Page 70 of The Gentleman’s Leading Lady

Her face softened, lips curving into a smile. “Oh,” she said, leaning toward him. “That is a good enough line for a play.”

She turned her face up to his, a prim request to be kissed, and he was not about to deny her anything. “Cerys Evans,” he said, his voice a dry rasp as he brushed his mouth over her, “will you⁠—?”

She stepped away quickly, the softness falling away. “Not yet.”

He stood stunned. “No?” After he thought she was probing him, asking his terms⁠—

“Not yet,” she said, straightening the waist of her jacket. She clutched at the dangling tassels as if holding a tether, reining herself in.

“Then when?” He followed as she stepped into the next room. “Do you wish me to talk with your father first—no, your stepfather.” His mind was crashing to a halt, gears whirring uselessly. “Is there someone else—some reason⁠—”

“Oh.” She drew to a halt with a small puff of surprise. Her eyes grew enormous. “This is the library.”

“Yes.” He’d modeled the one at Suffolk House after his own design. There were the cornice and the pillars, like a temple shielding the built-in cases, which the woodworkers were finishing. The bay of windows looked out onto what would one day be the flower beds and a properly landscaped walk. Perhaps even a hedge maze, if she wanted one.

She looked so perfect, standing in this room. As perfect as the first afternoon in the Suffolk House library, when she challenged him for calling her Lady Disdain, and she’d listened when he prated on about columns because he didn’t know how to woo a woman.

“Dante.” She clasped her hands together. “This is magnificent. All of it.”

“The books have not arrived,” he felt obliged to point out. “It will take some time to build my collection.” Every gentleman had a library, to signal to the world that he was cultured and educated in all the necessary ways.

That couldn’t be what was holding her back, was it? Did she want him to be a gentleman in truth before she conceded her hand?

The room smelled like plaster dust and the sharp finish used on the wood. He wasn’t ready for her yet, and she could see that.

As if she knew the way his thoughts were whirling, she turned. Sunlight fell across her face, brushing her light freckles with a patina of gold. “I have promised to give Dorsey’s group a theater.”

This was not, entirely, an explanation. “And I have promised to design it,” he said. “What do you mean?”

She bit her lip and turned her attention to the empty bookshelves. He recalled that moment when she’d spotted the statue of the naked discus thrower on Suffolk’s shelves. She hadn’t batted an eye, not the least surprised or alarmed by the nude male form, or a scaled-down representation of it. He’d known then she was a woman who looked at the world straight on, with no fantasies and few qualms. He’d never met anyone like her.

“They expect me to leave them,” she said. “Dorsey’s group.”

He waited. He wanted, intensely, for her to turn back to him. He wanted to tug loose the ribboned bow beneath her chin, remove her bonnet and hair pins, and run his hands through her masses of hair.

“There is a contract?”

“Not really. We operate by agreement. But they have teased me, over and over, about abandoning them for a protector.”

He wasn’t following. “I would not demand you abandon them. We will live here. You can act whenever you wish.” Of course he was greedy for as much time as he could spend with her, but she wasn’t the type of woman to sit about in papered rooms and amuse herself with gossip and the decorative arts. She had too active a mind, too restless a spirit.

Her teeth were making a groove on her bottom lip. He wanted to run his thumb over her jaw and urge her to release the grip before she drew blood.

“But I owe them, you see.”

“Owe them what?” He drew close, so he could peer into her face, but she walked to the bay of windows and stood looking outside at his makeshift cement factory, the piles of lime and the barrels of water used for slaking, the heaps of sand and ash that would be mixed into the lime putty to make mortar. She watched the process with interest, her endlessly curious mind at work. But he still didn’t understand.

“What do you owe them?” He came to stand beside her.

“They invested in me. Dorsey took an enormous gamble, offering me work on the basis of only one show. I must repay that.”

“I should think you already have. You have enjoyed your time with them, and they have made great profits off you, according to Dorsey.”

“But I haven’t yet proven myself,” she said, stubborn.

“Not even with your Hamlet? You are the talk of Cheltenham. Dorsey is drawing bigger audiences than Watson’s theater. You have already cemented their reputation in this town.”

“I need to give them something solid. Something concrete by which to remember me. Otherwise, what value will I have had to them?”