Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
J ack disciplined himself to breathe. Evenly. In and out. Not to let his face heat like a slow match. Or worse, go ashen and sea grey from the absolute stupidity of expressing his most private thoughts in this utterly exposing way.
Beside him, Miss Conway was just as still and watchful, barely breathing herself. But she finally took in a long breath and focused her attention solely on him. And then she smiled—a smile of such revelatory wonder that Jack felt the fullness of her charm settle upon him like a sunbeam. And he knew he was lost. That he would do anything to feel the warmth of her regard. Anything. Everything.
“Then pray tell me, my dear Captain,” she spoke so quietly he found himself bending toward her to hear. “How might we go about making that happen?”
Jack heard the words, but feared they could not be true. His sense of responsibility, his honor demanded that he had misheard her. She could not mean what he wanted her to mean. “Pray don’t toy with me, Miss Conway.” His voice was as low as his hopes. “Poor and unimportant as I am, I am not a plaything.”
“Do I appear to be the type of person who would toy with another’s attention or affections?” she asked with that solemn honestly of hers. “Because I assure you, I am not.”
She did not, in fact, look like the type of person who might toy with anyone, at all, for any reason. It was one of the reasons he liked her.
“No,” he finally said. “And neither am I, so I will say again what needs to be said—and understood. I am poor. I am leaving.”
“I understand, Captain.” She nodded, her eyes never leaving his face. “And what I would like to know in return, is, if you are the sort of person who is careless with your words or admiration?”
He was, despite his cynical protestations to indifference, both a sworn officer and a gentleman who knew both his duty and what was right. “I assure you I am not.”
“Then,” she said simply as if she had made up her mind. “What comes next? Right now. This evening. Before you must go away.”
It was as if the floor beneath his feet had shifted—he was immediately at sea and unprepared for the feeling of being so summarily tossed to and fro.
Privacy comes next, was his only thought, though there was little privacy to be found at such a public event in such a private home—he could hardly avail himself of Lady Ivers’s bed chamber.
And she could not mean what he wanted her to mean. She could not.
Jack took a moment to straighten his coat and cuffs to allow himself to regain his metaphorical balance. To make sure he had not imagined the entirety of the conversion from out of the depth of his wildest longings. “A walk,” he offered more reasonably. “A slow promenade so we might…” Might not immediately proceed to some conveniently darkened corner of the library where he might taste the sweet tartness of her wit from her lips. “…further our discussion.”
“Perhaps a dance might be easier?” she suggested with a glance at some of the younger guests who were forming into the lines of a country dance.
Nothing could be less to his advantage. “I beg you will not put me through the torture, Miss Conway. I am a naval man, not a dandy.”
She gave him one of her sweetly solemn smiles. “If you could learn the particulars of every sail and spar for the furtherance of your career, sir, I feel certain you could overcome the far more mundane complexities of a country dance.”
In Jack’s mind, dancing was but a poor substitution for another activity wherein a man and a woman exercised face to face. But he was determined to keep his less than gentlemanly demons battened down and weather reefed. “One might think,” he allowed, “though I have never had the time or tuition. I was sent into the Navy before my father could be taxed with finding a dancing instructor.”
Flora Conway let out a low little hum of laughter, that made him think of honeybees and flowers and other idiocies in the middle of winter, before she began to walk with him—although he made sure to measure his steps to match hers—and asked, “May I propose a more interesting alternative?”
Whatever it was, it could not be merely interesting. It would be maddening. And damned inconvenient. Because no matter what she suggested, he knew he would do it, as sure as the tide. “Aye.”
“There!” Her smile was full of satisfaction. “Now you sound like both a proper Scot and a sea captain. And not that you don’t look entirely distinguished, but may I ask, why are we not treated to the sight of you in your rather dashing uniform?”
It was another boon to his damnable pride that she remembered their first meeting—which was precisely the last time he had had the comfort of wearing his post captain’s uniform. “Custom forbids the wearing of His Majesty’s uniform while being off post. Simply put—no ship, no uniform. And I have no ship at present, courtesy of my being forced to tend to the exigencies of the earldom.”
“This I did not know,” she acknowledged. “So many interesting things to learn.”
So many more interesting things he might teach her. If she were truly willing.
God knew she looked able.
No, he must not think like that. He must remember he was at a private, Christmastide soirée with a young lady of good family who was not for him .
So, he and the lass who was not for him took a few more silent turns of the room before Flora Conway very gently laid her hand against his forearm—which obligingly raised itself up to take the subtle weight of her elegantly gloved arm—and just as subtly, steered them through the nearest door, then down the staircase beyond.
Jack allowed himself to be led. She set a course for the back of the house where a small glass conservatory housed an abundance of tender, exotic plants from Lady Ivers’s travels about the world with her naval husband. Greenery, such as potted palms, abounded despite the season, while a very old grape vine reached its bare, arthritic fingers in a lattice up the slanted glass roof.
“I’ve always liked this room,” he said to allay his inexplicable rush of nerves. He had faced down the enemy French and Spanish, for God’s sake—surely, he could converse with an attractive, witty, insightful young woman without acting like the greenest landsman. “The Admiral liked to sit and take his coffee here when he was home.” He gestured to a comfortable divan and armchair at the near end of the room where a single glass lamp stood ready to illuminate the dark, but Jack left it unlit, exorcising his demons by moving away from her down the length of the room. He moored up against the glass, where a large fern pressed its tender fronds against the icy pane. “He used to say he liked being able to see the stars the way he was used to at sea.”
“What a lovely thought.” Miss Conway looked up at the dark night sky twinkling through the glass. “For the longest time, I had no idea there was a glasshouse attached to this house. It’s a lovely sort of hidden jewel. Reminds me of home.”
“The house on Kirk Brae Head?” he asked. The old Jacobean house at the west end of the New Town had been the Widow Fraser’s before the Conway family had taken up residence. The Conways had filled the place with the elder daughter’s elegant art, but the darker, older, more formal style of the house had never suggested to Jack the sort of airy, but lush, domestic ease the Ivers conservatory offered.
“No,” she answered, though she smiled. “I was thinking of our house back in Richmond, along the river in England, before we came here. It felt warm and green and easy, much like this room. Not this perpetual grey winter we seem to have here in Scotland.”
He had not thought her so particularly English, so seamlessly had she immersed herself in Edinburgh society—and subsequently sailed straight into his overactive admiration. “I apologize on Scotland’s behalf.”
“You’re very kind.” She smiled at him—the glint of her white teeth winking at him in the dim light. “But that will be our secret—that you’re secretly kind.”
Damn his eyes. How could she be as keen and witty and insightful as she was beautiful? It ought to be impossible. “You’ve found me out.”
“Have I?” She tipped her head to one side. “I can’t imagine you’re the sort of man one can find out so easily. In fact, I should think you wear this charming cynicism of yours much the way you would your naval uniform—like a well-worn friend.”
Impossible. “My dear Miss Conway, you have found me out.”
“I rather wish I were your dear Miss Conway. Dear enough for you to call me Flora. Because I should like to call you Jack. It has a nice ring to it.”
Her straightforward compliments came one after another, seemingly innocuous, until they were a billowing weight piled upon him. He had no defense against such soft arts. “Miss Conway, I beg you.”
“I was rather hoping I wasn’t going to have to beg.” She looked only fleetingly chagrinned. She tipped her head to the side in that solemnly sweet way of hers, and he was all but gone. “But if I have to, I will.”