Christ, this was going to be a long marriage.
Chapter Eight
LORD, THIS WAS GOING TO BE A LONG ELOPEMENT.HARRIET’S NECKwas stiff and her toes, still clad in slippers meant for a ballroom, were growing ever more frigid as they made their way north to Scotland, with its harsh climate and lenient marriage laws. Another blanket would have been more than welcome; unfortunately, one doesn’t always know what to pack when kidnapping a peer of the realm.
Harriet’s greatest tribulation, however, was Alexander’s presence. The man was awfully, woefully, horrifically handsome. Not that she would admit it out loud. She’d rather have her ears removed with a paring knife. She’d just spent an hour at a coaching inn having one of the most frustrating and insulting conversations of her life, and it had done very little to temper her ardor. The man was a blighter. Unfortunately, objectively, he was a quite gorgeous blighter.
She did her best to focus on the book she’d brought along, uninteresting as it was; Philippa’s house was not the best source for last-minute, engrossing reading material. Still, she ought to be circling words she didn’t know andnotstealing glances at a man’s jaw.
She’d never been so close to such a good-looking man. Harriet tried to talk herself out of any feelings of inferiority, but really, hisbeauty bordered on absurdity. He was just so … large. And strong. And still. He moved slowly and deliberately, which Harriet couldn’t really explain her excitement over. So much of her attraction to him was confounding.
To be sure, she knew why she liked certain parts of him. He had thick, black hair that seemed in danger of growing out of fashion within the week. And thick, black eyebrows to match; were eyebrows meant to be such a dominating feature? And such an attractive one? He had a wide mouth that she couldn’t stop her eyes from returning to again and again—her fingers burned to trace his lips. How could one describe a man’s lips without sounding brainsick? All of this was to say nothing of the chest she’d seen earlier, fit and broad and dusted with hair. Lord knows where he had his breeches made, but she dearly hoped the tailor who fitted them knew the effect his work had on women. Byron would have wept to have his creations affect people so deeply. No wonder Miss Evans had lingered so.
No matter how she cataloged the pieces, there was something about the whole of Lord Alexander that made onewant. Desperately. Something that made books—books!—fail to hold focus. He was a danger to her.
Thus, her decisionnotto engage in intercourse with the man. So much as a quarter of an hour in his bed was bound to inspire feelings of love—which she was certain would not be reciprocated. And the last thing she intended was to become a twitterpated birdbrain over Lord Alexander like so many others did in his presence.For goodreason, she added mentally, not wanting to denigrate anyone who might have fallen for his charms. Every heady glimpse at the man reinforced her decision.
“What are you doing?” he asked, tipping one side of his mouth up into a smirk.
“Reading,” Harriet replied, her heart racing at being caught.
“Does your reading ordinarily involve so much …”Mooning over men? No. “Circling?”
Harriet tore her gaze away from him and down, bashfully, to the pages in her lap, where she had circled the wordsfarmerandlandscapeas if they were unknown to her. God, but she was cork-brained.
“Oh. That.” Harriet swallowed thickly, her throat full of nerves and some odd, unfamiliar cousin of hunger. Her eyes went back to the feast at hand—histhroat. Why on earth would a man’s neck be erotic? Only, it was. He hadn’t shaved at the inn and stubble was beginning to show. It was oddly intimate to see an unshaven man.
Erotic!That’s what his lips were.
Alexander smiled at her, as if he knew precisely what she’d been thinking. Harriet flinched. “I’m circling words I don’t recognize. Of course, often I understand them due to context, but I haven’t recorded them before.”
Alexander reached across the carriage and lazily tipped up the spine of her book.
“You read about … agricultural precast of Welsh farmers in 1764 frequently, do you?” Words. Words were solid. This was solidground. With the conversation returning to her dictionary, Alexander ceased to be an object of desire and became instead an audience for her passion.
“Oh, no no! Well, sometimes. But no, I aim to document everything I can find. I’m creating a dictionary of sorts, particularly of slang words, cant terms, idiomatic expressions of our time. That makes it sound like I’m doing it all, when really it’s Mr. Dawkins’s book; I’m only aiding him. I’ve been sending him words for years now. Anyway, I grabbed this book rather haphazardly; it’s not proving very fruitful. However, I’m hopeful I’ll be able to send something to Mr. Dawkins soon. I was going to—”Marry him. She was going to marry him.
“You write letters to a man? Isn’t that a bit scandalous for an unmarried woman?”
“All the more reason to hurry to Gretna Green, isn’t it?”
“You’ll continue to send this man letters? Once we’re …” He waved his hand around to indicate the full weight of holy matrimony.
Harriet dithered. What was one’s obligation when it came to telling one’s intended about letters they had been sending another man? Under a false identity? Especially considering the erstwhile hope that one day those letters would turn into something romantic.
“He doesn’t actually know … me.”
“You haven’t met him?” Alexander tried to keep the shock out of his voice, to no avail.
“Sadly, no. I read of his work and wrote to him. He lives in Oxford. He’s a brilliant professor, you see. I read a pamphlet he’d worked on, and I wrote a letter correcting him on the origins ofa certain word. He claimed the origin to be unknown; however, I knew it to be from seamen.”
Alexander let out a snort that he tried to disguise as a cough. Clearly, he thought her a fool. Men frequently dismissed women’s knowledge, and she was rather disappointed he’d joined their ranks. Mr. Dawkins never had, but he hadn’t known her to be a woman.
“Anyway, we began writing to one another, and I began submitting words to him. He’s promised me twenty-five percent of the profits of his dictionary when it’s published this fall.” There. That ought to shut him up.
Harriet adjusted her posture smugly, but he did not respond. The man positively adored smirking in silence. Was this how he acquired female company? Was this his winning strategy? Just stay quiet while they blather on, creating an image of him that suited their needs?
“I was supposed to meet him at the ball. His father is a cousin of Lady Dunley’s. I was going to reveal to him that I’m … well …”
