urchin with a dodgy background. But Callista had been unable to turn her back on any of them. Together, they formed a household family—a little odd and ragged perhaps, but hardworking and devoted to each other. “I worry”—she shook her head slowly, fighting to get her breathing back under control—“that Daphne has lost so much and that her upbringing has become . . . rather unconventional.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “but she still has much: her family home and you as her mother, to provide love and guidance.”

“Yes, every girl needs her pirate lessons!” Callista rolled her eyes and huffed out a short laugh at the sight she'd presented on his arrival.

“Indeed”—he smiled down at her—“you never know when a knave will come along to take advantage.”

Her heart skipped a beat and something changed in the air between them.

The man was entirely too potent, like a very heady Madeira. When she'd lived on the Continent, she'd met any number of rich and powerful aristocrats bent on building their libraries. But she'd never before encountered any gentleman so classically perfect or so intensely charismatic. When he turned that Master of Love charm on her—even when she knew it to be no more than foolish teasing—it still made her panic and look away.

She forced a light laugh, and her attention back to their conversation. “I am lucky to have them all in my life.” Despite the tribulations of the last two years, she still had family and home and interesting work, all on a glorious spring day.

And a viscount in her garden, apparently flirting with her.

If only it could last.

If only it could mean something.

“I think it is I who am lucky to have stumbled upon you.” He stepped closer and slid his hands up her arms.

He's going to kiss you!
some woman's wisdom warned. Sweet Jesus, the Master of Love was looking at her like she was his next victim, even after swearing he had no designs on her person.

Surely she should push him away, turn and walk back to the house, but how—
how?
—to say no to this, to him? She held still, still as a doe listening for the hounds, felt the sun on her face, and to her shame,
wanted
it to happen.

She didn't know which was more terrifying: that he was about to kiss her or that he might not.

The tip of her tongue came out to lick nervously at her lips as the breath hitched in her throat. His eyes flitted down to her mouth, and he lowered his head. When his lips brushed butterfly-light across hers, the world shrank to the warm breath between them.

She tried to resist the onslaught of sensation, tried to hold on to a sense of herself as prim and proper. But her weariness and loneliness left her with few resources. And unlike his other lovers, she operated without a seasoned temptress's arsenal of defense and counterattack. She knew herself no match against the pleasure this Lord Adonis had long ago learned how to give.

With a growl, his arms tightened around her and pulled her flush against his tall frame. Heat surged within her. She suddenly understood his reputation for seduction. The Master of Love—good Lord, who
could
resist? With a little despairing moan, her edge of opposition gave way. She softened in his arms, surrendering her mouth to him. She couldn't—simply
couldn't
—push him away. In fact, she feared she was pushing up on her toes toward him, pressing into his deepening kiss, as a garden blooms into life after a long, deep cold.