Chapter 18
Stephen sat in a chair in front of the fire in his office and tried to concentrate. That task was made substantially more difficult by the addition not of three ghosts, but one very mortal, very beautiful woman sitting across from him, plowing through Regency research items.
He wondered if he should have been surprised Peaches had been willing to help him.
She had spent most of the day before at Sedgwick ignoring him.
Well, perhaps that wasn’t completely accurate.
She hadn’t been rude to him. She had simply said only the bare minimum and found other things to look at.
He had actually been stunned early that morning when she’d texted him one word.
Yes.
He would have happily accepted that answer to any number of questions, but he decided he would be wise to take things a step at a time. So he’d sent an innocuous reply and promised to meet her at his office after lunch.
Lunch had come and gone, and he’d begun to wonder if perhaps he was making a serious mistake.
After all, his schedule was rather lighter than usual that semester, leaving him more time than he would have normally had to simply sit in his office and read.
Inviting Peaches to sit there with him was self-torture of the worst kind.
It would have been easier, perhaps, if he’d had lectures or tutoring to keep him busy.
Anything to keep him in some other location.
And then she’d arrived, grave and serious.
She had walked into his office in clothes he had purchased for her to wear at Kenneworth, clothes he was certain she had chosen because she would have thought they were conservative enough for the locale, and he had been forced to clutch the door to keep himself from falling to his knees and begging her to put him out of his misery and marry him that very day.
“I’m confused.”
So, heaven help him, was he. He grasped for his remaining shreds of self-control and dignity and cleared his throat. “About what?”
“Why you’re doing all this research into the Regency period.”
“I’m not,” he said. “You are.”
“But you’re publishing something on it, aren’t you?”
“Unfortunately,” he said honestly, “but it seems less painful now that you’re here to do all my work for me.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “And if I get it wrong?”
“You won’t.”
“You’re very trusting.”
“I’m going to force you to come sit in the front row when I deliver the paper. You’ll have full credit, of course. I’m hoping the fear of being torn into by ancient female scholars bearing reticules will keep you on the straight and narrow.”
She watched him for so long, he began to grow slightly uncomfortable. He finally put a bookmark in the text he was reading and gingerly closed it.
“Yes?”
She started to speak several times before she apparently cast caution to the wind. “I’m not sure I can do this.”
“Do what?” he asked, feigning ignorance even though he knew exactly what she was talking about.
Sitting in the same room with her was terrible.
He wasn’t sure if he wanted to pull her up out of her chair and kiss her senseless or bolt for the door.
“Spend countless hours poring over musty old manuscripts?”
She looked at him evenly. “It’s not the books that are bothering me.”
He set his book aside, then leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He clasped his hands and looked at her seriously. “Then what is it, Miss Alexander?”
She let out an uneven breath. “We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” she said slowly.
“Today?”
“No, in general.”
He looked at her, that beautiful, ethereal creature who had added a magical warmth to his office he’d never expected, and wondered how in the hell he was going to do anything but frighten her off. He took a deep breath. “Perhaps we should start afresh.”
“And how do you propose we do that?”
“With introductions?”
She smiled and he thought he might have to sit down. He wasn’t terribly surprised to find he was already sitting down. Peaches Alexander had that effect on him.
He stood up, then helped her out of her chair not because his mother expected that sort of thing but because Peaches deserved it. He held out his hand.
“Stephen Phillip Christopher de Piaget,” he said inclining his head, “at your service.”
“That’s a mouthful,” she said, putting her hand into his.
“My younger brother is similarly burdened, but his names are shorter,” Stephen said with a smile.
Peaches only continued to watch him expectantly.
Stephen thought to ask her why, then it occurred to him that he already knew the answer. He tried not to sigh. “Must I recite the rest?”
“Yes, you must.”
He had to sigh then. “Very well. I am the very fortunate possessor of the titles Viscount Haulton and Baron Etham, which means that I can get a decent seat at one or two restaurants in London. My father is the current Earl of Artane, which gets me decent seats at the theater. My PhD is in medieval studies with an emphasis in medieval languages and literature. Now, who are you?”
“Peaches Alexander,” Peaches said, shaking his hand, then pulling hers away. She sat back down and looked up at him. “That’s it. You know the rest. School, closets, intentions, being one step away from a Dickensian level of destitution.”
He sat down and resumed his position with his elbows on his knees. It put her almost within reach, which he thought was something of a boon.
He studied her by the light from his fire and the soft incandescent lights he refused to give up.
She was, as could have been said about her sister, remarkably lovely.
But he could safely say that he’d entertained the thought of having designs on Tess Alexander for less than five minutes before he realized she was just not the woman for him—and that had nothing to do with her looks, her personality, her passion for his passion, or the issuer of her passport.
She had been destined to marry John de Piaget and he’d known that without knowing it.
Peaches, however, was a different story entirely.
“What led you to choose chemistry?” he asked, because he realized he’d been staring at her without speaking.
She sighed. “Because it was the hardest academic thing I could think of, and I was in a houseful of sisters—well, besides Cindi, of course—who were all trying to be as different from my parents as possible. I had originally thought that maybe med school would be the right path, but decided my first year of college that it wasn’t what I wanted. ”
“What did you want?”
“I wanted to make a difference,” she said. “Somehow.”
“And you didn’t think that would happen in a lab?”
She looked at him evenly. “Sorting socks isn’t glamorous, but at least I saw the sunrise and sunset every day.”
“I wasn’t criticizing,” he said mildly. “Just curious. What now?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Regency research, I suppose.”
Which he was happy to let her get back to so he could digest what she’d said and plan his next move. He reached for his book, then stopped when he realized she wasn’t finished with her questions.
“What do you want?” she asked.
You was almost out of his mouth before he had the good sense to engage the filter between his brain and his tongue.
His mother had made certain he’d been born with it and his father had honed it from the time Stephen had said his first words, he was certain.
He set his book back down and cleared his throat.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what do you want?” she asked. She made a circle with her pointer finger that encompassed his entire room.
“This somehow doesn’t jibe very well with the other you.
The one that carries the sword. And then there’s the nobility you that I don’t even know, but I understand wears a tux and has a chauffeur and a Rolls. And a valet, as I’ve already seen.”
“Humphreys is my social secretary.”
She only laughed. “I think he’s more your keeper.”
Stephen might have—very well, he most definitely would have taken offense if anyone else had said the like.
But somehow, coming from that astonishingly pretty woman sitting across from him—nay, she wasn’t pretty.
She was beautiful. But not in a hard, manufactured way.
She was beautiful, true, but made even more so by an artless, almost vulnerable aura she projected that he hadn’t had the chance to see until just that moment.
He realized with a start, that she was honestly interested in what he was thinking.
“I’m very content with my life,” he said, because he wasn’t about to say anything else.
“What part do you like the best?”
“Isn’t your degree in chemistry, not psychology?” he asked lightly.
She only stared at him, a smile playing around her mouth, then she bent her head back to her book. “You need to go to Scotland soon.”
“I went to medieval England recently. I think that will last me for a bit.”
She didn’t look up. “You’re crabby.”
That didn’t begin to describe it. She had unerringly found his weakness and exploited it. He had difficulty, he could almost admit, trying to reconcile the different parts of himself: scholar, swordsman, and heir to a pile of stones that made him catch his breath every time he returned home.
He somehow wasn’t surprised how unerringly Peaches had dissected him and left him lying there on the table.
He tried to get back to his reading, truly he did. But it was almost impossible. The longer he sat there, the more anxious he became.
“I never thanked you for the clothes.”
He blinked. “What?”
She shot him a look. “I know you rescued me last weekend, and more than once. The gown was absolutely stunning.”
He could only incline his head slightly. Words were beyond him.
“This is pretty snazzy, too,” she said, fingering the sleeve of her sweater. “And the shoes fit.”
“Humphreys has a good eye.”
“And you have good taste.”
“He does the work and I take the credit.” He took a deep breath. “You looked lovely then, as now.”