Callum rarely spoke without thinking, but of course the one time he did, he’d cut his cousin to the quick.
James stared out the window, his jaw tight.
“I’m sorry, James—”
“Stop. I know, and I forgive you.” He chuckled without humor. “Lord knows you’re right.”
Callum cleared his throat and shifted in his seat.
“She’s a nice girl, Cal,” James said, still not meeting his gaze. “Don’t break her heart or our business just to get her in your bed.”
Of course he wanted to bed her, but the thought of a quick tumble settled like a rock in his gut. He’d begun to crave her presence, her whip-smart mind and clever words, her soft touch and reluctant smiles. “Ye were willing to ruin her.”
His cousin smirked at him. “We all know I’m not the brains of the operation. Everyone expects me to make a hash of it. I’m the rascal, remember? You are the serious one, the upstanding one.”
“Violet and I are only pretending. I’m no’ taking her to bed.”
“Of course you’re not,” he drawled. “But decide if she’s worth it—decide if going to bloody Panama is worth it.”
“I ken what I’m doing,” he snarled, but his insides curled.
Wanting Violet would only end in disappointment, and he couldn’t risk taking his focus off his family’s future, not even for a woman with berry lips and the sweetest soul he’d ever known.
Chapter 16
Violet heaved a sighof relief and pushed the handkerchief full of halved grapes into her pocket. She’d been prepared for another assault by a goose on her way through the gardens, but she’d managed to evade Kevin and reach the glass atrium nestled onto a swell of earth near the edge of the lake.
Lord Valebrook had constructed the enclosed structure on the footprint of a rotunda built generations ago, the cracked and leaking marble dome removed and replaced with leaded-glass panels. The lantern she’d carried with her illuminated the path to atrium’s entrance, and welcome silence surrounded her when she stepped inside.
The interior of the atrium-turned-conservatory was warmer than the chilly spring air, allowing the stacked shelves of potted plants to thrive through the winter. One wall was devoted entirely to orchids, their delicate stems laboring to hold blossoms in every shade imaginable. Vines and tender buds cascaded from containershanging along the walls, and the rosettes from bromeliads fragranced the air with their sweetness.
Iron support beams mimicked the arboreal nature of the space, climbing from the earth between glass panes like vines, twisting and reaching from all sides until they coiled together around a central oculus. Valebrook had put his telescope, an acquisition from a friend who’d recently retired from his post teaching astronomy at Oxford, in the center of the room, pointed towards the wide glass panels that provided an unobstructed view of the heavens.
Violet exhaled, and a deep satisfaction swept over her as she turned off the electric sconces, bathing the room in long, indistinct shadows. Dinner had been a disaster; Lady Fosworth, stalwartly refusing to allow anyone to use anything but her title, had interrogated Violet about her shameful lack of a third season, querying what malady had kept her from the social circuit. The woman sank her teeth into the meaty piece of potential gossip and held tight, declining to quit even when Bridget attempted to distract her with a debate on the most recent necklines from Paris. With Aunt Margaret already asleep in a chair next to the fire and Timothy notably absent, she missed her sisters and their unfailing support. In her malaise, she’d searched the room for the familiar brooding Scotsman that always seemed close by.
But business had kept him away, as he’d said it would. Not a desire to avoid dancing with her. How quickly she’d fallen into old patterns, searching for more from him than actually existed. He was only pretending to be attracted to her, and she needed to remind herself of that.
She pulled her notebook from her pocket and laid it on the small pedestal table next to the telescope. The leather cover was creased and worn, its pages soft from frequent handling, and, despite being an artifact from the most difficult time in her life, peace rushed through her veins when she touched it.
Twenty-one hours right ascension, forty degrees north in declination. It took her a moment to adjust to using this telescope, far finer than the one she used at home in Oxfordshire, but the moment Cygnus came into view, the clarity of the image pulled the breath from her lungs.
“Violet?”
She started as she spun around, knocking the lens out of position, but she sighed with relief when she saw the man standing in the doorway. “You read my note.”
She’d left a hastily scrawled invitation to join her under his door, hoping—
Well, she hadn’t stopped to examine what she had hoped, nor why she seemed compelled to see him, even when everyone else had retired for the evening. But an answer dawned when a weight lifted from her chest with his presence.
She’d started to trust him.
“Aye.” He gave her a crooked smile.
Her fingers twisted again. “I—I wanted to thank you.” She swallowed and hated the need for fortification to be up to thanking him. “For listening to me, for not judging me.”
His brows drew together. “Does that happen to ye often?”
She exhaled in a huff and turned her attention to the wrought-iron table beside the telescope. Her gloved fingers traced the pattern of the iron, twisting vines to mimic the patterns between the glass panels. “I’m not certain I can say anymore. When Hugh left me, people stared at me wherever I went. I stopped receiving invitations, and some women wouldn’t even make eye contact with me as I walked down the street.” She released a humorless chuckle. “As though being jilted was contagious. I had only just started going out in society again when I began my affair with Gregory. After he left, no one would tell me exactly what was being said, but I’m sure none of it was good.”
