Chapter 19
Peaches looked at herself in the bathroom mirror of a bed-and-breakfast room so luxurious, she didn’t dare speculate about the nightly cost of it.
Just the fact that it was within walking distance of Stephen’s college sent shivers down her financial spine.
She could only hope that Stephen was getting a break with a weekly rate.
And if not, she would just have to trade him out her work for the accommodations.
She wouldn’t make any money—in fact she would probably end up owing him money—but she wouldn’t feel like she was bankrupting him. Or being the recipient of his charity.
Not that he would have termed it such. Tess had often commented on his generosity, both with time and means, but Peaches had never expected to be the beneficiary of either.
Life was strange.
She jumped a little at the sound of her phone ringing.
She wondered if it would be impolite to just let it ring through to her voice mail.
The last person she wanted to talk to was David Preston.
He had been charming the night before, attentive, said all the right, flattering things.
If she had gone out to dinner with him a month earlier, she would have been absolutely giddy with delight.
He was, as she had noted several times before, just right.
But last night instead of finding him flattering and charming, she had found him conceited and unpleasant. His interests were seemingly limited to complimenting himself and disparaging anyone from Artane. She had actually been rather surprised by the viciousness of his attacks on Stephen.
And rather ashamed of herself that she had, at one point, probably been all too willing to agree with them.
The only saving grace of the evening had been that Stephen had been waiting with his office door open when David had dropped her off, which had allowed her to avoid any unwanted advances.
David had been quite obvious about his irritation that she’d offered a friendly handshake instead of a passionate embrace, but she’d found herself surprisingly unconcerned about what he thought.
It was odd how a few days in the company of a certain de Piaget lad had completely changed her perspective on quite a few things.
She blinked and pulled herself back to the present when she realized her phone was still ringing in her hand.
She looked down, fully expecting to see David’s number only to see Stephen’s instead.
She answered it, surprised he would call her when he knew she was going to be in his office in less than half an hour.
“Yes?”
“Change of plans,” he said briskly.
Her heart stopped—and not in a good way. Maybe he’d decided that feeding, housing, and clothing her while she was dating however reluctantly another man just wasn’t something he cared to do. “A change of plans?” she echoed.
“On-site research,” he said, “in Bath. Would you object to that?”
She sat down on her bed because the relief that rushed through her gave her no choice. “I thought you were going to fire me.”
He was silent for a long minute. “That thought hadn’t crossed my mind, actually.”
“Well, there is that.”
“There is,” he agreed. “So, are you amenable to a journey?”
She considered. A day spent closed up in an office with Stephen reading books, or a day spent partially cooped up in a car with Stephen but the rest of the time wandering through one of her favorite cities in England.
“Are you really going to make me work,” she asked, “or is this just for fun?”
“A day off?” he asked, sounding faintly horrified. “Certainly not. I have note-taking supplies for you as well as a flask full of tasteless gruel for your lunch.”
She let out her breath slowly, because the thought of notes and gruel and Stephen de Piaget all in the same place for an entire day was almost too good to be true. “I think I can live with that.”
“Then hurry yourself into comfortable clothes, and let’s be off.”
She realized he was not only speaking French, he was speaking a rather vintage version of it. Obviously that little trip to medieval England had affected him adversely. She frowned. “I think we should use modern French today, my lord. People will look at us strangely otherwise.”
“Do you think we could discuss that later so I don’t freeze my arse off out here on your front stoop?”
“Is the tweed not keeping you warm?” she asked sweetly.
He made a noise of exasperation. “I’m wearing jeans, Peaches.”
She smiled in spite of herself at the sound of his saying her name. And if just that had her going, she imagined she was going to be in big trouble for the rest of the day.
“I have jeans, too,” she managed. And she did, and they weren’t the ones she’d brought with her from Seattle with the smiley face patch over the rip on the bum.
These were jeans that Humphreys had bought her that went with very lovely, stylish boots and yet another sweater in Stephen’s favorite fabric.
“Then put them on and hurry.”
“Be right there.”
She hung up, flung herself into clothes, dragged a pick through her hair, and grabbed her backpack on her way out of her room.
She thought it might be prudent to have breakfast to tide her over until she could have her gruel, so she poached a couple of scones from a sideboard and hurried for the front door.
She came to a skidding halt on the porch.
If she hadn’t known better, she would have—well, she wouldn’t have suspected she was looking at the future Earl of Artane.
She struggled not to drop her scones, then considered the man standing twenty feet away from her.
If there was one thing John de Piaget knew how to do, it was look like a very suave, very bad boy.
Leather jacket, fast car, smoldering looks.
Maybe it ran in the family.
Peaches managed to get herself down the steps, down the walkway, and to a stop in front of a black-leather-jacket clad, jeans-wearing, boot-sporting man who didn’t look like anyone they would let into Cambridge without a thorough background check.
She would have put her hand over her racing heart, but she was holding on to scones.
“I’ll bet Granny doesn’t approve of this look,” she wheezed. “Are you in disguise?”
One side of his mouth quirked up, finishing what was left of her knees and her good sense. “I own casual clothing.”
“I can see that.”
He opened the door. “You’d better sit down before you fall there.”
“I’m weak because I haven’t had breakfast yet,” she said archly. She started to get in, then hesitated. “I don’t think I should eat in your car. Not after everything else I’ve done to it.”
He removed one of the scones from her hand. “It’s just a car. There’s tea waiting inside for you.”
She looked at him seriously. “You are a very nice man.”
He opened his mouth to say something, then apparently thought better of it. He settled for a hint of a smile and a nod toward the empty seat.
Peaches sat, supposing that since she’d already destroyed the inside of his car with her soggy self the weekend before, a few scone crumbs weren’t going to make things worse.
The inside of the car, however, didn’t seem to be as trashed as she’d remembered it being.
Humphreys at his usual work of busily making things right, apparently.
She waited until they were well out of Cambridge and Stephen had finished breakfast before she attempted any conversation. “The clothes are lovely. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, negotiating the rather heavy traffic. “Humphreys has good taste in ladies’ wear.” He shot her a brief look. “And you won’t be giving me money for them.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” she said, finding herself slightly satisfied at his subsequent twitch of surprise. “I’ll work it off researching.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will.”
“Nay, lady, you will not.”
“Don’t think you’re going to intimidate me with that medieval French,” she said, trying to sound stern. “I understand you.”
“Do you understand the swear words?”
“Tess needed someone to practice with and Aunt Edna’s rigorous Gallic conversation had prepared us both for further study.”
Stephen smiled briefly. “I think I would appreciate your aunt Edna.”
“She’s still tormenting morning glory in her garden,” Peaches said, “and I’m sure she would find that your French meets her exacting standards.” She looked out the window as the scenery crawled by. “I’ve thought about going and begging my garret back—”
“Don’t.”
She looked at him in surprise. “What?”
He shot her a look. “I have several things for you to research still.”
She wished she had something witty and pithy to say in return, but all she could do was look at him and try to keep breathing normally.
The truth was, while she was a good researcher, he could probably find a better one at the university.
And she hadn’t been born yesterday. He hadn’t given her something to do just to keep her busy, or because he was taking pity on her.
She just couldn’t bring herself to think about what in the world he was possibly thinking because it was too ridiculous to contemplate.
She spent the rest of the trip south—and it was a rather long trip south—making polite chitchat with him.
She was fairly sure they had discussed everything from the unfortunate state of cuisine to be found in London to how much money her parents had socked away thanks to buying stock in cotton and hemp, but she couldn’t have said for sure.
All she knew was that she was in very great danger of undoing all the work she’d put into disliking Stephen de Piaget.
Fortunately for her heart, by the time they reached Bath, she had managed to make a rather depressing but accurate list as to why their relationship, such as it was, had no future.