Chapter 5
Eli couldn’t remember the last time he’d so viciously wanted to shoot something. Or hit something. Or snap something over his knee and beat something else to death with it before lighting both things on fire and sending them to hell.
He’d never been so happy to return to a quiet, empty house.
After a late morning with Morley and their lawyers—whom the Brits called solicitors, though he could find exactly nothing solicitous about them—he’d had his own business to contend with.
Contend being the operative word.
Land deals sure meant the world to people who called themselves lords, and even more to those lords whose families had owned said land for hundreds of years. Sometimes longer.
Apparently, after business, men in this town went for “a bit of sport,” which sure as hell meant something different than where he was from.
Though Eli did his level best to enjoy a night of drinking, gambling, and carrying on with flirtatious women drenched in heavy gems and perfumes, he just…couldn’t. It wasn’t that he felt any sense of fidelity to his bride-to-be. He’d never even had a proper conversation with her.
He was just…getting too damn old for this shit. The noise and the odors and the vibrant colors, he’d once found them dazzling. Had been drunk on the fact that he could walk into a room and buy anything, or anyone, in it. Power was such an effective intoxicant. Wealth, a heady seduction.
It was freedom.
Or so he’d once thought.
Yanking away the silk noose at his neck, he had one button of his collar thrown before he’d reached the first-floor landing of Hespera House. Flexing and stretching his right hand, he examined the few superficial cuts on his knuckles. They’d be swollen and sore tomorrow.
Though not as sore as that Viscount’s smarmy face.
Eli’d never met the man in his life, and still the worthless lordling had the gall to sneer at his ‘crass American money.’ He’d mocked Eli’s callused palms and his sunbaked skin, as if his own limp, smooth lady-hands were something to be proud of.
Proof he’d never worked for anything he owned.
When unable to get a rise out of him, the young man, surrounded by a pack of pathetic mates, announced Eli’s engagement to a club full of men like a fucking matron clucking gossip at a church social.
And here he thought news traveled fast in small towns.
Apparently, London had a few telephones installed, and it seemed the days a man could outrun what was said about him were over forever.
Eli had held his temper. Held it like a fucking champion until the buck-toothed bastard insinuated that the youngest sister of a country Baron who had to work as a shipping entrepreneur might just be unrefined enough to deserve the likes of him.
Back in Nevada, you try and take digs at a man’s work or his woman? You sucked the end of his barrel until he ejaculated lead and gunpowder through the back of your skull.
The lad was lucky to have escaped with only a broken jaw.
The way his compatriots scampered, Eli imagined they’d not realized the complete height and breadth of him until he was scowling down at them, itching for another face to plant his fist in.
Or they’d underestimated his willingness to commit physical violence when dining at a table with three members of Parliament.
Eli conquered the second- and third-floor stairs two at a time, looking forward to a hot soak and—
What the—?
A seam of light from beneath the door to the observatory broke his step.
He checked his watch. Ten thirty. Mrs. Clarkwell barely made it to her wheelchair these days, let alone to visit the treasures he promised she could come and stare at any time.
There was a fortune in archeological finds in there he was itching to catalogue just as soon as the professor and the appraiser could get their collective asses by to tell him if it was even worth the trouble.
Had someone heard about the find? Someone who’d known he wouldn’t be home tonight?
Creeping toward the room, he pressed his ear against the wood paneling, hoping to ascertain just how many people he needed to expel from his house.
And possibly from this world.
A soft, melodic hum vibrated through the door, husky, lyrical, and…female.
Eli pulled back, glaring at the heavy wood as if he could burn through it to see the little vixen on the other side.
She wouldn’t.
Eli threw the door open with every bit the amount of force he’d used when this senseless woman had invaded his house—his fucking life—not twenty-four hours ago.
What he found was entirely different scenery than before, that was for damned sure. She was dressed, for one. And the lights were blazing as if she wasn’t even trying to hide her presence this time.
Producing a little eep of surprise, Rosaline Goode whirled around, bumping the business end of the telescope with her elbow.
“Drat,” she muttered, dramatic brows lowering over a look of mild accusation. “I’d only just calibrated the new coordinates to the—”
“Tell me I’m not engaged to a lunatic,” he gritted out, unable to tear away his death grip on the door latch. “Tell me you didn’t break into my house after last night’s calamitous fiasco and—”
“I didn’t!” She picked up the big leather logbook on the writing table next to the contraption and hugged it to her chest as if it’d block any incoming bullets.
“I called upon you this afternoon to ask permission, but as you weren’t here, I obtained it from Mrs. Clarkwell.
You can ask her, if you like. I wish I’d known she wasn’t the crotchety old witch she was reputed to be.
Would have saved the both of us a great deal of troub— Why are you looking at me like that? ”
He couldn’t imagine what a fool he seemed. His jaw gone slack. His eyes fixed and unblinking. Arms hanging like two wet noodles at his sides as he gawked at the woman for what felt like the first time.
Had she been this fucking beautiful last night?
He’d not allowed himself to notice.
Her hair was piled high on her head in some intricate style held together by a feminine magic that frankly amazed him.
It wasn’t a vibrant color, or even an identifiable one.
Somewhere in between dark honey and light oak, if he had to take a stab at it.
An almost unnatural sheen rippled in the light as she moved, turning the few loose locks down her back into a waterfall of satin.
Her eyes were so dark a blue, he had to take several steps closer to properly appreciate the color. He’d had a verbose boss once, that might have called her eyes mercurial.
A simple white blouse was tucked into an elegant skirt of fetching blue and green plaid, which matched the cravat knotted below the high-necked lace of her collar. Little pearls bobbed from her ears, obviously paired with the broach that fastened her cravat to the blouse.
She looked like a schoolteacher.
Like a woman.
In proper lighting, he conceded that her features appeared more elfin than immature, though she was still painfully young.
Fifteen years younger. Holy fuck.
It wasn’t unheard of, he supposed. Rich old men took young wives all the time.
And yet, it’d always seemed so ridiculous to him.
Did they fool themselves into thinking such a pretty young thing was actually attracted to them?
Or did they just not care, enjoying the fact that they’d bought a lovely toy to legally bed as they pleased?
Either thought had always turned his stomach. He’d considered the practice pathetic.
And yet here he was. A man with silver threads in his hair about to take on a wife who’d not been a woman for very long.
What a mess. What a goddamn—
“Please don’t make me go.” Her fervent plea reminded him she’d been waiting for an answer as he stood there drooling like the town idiot with a fresh head wound.
Apparently discerning he was unarmed, she abandoned the book to the table and crossed the dais upon which the telescope was mounted to entreat him further. “I figured, the damage has already been done, does it hurt anything if I watch the Andromedids?”
Remembering to inflate lungs starved for air he replied, “It don’t hurt nothin’. I mean—anything.” Damn it, he’d spent more than ten years fixing his Western diction. Using the correct words instead of the plunky patois he’d learned in the mines.
She made him forget himself.
And in offering a slight smile, damned if she didn’t steal his breath twice in as many minutes.
He glanced away, his gaze finding the table upon which the treasure was kept, covered now since her last intrusion. The cover was undisturbed, the trap he’d set still in place.
She truly just wanted to use the telescope. It made sense, he supposed. She came from a wealthy, titled family. Granted, not as wealthy as him, but she needed for nothing.
Perhaps she was different than—
“Do you want to see?” she asked, eyes sparkling.
He blinked. “See what?”
“The meteor shower.” Motioning to the telescope, she bustled back over to it, bending slightly to press her eye to the lens and to fiddle with a few knobs. “I just have to position the lens back in the right place.”
Eli had never lived with a woman before. Had never stood still long enough to watch one go about her business. Sure, he’d enjoyed a romp with a few—okay, dozens. And he’d had friendly interactions with almost all of them.
But this was different.
He wasn’t kicking open a door with his belt half undone, ready for a romp; he was looking at his fiancée.
He enjoyed the way the slight train of her skirt swished along the shiny wood floors.
He liked the wide belt she’d cinched around her startlingly small waist. The little gather of frills at the cuffs of her shock-white blouse.
He was arrested by how her feet never really seemed to touch the ground, and the graceful way her wrists and hands moved with deft skill. Like every gesture was a dance.