“I’m sorry about your father.”
Her response took him by surprise, but he quickly determined she was striving to direct his attention away from pursuing a discourse on their more intimate encounter. She didn’t seem entirely comfortable with it. Because he wasn’t a worker as she’d thought? Because their paths were bound to cross again under very different circumstances? “Don’t be. He has made far too many people miserable.”
“Like your brother? Mr. Trewlove? I assume he was born on the wrong side of the blanket since he doesn’t carry your surname.”
“He was. I only recently discovered he existed, but we’ve become close in a rather short period of time.”
“Is it wrong of me to assume your father was unfaithful to your mother?”
“He was a right bastard to be honest, but I’d rather not discuss him.”
“Perhaps at this moment, you could use this more than I.” She offered him his glass.
Not much remained, but enough. He tossed back the scotch, aware of her watching him. While he knew it was impossible, he could have sworn that in that final swallow, he tasted her.
He glanced over his shoulder. No one stood at the library window, but he was fairly certain the inhabitants inside could see her silhouette and his. Her mother no doubt was mentally gauging the distance between them. Too close and she’d probably be screeching for a wedding. He wondered if it was the mother more than the daughter who was in search of a match.
He looked back at her. “Before you, I’ve never had a woman fall asleep on me while we were intimately engaged. Afterward, yes, but not during. I was rather disappointed we didn’t get to finish that kiss.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “Well, we did. It came to an end.”
He smiled. “Did it, Miss Garrison? Or is it simply waiting to be continued?”
Chapter 5
He’d left her then, taken both empty glasses with him, and rejoined his friends in the library. While she’d been too stunned to do much of anything except wander along the green between the edge of the garden and the terrace until her mother had finally come to her in order to announce they were to depart.
If the gentlemen had spoken more of business, Sam would have expressed his ire once they were in the carriage. Instead, he’d remained silent throughout the journey to the Trewlove Hotel where they had a suite of rooms on the top floor. She suspected its owner, Mick Trewlove, had once lived within these very walls, but a maid who came in to clean each day had revealed that he’d moved his family to a posh house.
The maid had also whispered that all the Trewloves were by-blows. Leonora had been surprised to learn that Rook communicated with his brother, more astonished by the affection in his voice when he mentioned him. Most were intolerant of those born outside the boundaries of marriage. That Rook wasn’t said much about his character, shed it in a favorable light as far as she was concerned.
Sitting in a plush chair by the low fire in her bedchamber, sketch pad in hand but pencil unmoving, Leonora contemplated all this, her thoughts continually drifting back to Rook. Had he issued his parting words because he knew she took that kiss to bed with her every night, examining it from various angles as she drifted off to sleep, and sometimes being fortunate enough to relive it in her dreams? Could it really have been as all-encompassing, as all-powerful, as she remembered?
Tonight, on that terrace, a few times he had looked like he might lean toward her and press his lips to hers. She’d not have stopped him. She’d have welcomed him—
Then she would have married him because her mother would have insisted.
She was beginning to understand the true beauty of the Elysium. It offered the chance to explore without suffering consequences, especially as the men who worked there wouldn’t be wandering around the aristocracy. Rather unfortunate that Aiden Trewlove had imagined she wouldn’t either when he’d sent his brother to her.
With a growl of frustration because she might never escape reminders of that infamous club if the Chessmen did indeed invest, she turned her attention to her sketchbook and began drawing lines, circles, swoops, and intricate designs. She’d always found solace in the way the pencil sketched what she envisioned in her mind.
During her journey across the Atlantic, she’d felt swallowed up by the vastness of the sea—the blueness of it, the beauty of it. Staring out at something that offered no distractions, she’d come up with an idea for another sort of machine. She’d drafted what sheenvisioned for the outside easily enough, but the inner workings were a bit more complicated, and she was certain once she figured them out that the outside of the contraption would no doubt need to be altered somewhat.
Her father had always encouraged her to start with the first cog and go from there, but she preferred to begin with how it would look when completed, so it served as a beacon for her imagination, gave it a focus. She knew her mind would take wrong turns and travel along paths that led nowhere but that was all part of the journey. None of the hours she devoted to exploration were wasted because even the aspects that didn’t work contributed to her discovering what did.
Therefore, she’d sat in a chair on the deck of the ship and spent hours filling up pages with notions and potential solutions. And all the possibilities waited patiently for her when she needed a diversion from her wandering musings that now included a kiss that had not yet been completed.
The rap on the door startled her, and she was rather certain she was blushing with guilt because of the direction in which her rambling thoughts had been traveling at a breakneck speed only a minute ago. She had to swallow and clear her throat before she could call out, “Come.”
The door opened but a crack, just enough for her brother to peer in. “May I?”
Although her maid had assisted her in preparing for bed, she was wearing a wrapper and was adequately covered. Besides, it was difficult to look at her baby brother and see him as a grown man. “Of course.”
Attired only in shirtsleeves and trousers, he wandered in, closing the door behind him, and joined her by the fire, leaning his shoulder against the mantel. “Mama was in fine form this evening, wasn’t she?”
“You’re fortunate no unmarried ladies were in attendance, or she’d have had you betrothed by night’s end,” she told him, with a wry quirk of her lips.
“If the lady had a substantial dowry, it could solve our problem.”
