Chapter 2 #3
Oh dear. Barbara should probably hit him with her fan and shout lawks, or fie sir, or similar.
Instead she found herself growing all warm and tingly again, hyper aware of the muscles beneath her hand.
What would those muscles look like without the cover of his jacket and shirt? What would they feel like, were she to strip off her glove?
Sir Kenneth Fraser was a flirt, a charmer, a gentle scoundrel, and she was beginning to fear, a rake. But he hadn’t dismissed her intellect or her disability. He’d sat with her and spoke to her as an equal about her interests.
Perhaps it was all part of his practiced charm, but Barbara found herself captivated.
If it took a rake to show her such courtesies, then perhaps rakes weren’t that bad.
After all, hadn’t she just been thinking how it would be nice, just once, to learn more about the pleasure she’d missed out on in her life?
A man stepped in front of them and Kenneth pulled them up short. Barbara caught her breath guiltily and forced a smile for her cousin. “My lord, we were just on our way to see you!”
The Earl of Standish glared at the man by her side. “Were you?” he growled.
“Oh yes! Of course you know Sir Kenneth Fraser?”
“We’ve met.”
Met? From the way her cousin was staring at Kenneth, the Scotsman had personally kicked his dog or spat upon his mother. Or both.
Barbara glanced worriedly between them. “He—He seemed quite interested in your ushabti and canopic jars when I mentioned them—”
“Och, aye,” Kenneth interrupted, full of good-natured charm. “I cannae get enough of canopy jugs.”
“More like my cousin’s jugs,” Cousin Errol growled. “You stay away from Barbara—she had better not be who you were hoping to meet earlier!” The old man thrust his arm out to her. “I’ll show you the new ushabti—they are a stunning color, my dear, you’ll love them. Go back to the dancing, Sir—”
But Kenneth didn’t release her. “Nonsense! I’m fascinated by the way Miss Fokette described them. I would be devastated to leave her in yer care without the chance to see them.”
The Earl continued to glower but Kenneth tugged her into motion. “The collection’s this way, aye?” he asked cheerfully, already heading toward the study.
Barbara glanced over her shoulder where her cousin flagged down a servant, said something to him quietly, then hurried after them.
Once in the study, however, the worry of the previous moments failed to matter. She sucked in a breath and dropped Kenneth’s arm, hurrying as best she could to a stand in the center of the room. “Oh, Cousin Errol, they are magnificent,” she breathed. “Wherever did you get them?”
The Earl launched into a convoluted explanation about a French seller working in Portugal.
It was a garbled story likely only of interest to a collector, though surprisingly Kenneth not only followed, but asked specific questions.
In his charming way, he soon had her mother’s cousin explaining the nuances of tariffs and importations.
The conversation dimmed behind her as Barbara exhaled in wonder. The piece before her had been created by artisans three thousand years ago, hundreds of miles away…and was as beautiful tonight as it had been then, sealed in the tomb with…
She leaned closer, studying the hieroglyphs with a furrowed brow.
Right, so there was a feather—no, a reed, and a squiggle showing the direction, and an eye, and a bird…
A slow smile crept over her lips. The man whose tomb these had been found in was named Paser-nakht, a military leader from the Nineteenth Dynasty.
He’d been a great warrior, a Commander of the Medjay, and served as a Royal Envoy to the Pharaoh.
Paser-nakht had traveled extensively, protected borders and trade routes, and had lived into old age to enjoy his rewards. How unusual.
Barbara’s lips moved as she worked out the pictographs accompanying the small figurines who’d been created to serve the deceased in the afterlife.
Many years ago, her father’s father had told her a man is never really forgotten as long as his name is spoken; each and every time she read a name from an artifact like this one, chills raced down her spine.
She didn’t know Paser-nakht: he was long gone. But as long as these pieces were on display and she could read his name, she was, in some way, remembering him.
Had he been a good man? Had Ma’at judged his heart against a feather and sent him to Aaru? Or did his soul now wander the desert sands, hunting for the scattered pieces from his robbed tomb…such as this one?
“Och, really? A whole twelve percent? Tell me, milord Earl, who is it that benefits from these tariffs…”
Shaking her head at her fancy, and at the dull conversation behind her, Barbara moved around the stand examining the new pieces. The Earl had placed them in a display with several jars she recognized from previous visits. She’d studied and sketched them all, and now they held little interest—
Wait.
Her gaze was drawn back to a canopic jar in the corner of the stand.
Cousin Errol had acquired that one eighteen months ago.
It was small and particularly valuable, thanks to the scarcity of artifacts from women’s tombs.
This one was inlaid with precious stones, but the patina… the patina was different.
Different?
Frowning, she glanced around the room, wondering if a draft or too much direct sunlight was the culprit.
No, the stand was out of the way of any potential draft.
Curious now, she picked up the lantern and began to shuffle among the Earl’s collection, studying the pieces she knew as the men’s conversation droned on in the background.
“And ye’re telling me the packaging costs have doubled? Astonishing!”
She’d just found the third piece which seemed off when the door opened and Mother and Papa joined them.
“Barbara!” Mother called, sweeping across the room in that elegant, distracted way of hers. “We have missed you!”
Since she’d spent the majority of the ball sitting in one place, being bored out of her mind, and utterly ignored by her well-meaning parents, Barbara sincerely doubted that.
Papa, meanwhile, was being introduced to Kenneth by the Earl, and was soon inclining his head politely. “Always a pleasure to meet a fellow antiquarian!”
“Och, I cannae claim such a title,” Kenneth demurred, sending a knowing smile to her across the room. “Yer charming daughter was the one who introduced me to the study, but I find myself fascinated.”
“You ought to see her collection.” Papa beamed, always proud of her work. “It puts the Earl’s to shame.”
“Alas,” Cousin Errol sighed. “You are likely correct.”
Kenneth had turned to her, brows raised, and Barbara found herself feeling uncertain. She wasn’t shy about her collection, but suddenly had the urge to duck her chin and brush off the compliments.
Why? To make herself smaller in Sir Kenneth’s eyes?
Bother with that.
She lifted her chin in challenge, and began, “In fact—”
Mother, on the other hand, tittered unhelpfully. “You know how it is, Sir Kenneth, ahahaha. A lady needs someplace to spend her pin money!”
As if Barbara’s inheritance from her grandfather wasn’t enough to buy the Earl of Standish’s collection outright. She began to bristle—but when she looked up, Kenneth’s expression had turned from surprise to a soft sort of approval. And that made her warm all over again.
Most inconveniently.
“I would verra much like to see that,” he murmured, then cleared his throat. “Do ye give tours, Miss Fokette?”
Before she could answer—how was she supposed to respond to that?—her father clapped Kenneth on the shoulder. “I’m sure she’d be delighted to share. Stop by tomorrow, eh?”
Barbara had forgotten how to breathe again.
Papa had just…invited an eligible man to their home. Her home? To tour her collection?
The reasonable, intelligent part of her was trying to calm her expectations. He is a rake. He’s already made a fornication jest. It is not as if he is courting you.
But the rest of her, the part still reacting to the arousal of his touch earlier, was trying not to squeal in excitement.
Especially when, still holding her gaze, the delicious-looking Scotsman murmured, “Tomorrow it is, then.”