Chapter 18 #2
She studied him for a moment or two. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“About what?”
“About the clothes. You let me think they were from David Preston.”
He shifted uncomfortably. In fact, he had to fight the urge to get up and pace. “You weren’t—” He paused and tried again. “You didn’t seem—” He set his book aside and rubbed his hands over his face. “Must we have this conversation?”
“I think you need a green drink.”
What he needed was a cold shower and not just for the usual reasons. He desperately needed something to bring good sense back to its normal place of prominence in his life. He looked at Peaches seriously. “I didn’t think you would accept them if you’d known they came from me.”
She rubbed her hands over the knees of her trousers. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I misjudged you. I misjudged quite a few things.”
“David Preston?” he asked, because he was too stupid to keep his mouth shut.
She opened her mouth, then shut it at the ringing of her phone. She sighed. “Sorry.”
“No, go ahead.”
She nodded, then picked up.
Stephen retrieved his book and dived right back into it.
It was a fascinating treatise on marriage in the Middle Ages that he paid attention to for approximately ten seconds until he realized that Peaches was talking to none other than David Preston himself, that promiscuous, empty-headed, hard-hearted Duke of Kenneworth, who was missing one of his extremely valuable ceremonial swords.
Stephen wished he’d poached a handful of them.
“David, I really appreciate—”
David interrupted her. Stephen put on a neutral expression and waited for Peaches to sort things as she cared to.
After all, he had no claim on her. He couldn’t actually even claim her time as a researcher.
He fully intended to pay her, though Tess had warned him the day before that Peaches wouldn’t take any money from him.
It was difficult to tell Peaches she couldn’t date Kenneworth when he couldn’t hold her job over her head.
Not that he would have anyway. If she wanted him, he wanted her to want him freely.
He listened to her protest that it really had been a lovely weekend and that she’d simply gotten lost and been rescued and taken home.
She had left a message with his secretary to that effect.
She protested further that dinner wasn’t necessary and what a surprise it was to learn David was in Cambridge.
“Seven?” she asked. “Well, I might be—yes, that’s true.” She took a careful breath. “I’m doing research for the Viscount Haulton.” She shot Stephen a quick look. “Yes, I suppose you could pick me up at his office if you like.” She paused. “Yes, see you then.”
Stephen buried his nose in his book, because it seemed safer that way.
Silence reigned supreme for several very long, very uncomfortable moments.
“That was David Preston.”
Stephen looked up and smiled. “Was it?”
She was looking as neutral as he was trying to feel. “He wants to take me to dinner.”
“Lovely of him, of course. Did he say how late he would be keeping you?”
She looked quite miserable, which he found very encouraging, actually. “I hope not late. I’ll have to catch a train home—”
“Stay,” he interrupted.
She blinked. “What?”
“I’ll find you a spot within walking distance of the college,” he said, reaching for his phone. “Then you won’t have to travel back and forth to Sedgwick.”
“But I didn’t bring any clothes.”
“Humphreys has excellent taste.”
She looked at him seriously. “Stephen, you can’t buy me a new wardrobe.”
“Why not?” he asked lightly.
“Because I can’t let your butler buy me knickers!”
“He’s my social secretary.”
She didn’t smile. “It makes me uncomfortable. The idea of any of it makes me uncomfortable.”
He felt his smile fading. “Does it?”
“Doesn’t it seem a little strange that you’re dressing me to go out with another man?” she asked, looking at him evenly.
“I’ll have Humphreys buy something ugly for tonight.”
She took a deep breath. That didn’t seem to satisfy her, for she took a handful of others. She finally set aside her book and stood up. “I have to run.”
“Run?”
“You know,” she said, making a running motion with her fingers. “Run. As in, moving very quickly along a flat surface in tennis shoes.”
“Trainers.”
She glared at him. “Yes, those.”
He set his book aside. “I’ll go with you.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Do you run?”
“Ian MacLeod suggested it.”
She put her hands on her hips and scowled down at him. “Do you always do what he tells you to do?”
He banked his fire. “Only when he has a sword in his hands.” He brushed off his hands and looked at her. “I started at Eton, actually. One does what one must, don’t you know, to get along with one’s responsibilities.” Or get away from them, as the case had been on occasion. “Do you have gear?”
“I never go anywhere without it.”
He waved her toward his loo. “Make yourself at home.”
She looked at him briefly, then picked up a backpack and walked away. Stephen took the opportunity to make a quick call to Humphreys, who was more than willing to find something exceptionally lovely for Peaches to wear that night.
It was twenty minutes into a run in which Peaches wasn’t even breathing hard that he realized he was perhaps dealing with something he hadn’t expected.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked.
She looked up at him. “Enormously. You?”
“Oh, yes,” he panted. “It’s brilliant.”
“Should we go on, or are you finished?”
He leaned over and tried to catch his breath. “I’m fine.”
“Did I tell you that I run the Seattle marathon every year?”
He almost sat down. “No, you did not, you vile wench.”
She laughed. “You realize that wasn’t English, my lord.”
“I have an entire collection of things not English I could use on you.”
She patted him on the back, which just about finished him off right there.
“You had probably better save your breath for them, hadn’t you?”
He heaved himself upright and pursed his lips. “I don’t suppose you’d want to carry me back to school, would you?”
She only smiled at him and ran away.
He watched her go. The only benefit he could see to doing something that restored her good humor so thoroughly was that at least he would be nursing sore muscles whilst she was out to dinner with a man who wasn’t him.
And then he, poor fool that he was, followed after her.