Chapter 20
Jensen
It’s been two days since I made the mistake of barging into the Beaumont Craven House heat chamber, and since then, nothing orgasmic has happened between the lord and me.
He chased me back to my rooms after our conversation that night and caught me at the bottom of the stairs.
Instead of offering me sexual favors for my efforts, he informed me that my feet were cold and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, refusing to put me down until he got to my rooms. He deposited me on the rug in my sitting room and left with nary an offer to suck my cock or pummel my prostate.
Last night I hopefully ventured out of my rooms, but he wasn’t waiting for me. There was no alpha growl in the dark. No big feet hitting the floor behind me. Just me in the kitchen with a handful of fucking cookies.
I’m trying not to read anything into it.
There’s every chance the lord was tired and fell asleep early last night, and that’s all that happened.
Maybe he didn’t want to do anything after the heat chamber because of how heavy our conversation was.
It was hard hearing his story because he’s been through so much, but it meant a lot that he opened up to me.
It’s entirely possible his mood was affected by our conversation. Probable even.
The trouble is, I’ve never been very good at not reading too much into things.
The list of things I could’ve done to put him off is long and has been playing in my mind on repeat since this morning.
I’m at my desk in the library, battling with the rigors of reality and an imagination that would dearly love to fill in the blanks for me, when the sound of the door swinging open interrupts me.
Thankfully, I had the sense to clear my desk of all my Casanova alpha research a few days ago because Lord Augustus has taken it upon himself to drop in.
Fortunately, there’s nothing in front of me but a wide expanse of timber and a stack of books that I may or may not have specifically chosen to seem impressive to the casual observer.
He saunters over to where I am, stopping in a sunny spot right near the window.
Dappled sunlight dances over his features, making them look softer than usual.
“I thought I’d pop in and let you know that my tailor will be here tomorrow to take my measurements for my suit for the ruddy masked ball.
I was wondering if you’d like him to knock something up for you to wear? ”
“That’s very kind of you. I haven’t really given much thought to what I’m going to wear,” I lie.
The lord hands me a matte-black business card with a discreet yet instantly recognizable gold emblem. “You can visit Jeffery’s website—if you like anything from his ready-to-wear collection, just let him know. I’ve told him to give you anything you want.”
I draw a quick breath and look at the card in my hands. It’s an incredibly generous offer. A dream offer that I never thought someone like me would be on the receiving end of.
“Thank you so much,” I say a little breathlessly.
He turns as though he means to leave, pauses, and turns back. His gaze drops to my desk and raises a single, cocky brow. A lashing of humor flickers in his eyes. “Hm. I see you really do read highfalutin literature sometimes.”
“I’m surprised you noticed, Lord Smarty Pants. With the state the library was in when I got here, I didn’t have you marked as a bookworm. In fact, I wasn’t sure you’d recognize a highfalutin book if one hit you in the head.”
He huffs a laugh but attempts to swallow it down. “Actually, I’ll have you know that I love reading.”
“Are you seriously asking me to believe that you’ve read any of these books?” I give him an exaggerated, narrowed side eye.
He tilts his head to the side, taking in the spines of the stack of books on my desk, and says, “I’ve read all of them. Loved most of them.”
“I’m afraid I find that very hard to believe.
” I cross my arms and shake my head slowly.
“You’ll have to prove it to me.” I pick up the book at the top of the stack, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and wave it in front of him.
“Tell me one thing about this book—and I don’t mean anything you can glean from the cover—and I might be inclined to believe you. ”
He clutches his heart dramatically, clamping both hands to his chest, and stumbles backward slightly. “‘You pierce my soul.’” He speaks quietly, but his gaze flicks up and hits me in the back of my throat. “‘I am half agony, half hope.’”
I’m quite taken aback. I was expecting him to say something along the lines of it’s a rather boring story about a spinster who gets a second chance at love when her formerly penniless ex-boyfriend walks back into her life with a big paycheck and a bad attitude.
The emotional depth of his delivery affects me almost as much as his choice of quote does.
I hold up Wuthering Heights next, and he frowns. “Absolutely not. That’s too easy, and I hate the story.”
“But, but,” I gasp, raising a limp hand to my clavicle. “What about the moor, lord? What about what our souls are made of?”
“I’ll grant you that ‘his and mine are the same’ is one of the most perfect lines ever written, but it doesn’t make up for everyone in that book being an absolute twat.”
I snort at his use of twat and hold up the next book: War and Love by Leo Tolstoy.
He turns and leans against my desk, hitching a butt cheek onto the table and crossing his legs at the ankles. “‘We are asleep until we fall in love.’”
He doesn’t wait for me to hold up the next book.
He thumbs the pages of Doctor Zhivago and places his hand flat on the cover, as if to quieten or tame the words that live under the dust jacket.
“‘You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to Earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.’”
The way he says it makes a lump form in my throat.
His voice is smooth and soothing. I thought his was a voice made to growl and alpha people, but I was wrong.
His voice was made to read poetry aloud.
To turn beautiful words into something bigger and better than they were when they only existed on a page.
“W-what about this one?” I say when he stops talking and the silence that replaces his voice feels crushing.
The last book on my desk is The Importance of Being Earnest, and I’m relieved about it. There are lots of sharp, witty lines for him to choose from. I’m sure any one of them will lighten the mood that’s befallen the room.
His expression changes, and something I haven’t seen on him before tugs at the corner of his mouth, making it dip down. His gaze skids off mine, and he says, “Perhaps you were right about me after all. I can’t think of a line from that one.”
I titter at that, and an uncomfortable silence follows. Naturally, I can’t let that stand. “Why did you stop reading?” I ask.
“The meds,” he says with a resigned shrug.
“They make me so foggy that I can’t focus.
Words swim on the page, and I can’t make sense of them.
” He runs his fingers over the embossed title of one of the books.
“I missed it so much that when I first started my treatment, I used to come in, sit over there”—he points to the settees near the children’s book section—“and simply hold books in my hands. I’d recite as many lines as I could to try to remember what it felt like to read. ”
My heart aches. I feel awful for him. A life without reading is unimaginable to me. On top of everything he’s lost because of being on a suppressant, not being able to find comfort in reading seems especially cruel.
“I could read to you if you want,” I offer.
I don’t realize that I’m expecting him to turn the offer down until he doesn’t. “Really?” His face transforms, mouth slashing open, boyish excitement making his cheeks ruddy. “You’d do that for me? Thank you, Jensen.”
His sincerity buckles the knees of the doubt I was feeling about whether it was a good idea to make the offer. “Of course! It’s no problem at all. Why don’t you come back after lunch? I usually read on my break anyway.”
He leaves the library soon afterward. I watch him go, waiting until he’s out of sight before I let my gaze land on The Importance of Being Earnest. I pick the book up and turn it over in my hands.
Something was off about him when he talked about this book. Something happened when he told me he couldn’t think of a quote from it. Something that hasn’t happened before. That little twitch of his mouth was strange. I think Lord Augustus lied to me.
It’s the first time I’ve ever thought he was being dishonest. It was notable and obvious because he’s not a good liar at all.
I open the book, flicking through pages one by one, momentarily transported by the familiar, repetitive action. I feel a little odd, kind of removed, and kind of sure about something I can’t quite put my finger on.
Dusty crème pages flutter, a soft schliff-wiff as they turn. Nothing stands out, and nothing stands out, and then, suddenly, something does. Near the bottom of a left-side page, there are words underlined.
One sentence only.
A line with a thin pencil marking underneath it.
My heart squeezes so hard that the air is forced from my lungs as I read it. It’s one of my favorite lines of any book ever.
“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.”
I feel a bit odd when the lord returns to the library after lunch.
A bit lightheaded and spluttery. In retrospect, I think asking a man as handsome as he is to quote me lines from books I love might have been a mistake.
In my world, handsome men clutching their chests and saying things like “half angst, half hope” is dirty talk of epic proportions, and there’s no getting around that.
I shouldn’t have put myself through that, especially not while I’m at work.
He sails into the room, disturbing the air around me, and takes a seat on one of the settees.