Chapter Fourteen
Because I knew what you wanted was what I also wanted.
Oh dear. She did want. So much. It was almost uncomfortable to be sitting here in this room with him, what with wanting to launch herself at him and press her mouth against his. Never mind having him caress her, as he had before. She just wanted.
But there were at least three other presentations happening today, and she couldn’t do anything about all the wanting, except—
“Could we meet at noon?”
she asked, startled to hear herself sound nearly breathless.
“Noon would be excellent,”
he replied, in that wicked, knowing tone he’d used before when they were discussing the system-cleanse.
“Good. I am glad that is settled.”
She picked up the papers in her lap and stared at them, even though her mind wasn’t registering anything so complicated as words. “I think we have—yes, we have another appointment. And then a few more after that.”
“Shall I call them in?”
he asked, and she nodded.
He rose and headed to the door, and she couldn’t help but turn her head to watch him. His back was broad and strong, and his arse was deliciously shaped. She’d never had that thought about a backside before, but here she was.
Apparently wanting meant you also thought about new things.
Two women entered the room, each wearing hats adorned with grapes.
They weren’t going to propose turning the factory into a grape greenhouse, were they?
“Thank you for the opportunity,”
one of them began.
As it turned out, they wanted to suggest the factory be used to manufacture grape scissors. Because when someone thought about bettering the world, the first answer of course would be “making it easier to separate grapes from bunches.”
Though, she might be a bit fatigued, so perhaps she was being a tad too judgmental.
Then followed a potential pencil producer, an antimacassar expert who wanted to save all the upholstery in the world from gentlemen’s hair pomade, and a plumassier, who wanted to expand the production of ornamental feathers.
It was nearly teatime when all their meetings were through. Diantha was exhausted; she was used to dealing with the minutiae of her own detail-oriented brain, but she wasn’t accustomed to hearing others explain theirs in such exquisite detail.
“Thank goodness,”
Lord Lucian said, when the final presenter had left.
Just then, the door opened again, and one of the duke’s footmen appeared.
“My lord?”
he said in a hesitant voice. “If I might speak to you and the lady?”
Diantha groaned internally.
“Of course,”
Lord Lucian replied. “You are—?”
“Wilkins, my lord.”
“Wilkins. Excellent.”
“Well,”
Wilkins began, “I heard the two of you have been having appointments for your factory, and I was hoping . . .”
Please don’t let it be another ridiculous idea, Diantha thought. Because she was so tired, and she didn’t think she could keep her reaction from her face, and it would be rude to reveal what she thought of whatever this footman turned entrepreneur was going to suggest.
“You were hoping . . . ?”
Lord Lucian prodded, when the man went silent.
“I was hoping you’d agree to meet with my brother. He’s just returned from the navy, he has a bum leg, but he’s a hard worker. He was a rigger. That’s how he got injured.”
“A rigger? That is what?”
“He maintains the rigging on the ship. The masts, the sails, all of that.”
“Of course.”
“And he tried to speak with some of Her Majesty’s Navy about his idea, but they wanted nothing to do with it.”
Hopefully that didn’t mean it was some ludicrous proposal to populate ships with various taxidermied sea life or something like that.
“What is the idea?”
“He has a prototype of a kind of jacket a sailor could wear that will support him should he go overboard. It’s made of cork, and it floats.”
Diantha’s eyes widened in surprise. Not ludicrous at all.
“So this jacket, this cork jacket, it could potentially save sailors’ lives?”
Lord Lucian asked.
The footman gave a vigorous nod. “Most sailors, they don’t know how to swim, and so if they fall overboard, it’s just—”
and he shook his head.
“But if they are wearing this jacket, they what? Float in the water?”
“Yes, exactly that. They can survive long enough for their ship to fish them out of the water, and the jacket just has to dry out until it can be used again.”
“How big are the jackets?”
he asked, and Diantha found herself surprised he’d thought of that detail. Of course something that saved lives would be of no use if it was too bulky to wear.
“Bigger than one of your jackets, my lord, but not by much.”
“And the cork, where is it manufactured?”
Diantha asked.
The footman looked at her, clear enthusiasm in his expression. He must care for his brother very much, she thought.
“It comes from trees, my lady. Davy—that’s my brother—he can explain it better than I can, but it’s taken from special oak trees.”
“We’d better meet with your brother, then,”
Diantha said with a smile.
The footman’s face split into a wide grin. “Thank you! Davy said there’d be no chance of you wanting to hear about it, since the navy didn’t. But I said he had to at least let me try. I’ll tell him you would like to see him. Thank you.”
He left, that grin lighting up the room, and he shut the door behind him, leaving them alone again.
“Rather remarkable if the answer was inside your father’s town house the whole time,”
Diantha observed.
“I can’t see where anyone would find fault with wanting to save sailors’ lives.”
“Even if it doesn’t protect gentlemen’s trousers from mud,”
Diantha replied.
“Or make grape retrieval that much easier.”
They glanced at one another, each beginning to laugh, both from fatigue from the day and how ridiculous some of the presentations had been. It was entirely comfortable to laugh with him, she thought; she wasn’t accustomed to laughing with anyone, to be honest. Occasionally Drusilla, but even then her sister would often find a way to tease Diantha about something so she ended up feeling odd, even in her own family. Again.
But she didn’t feel the same way with him, even though they were clearly two very different types of people. Perhaps that was because he seemed to accept others’ differences and not take umbrage that there was a difference?
Even her parents, open-minded as they were in some ways, could be very disdainful if others did not think as they did. She knew that from firsthand experience.
But he didn’t seem to hold that same judgmental attitude.
Was it possible, she wondered, that he didn’t find her off-putting, but instead just found her . . . different?
Not that it mattered. They had no future together: their parents’ feud ensured that. Never mind neither one of them had even thought of it.
Except her. Because she had. He would be a partner who would be a truly equal partner, willing to listen to another point of view, not insisting his was the only way.
And she? Was she that open-minded?
She’d have to say no. Though with some encouragement, with a demonstration of how it was done, she bet she could be. It would certainly free her from feeling constricted; if she were able to just say aloud I want to be on my own, living my own life, and not doing precisely what Society expects. That would be the ultimate freedom.
But she could not. Not now, and she knew that she neither could nor should count on him to give her the support such a statement would require.
It wasn’t possible, for all the reasons she’d already told herself.
She’d just have to hope seeing him tomorrow, kissing him again, would actually work. She wanted to have her own sensible brain back. Not this desperate, longing, passionate being who kept popping up at the worst times. Which was all the time.
And if it didn’t work? Well, if not, she was in even more trouble than she thought.
He was at the British Museum by 11:47 a.m. When was the last time he had been early to anything?
Usually, he arrived fashionably late, at which time the event—whatever it was—would actually begin, because he had graced it with his presence.
But today the person that was most important to the event was her. After she’d left the day before, he’d tracked Wilkins the footman down to arrange a specific meeting time. Then he’d organized all the proposals from the day into neat piles, leaving them on the desk. He felt oddly satisfied with the day’s work, even though only one of the meetings might prove useful—and that hadn’t been planned at all.
Was this how people felt when they worked? Was that something he should actually consider?
Shammie had mentioned it at the wedding, possibly getting Lucian to work with him, but Lucian hadn’t given it too much consideration.
But perhaps he should. Perhaps he might be able to find as much satisfaction in a job well done as a pleasure fully enjoyed.
All these new ideas, new concepts—of work, accomplishment, doing right in the world, and helping others—were unsettling. He wasn’t accustomed to feeling enervated.
Usually, he was the one maneuvering situations so people were pleased and he didn’t have to expend unnecessary effort. That applied even in romantic circumstances. Not that he wouldn’t do everything he could with his natural and learned talents, but those efforts had significant reward.
But now, with her, he felt as though for once he wasn’t the one in charge. That she was intelligent and insightful enough to be able to keep up with him while also being so remarkably attractive he nearly felt dumbstruck.
Him. Lucian Eldridge, renowned for his silver tongue, was dumbstruck.
And early.
“Good morning,”
she said, startling him from his reverie.
“Yes, of course, good morning.”
She looked lovely—and expectant. Thank goodness. If she had come here today to tell him she’d had a change of mind and had already gotten over him, he’d have been more frustrated than when his older brother had decided he would no longer play any games with Lucian because it wasn’t what heirs did.
That it was something siblings did that might make them closer was apparently irrelevant.
“I’ve been thinking about our meetings yesterday,”
she said. “I don’t think I will need to put another advertisement in. I think your footman’s brother has hit on just what we need.”
She held her gloved hand out and ticked items off on her fingers. “One, the factory won’t have to replace too much of its equipment to accommodate this new production line. Two, this product will benefit everyone—not just duck-hunters or grape-eaters or whatever types of people enjoy those stuffed monstrosities.” She shuddered as she spoke.
“Are you saying you did not take your lady cat home and put it in a place of honor?”
he asked in a tone of amusement.
“Absolutely not!”
she said. “I did the only sensible thing I could—”
“As you would,”
he interjected, and she acknowledged the truth with a slightly embarrassed smile.
“—and gave it to Drusilla, who predictably thought it was charming. I told her she could have it, as long as I never had to see it again.”
“And three,”
he supplied, “the duke will not find it a frivolous item, since it is so useful.”
She nodded. “Yes, and my parents will want everyone to be able to live, if only so they can all do what they want.”
“Like we are today,”
he reminded her.
Her cheeks flushed, and she bit her lip. Her beautiful, red, plush lip. A lip he might be biting soon.
“The work won’t stop just because we’ve settled on something,”
she said. “We will need to make an outline of what we’ll need, now that we know what we will likely be producing. We’ll need to hire the factory manager, and staff, and—and whatever else needs to be done, businesswise,”
she finished, sounding as though she was warning him.
As though spending more time with her would be anything but welcome.
“I assumed so,”
he replied. “We’ve also got to oversee the improvements, and I imagine Wilkins’s brother—Davy, was it?—won’t be flush with cash, so we’ll have to provide the funds, at least in the beginning.”
“Yes,”
she said, sounding relieved. “That is precisely what I was thinking as well.”
“Did you imagine I was going to leave the actual work to you?”
“Well,”
she began, “yes. I didn’t know if you gathered the scope of what we’re trying to do.”
He nudged her shoulder with his. “Not trying. What we are going to do.”
“Right. Yes. What we are going to do.”
She wanted to tell him that she didn’t think that badly of him, to imagine he would wash his hands of the whole business once they’d decided. That it was just because this was her first experience with an actual rake, and she didn’t know if they operated by a different set of rules than other people.
Such as, for example, agreeing to assignations at the British Museum with people they had no intention of courting.
Though, that applied to her as well. Did that make her a rake also? A female rake?
Rakes reminded her of dead leaves. She was not a collector of dead leaves.
She racked her brain for the implements her father had bought during his gardening mania. “A cultivator!”
she exclaimed, then realized he had no context for what she meant. “Ah, never mind,”
she said, shaking her head in embarrassment.
Though, female cultivator made it sound much more enjoyable.
“Don’t apologize. It is always refreshing when someone says the unexpected.”
He paused, and his hold on her arm got tighter. “Such as, for example, that we should participate in a mutual system-cleanse.”
“Mm-hmm,”
she said, still too mortified to speak.
“Speaking of unexpected, I was concerned you might not be able to make our appointment, since it was only arranged yesterday.”
She knew he was deliberately switching the subject so she could recover, and she was grateful. Perhaps a rake, a cultivator, was someone who could ascertain the right thing to do in any social circumstance, and that was what made them so charming. So cultivating.
“I seldom have trouble doing what I wish,”
Diantha replied, then froze when she realized what she’d said.
“I can see that,”
he replied, laughter in his tone.
“Though, that isn’t the truth,”
she admitted. “What I do and what I wish to do are two different things, though I am free to do what I wish.”
“I don’t follow,”
he said. “Tell me what you mean.”
She was startled that he’d asked her to explain. So few people wanted to talk about anything but themselves. “I mean at some point, I want to do just what I want to do without worrying about anybody else. My family, I mean. Not that they are worried about themselves, it’s just—”
she shook her head “—if I don’t worry, no one else will. My family, they—”
How to say it without exposing them, but also not lying? “—they can be a bit preoccupied at times.” With apples, and Italian teachers who don’t speak Italian, and investing money in shady propositions. But she didn’t say any of that.
“I understand that.”
He spoke in a rueful tone. “My father and brother just prefer that I not be out doing anything that would cause their equally stuffy friends to judge them.”
He turned to look at her, then winked. “Though, usually I am.”
Right. She could not allow herself to forget that he was a rake with a certain reputation. That this Cloakroom Experiment was likely tame compared to his usual exploits.
That he wanted to forget their moment together so he could continue on his merry rakish way. There was a downside to cavorting with a rake—yes, you got all their rakish tendencies, but you also got the reality that their behavior and their interest was only in passing.
“What happened?”
he said, his eyebrows drawing together in concern. “Did I say something?”
Lucifer was far too perceptive.
“Uh . . . no, of course not,”
she replied, feeling her cheeks heat, knowing that her face couldn’t hide the lie.
“I will accept your word, though you know I don’t believe you. But I am not going to press you on it. I know what it is like to be forced to reveal a truth when you would much prefer to keep it hidden.”
He paused. “But I am curious about what you said before. About how solving the issue would allow you to do what you wished.”
She ignored his question, instead focusing on what he’d said earlier. “What truth did you reveal? Though that might be me asking you to repeat the thing you just said is unpleasant.”
He drew her closer against him. “I wouldn’t have said it if it mattered now.”
She shifted away instinctively, and he put his hand on hers where it rested against him.
He paused. “No, wait. That doesn’t sound how I meant. I want to say that I am comfortable talking to you about my truths.”
He gave a rueful laugh. “Not something I’ve said to many people.”
“Thank you,”
she replied in a soft voice.
“So. Are you going to tell me?”
she asked, after a moment or two had passed.
They were walking through the museum, past various people staring at artifacts and murmuring to each other and themselves. Lucian had taken a look at what was on display and had decided that the manuscript room was the most likely to offer the best opportunity for privacy.
If anybody was in there, they would be looking at pages, likely seated at a table, and wouldn’t pay attention if two people were standing behind a bookshelf or tucked into a corner.
“Tell you—oh, my truth?”
he said, startled. “Yes. I will admit, since you seem to have a similar story, that I often wish I had been born into a different family. One that would celebrate joy and living and experiences, rather than stuffing them into a hidden drawer and pretending they don’t exist.”
She gave a snort. “And I wish I had been born into a family with an iota of sense.”
She paused. “Though, that isn’t entirely fair. Drusilla has sense, she just chooses not to use it most of the time.”
“Your sister is quite remarkable.”
“Yes.”
She accompanied her word with a heavy sigh.
“And you are forced into taking care of her . . . remarkability?”
“Yes.”
“If we could swap . . .” he began.
“I would turn into an even worse pedant than Drusilla says I am. Remember when she accused me of wanting planned spontaneity?”
She inhaled. “It was not a compliment.”
“If this is your idea of planned spontaneity,”
he said in a silky tone, “I am very much in favor of it.”
“And,”
she said, feeling reckless and spirited and encouraged by his enthusiasm, “I want to solve our family’s problems so my family is in a better position. They rely on me—even if they don’t admit it—to keep track of finances and whatnot.”
“And whatnot,”
he murmured.
“But if the factory seems as though its product might make money, or at the very least not be a further burden to my parents, then I might feel as though I can finally let them manage things on their own.”
“What would you do?”
She shrugged, feeling awkward. She was not used to anyone asking her questions about what she wanted. Usually people asked her questions about things they wanted her to do for them. That the questioner was a remarkably handsome man she wanted to kiss, and who wanted to kiss her, made it even more unusual. “Uh, I suppose I just want to be free. I haven’t thought much about what I would do. More about what I would not do, which is take care of them forever, or marry anyone just to escape. I want to make my own way, and I don’t want to be dependent on anyone.”
“You sound like me,”
he replied, and she was relieved he sounded admiring. “I am hoping my father recognizes my autonomy once we resolve this issue and gives me the freedom to make my own way. I want far more adventure than what is available here, in this life.”
More adventure meaning more rakish escapades, she supposed. But she couldn’t deny him that, since that was what she wanted him for.
Nothing else. She had to remind herself of that.
“Oh, where are we?”
she asked as they entered the manuscript room. It was heavily curtained, probably to keep sunlight from damaging the fragile papers, and a few lamps gleamed with a soft golden light, casting long shadows.
Only one other person was there, an older, rumpled man who looked up when they came in, then immediately back down to what he was reviewing.
“The manuscript room.”
He gestured toward the room. “I thought it was unlikely to be very popular, and we could have some privacy here.”
“For our Anteroom Experiment,”
she said. She sounded hesitant, and Lucian felt his chest tighten. But he needed to be certain this was actually what she wanted.
“If you would prefer not to, we can take a look at some old recipes or something, and I can escort you home. There would be no offense from me.”
He made sure to make eye contact with her while he spoke so she knew he was sincere.
“Look at some old recipes?”
she echoed, sounding amused. “No, thank you. I just . . . I have never done anything like this before.”
“Visited a manuscript room, or the other thing?”
She swatted at him. “The other thing, of course.”
“So you have visited manuscript rooms before. And here I thought I was introducing you to some new adventures.”
She laughed at that, and he returned her smile, feeling himself ease into the familiar role of seducer. But that wasn’t precisely correct: he would never coerce anyone into doing something they didn’t actually wish for themselves. He just helped them to see that they wanted it themselves and then provided them with the means to do it.
In this case, it meant he’d be providing her with his mouth. His body, if she was especially wanting.
However, that could prove to have some logistical awkwardness. They were in the manuscript room, after all.
But he was nothing if not inventive, especially if it would be rewarded in pleasure.
“Well,”
he said, nodding toward one of the curtains, “should we go over there so we can begin?”
He heard her breath catch, and then she reached down and took his hand in hers before walking more swiftly toward where he’d indicated. The room’s only other occupant didn’t bother looking up again, and Lucian felt the rush of anticipation as they got closer.
He would make this experiment as satisfying for both of them as he could. Before it inevitably ended.
Because it would end. Even if he didn’t want it to, people didn’t stay with him. They found him diverting, but except for Shammie, nobody stuck around long enough to get to know him. His truth. Who he was, and what he could do.
He hadn’t realized that until just now. That he felt the lack of permanence at all.
No wonder he was so set on the pursuit of pleasure—it was the only constant in his life. Well, that and his family’s unerring judgment.