Page 67 of The Gentleman’s Leading Lady

“Elegant,” she murmured. “Graceful. And peaceful, somehow. It feels… I know it is strange, but the only word I can think of is sufficient. This house is simply itself. It has no need to be anything other than it is. It welcomes, and it shelters, but it is not trying to overwhelm or impress. It simply…holds one, in the loveliest way.”

He couldn’t speak. It took great effort to shape words and force air through his throat. “That is a good thing?”

She turned to him with her eyes gleaming. “The best, I should think. It is the difference between a house and a home.”

He laid his palm over the small hand on his arm. She was so slender, like the stem of a water plant, and yet so strong. The currents of life might buffet this girl—had buffeted her, he sensed—and yet she would not break. She used her strength to shore up others.

“And this holding you speak of.” He was tugging her closer, but he could no more have stopped himself touching her than he could stop drinking from a cool stream of clear water on a hot day. “That is enough?”

Because he could hold her. He could do that. Shelter her, protect her, keep her as long as she would have him. All the days of her life, if she would permit it.

His brain was cloudy with the rush of emotion. He’d known this girl a handful of weeks. He was thinking of forever, was he?

Her eyes were enormous, the green glinting deep and bright against a sheen he thought might be tears. “It is the only thing that matters,” she whispered.

He was bending his head to close the distance between her mouth and his when Dot Dorsey drawled behind them.

“Not here, Manelli. Saints and angels. At least wait till you’ve got her upstairs in one of the bedchambers.”

He hauled his head back, feeling his face flush with heat. “I wasn’t— There are no beds.”

“That won’t stop a man what wants it bad,” said one of the other women, the blonde one with the rough manner of speech, as if she’d been raised in the back of an inn. “Watch out for yerself, will ye, Cerys? We’re goin’ to investigate belowstairs.”

“There’s… nothing really there yet,” Dante said, mostly to himself as the larger portion of the group trooped through the hallway leading back to the service stairs.

The other girl in the company, the dark-haired one who played Ophelia, paused on the doorstep as if she’d never entered a grand house through the front door. A stricken look dawned over her face as she studied the details Cerys had noted. Then, quite without warning, she threw her hands over her eyes, whirled about, and rushed through the vestibule back outside.

“Is she well?” Dante asked, while Cerys looked after the girl with concern.

She met his gaze and spoke softly. “Imagine, if you can, not ever having a home of your own, and then seeing that some people live like this.” She gazed about the room again, and he was content to watch her, fearing she saw too much when she looked in his eyes.

“She did not seem overly distressed at staying in Suffolk House.”

“Because that is a palace. Earls and lords are so far above the likes of us, they don’t feel quite real.” She stared up the staircase as if she, too, were unsure she was permitted to use it. “You are more like us.”

“Not gently born, you mean.” He would never be admitted into the ranks of gentlemen. He would never be allowed.

She nodded and glanced toward one of the open doors leading off the vestibule. “The ones in between. May I explore?”

“Of course. I will show you.” He led her through the reception rooms, trying to see them through her eyes. In the formal drawing room, the sash windows had not yet been laid with shutters, but the view opened to the back lawn, looking down to the river and the swells of the Cotswold hills beyond. He hoped it would speak to her as it did him.

“I have marble fireplaces coming from Italy, and the floor will be oak, with a carpet or rug—I haven’t decided. A crystal chandelier for the ceiling. The chair rail is in, as you see, but I haven’t finished the cornices. I’ll be hand-carving some of the decoration.”

She raised her brow. “You yourself?”

Was that wrong, to admit he worked with his hands? “The models, yes. I’ll send them to the workshop for the plasterer to make the length.”

“How beautiful, Dante, to be able to create something like this.” She walked through the broad doorway, not yet set with doors, to the room beyond, where another fireplace looked out at the unfinished expanse. The windows on the side of the room opened onto a view of the workmen’s piles and the path to the churned ground he would make his kitchen garden, nestled against the wall that formed the ancient border of the old manor.

“You create beauty all the time,” he reminded her. “You cast a spell, daily, when you walk out onto the stage.”

She nodded. “But that is telling a story with my gestures, my manner, my voice. It is ephemeral. Unless the critics write about us, or the gossips in the morning papers, the memory fades. What you can do—you build something lasting. Something you create with your own two hands.”

“Labor,” he said, unable to keep the trace of bitterness from his tone. “Not the work of a gentleman.”

“Rubbish.” She waved a hand over her shoulder and walked into the next room, lined with windows, which he meant to be a conservatory. “I do not think those distinctions matter as much as you think.”

He followed. “I think they matter very much to some.”