Page 17 of The Lady’s Deception

“I confess I was hoping for something a bit lighter.” Her hand crept to her injured temple, throwing her expression into shadow. “I do still have a touch of the headache.”

He could offer no fashion plates or magazines. Not even, at the moment, many novels. Their family’s subscription to the circulating library had largely been made use of by Mama and Cami. But he knew of one other possibility. He stepped past the desk and ran one finger along the spines on the uppermost shelf until he came to a thin folio. “Perhaps this?” he said as he withdrew the book and extended it to her.

Forced to step closer still, she took it with one hand and examined it in the light. “Botanical prints?”

“Yes. My father’s hobby. I’ve never shared his interest, certainly not to the degree my sister Erica does, but I find the pictures soothing.” As a boy, he’d been allowed to thumb through the expensive volume of hand-tinted illustrations on the rare occasions when he was declared too sick to go out and play. He hadn’t looked at them in ages. But he still remembered his fascination with the strange arcs and lines of petals and stems.

When he’d been very young, Bell’s age, perhaps, he’d imagined them to be maps of planets no one could ever visit. A few years later, he’d noted a resemblance to more familiar, feminine territories in those alluring curves and hollows, and he’d dreamed of charting them himself. His father had moved the book to a shelf beyond his adolescent reach.

“Thank you.” She tucked the oversize book against her hip rather awkwardly. “I should let you return to your…” Her quick glance traveled from the empty desktop to the empty table beside the chair in which he’d been sitting. “Your solitude,” she finished uncertainly.

At various points in his life, Paris had constructed elaborate plans of all he would accomplish if ever he had a room, or an hour, to himself. Four sisters and a brother in a modest-sized townhouse had a tendency to interfere with one’s concentration. When he’d reluctantly returned to Merrion Square to care for Daphne and Bell after many years on his own, however, he’d discovered that the boisterous Burke household had grown considerably quieter in his absence, its occupants now scattered, some never to return. As a result, he knew now what he could not have known six years, or even six months, ago: Silence could be a greater distraction than noise. Sometimes, he quite disliked being alone.

But what did he expect? What more did he deserve?

Knowing her eyes were on him now, he nodded toward the partner of his chair, opposite the table and further in shadow. “I couldn’t sleep either,” he confessed. “Will you stay and talk?”

He fully expected her to say no. When she moved with hesitating steps to the chair and perched herself on the very edge of its seat, the book strapped to her chest by her flannel-covered arms like a breastplate of armor, he wished she had said no.

He ought to have considered the lateness of the hour, her dishabille, the story she’d told of her last employer’s improprieties. What a callous suggestion he’d made, one she was poorly situated to refuse.

Nevertheless, he did not rescind his offer.

Instead he wandered with apparent aimlessness to the far end of the room, hoping to reassure her that his intentions were not malicious. As he passed the spinet, he trailed his fingers lightly over the keys.

“Do you play?” The distance between them was insufficient to muffle the surprise in her voice.

For answer, he plucked out a few bars of a popular Irish air, not bothering to seat himself at the instrument. “Mama was determined that we all would,” he said, looking back at her. “Galen is the only real talent among us. Cami is proficient, as she is in most things, though I do not believe it gives her any particular pleasure. Bell shares Erica’s impatience and never practices. And Daphne—”

“Would rather learn the harp.”

He’d told her as much. On the walk from King’s Inns Quay. Or at least, he presumed he had. “Yes. I wasn’t sure you’d remember.”

“Oh, I remember.”

The lightest stress on the pronoun made clear to him that she had expected he would not. She seemed to place great store in his forgetfulness, and he knew very well why. “I owe you an apology, Miss Gorse, for not realizing how fatigued you were last evening. I was—”

“Drunk?” The prim note in her voice grew stronger.

He’d never known a lady to use anything other than a polite euphemism for the condition. Foxed, perhaps. Or a trifle disguised. He cleared his throat. “Selfish, I was going to say.”

“Ah.” He watched her gaze travel to the decanter of Irish whiskey that sat on the corner of his father’s desk. “Well, I hope you do not often find occasion to be…selfish, Mr. Burke.”

By God, was she a Methodist? Who else would be so inclined to scowl at a man’s sins? Annoyance prickled near the base of his spine, then traveled upward, stirring the air in his lungs, prompting him to retort with sharp words.

He bit them back, turning toward the window to look down on the empty street.

Given the vulnerable position in which she had found herself, he could hardly blame her for wanting to stake out some little piece of territory on higher ground. Well, he was willing to concede that much to her. Tonight, the stopper had remained in that bottle. But if he was honest, there had been other nights, lonely hours in the semi-darkness, when he had not been so wise.

“You also play, I assume.” It was the most innocuous question he could think of. Really, not even a question. A signal, after a few moments of uncomfortable silence, that the previous line of discussion was closed. And really, not much reassurance that he was any more gentlemanly than she believed. His voice was surprisingly gruff to his ears, and he only glanced over his shoulder as he spoke, rather than facing her. Serve him right if she got up and left.

She did not, however. She slid deeper into the chair—not so far that her spine touched its back, of course; he wondered if she ever allowed herself to relax enough for that—and laid the book across her lap. “I do. Will you wish me to continue your sisters’ lessons? Or have they a music master?”

A puff of laughter escaped his lips. “You must already have guessed the answer to that last, Miss Gorse, seeing as they did not even have a governess. And as to the first, you are at liberty to set the curriculum, so long as my sisters are no worse off when you leave us.”

When you leave us. An unexpected pang accompanied those words. In just twenty-four hours, she had made an indelible impression. Her departure, when it inevitably occurred, could not fail to be felt.

Her pursed mouth softened just enough to curve into a mocking smile. “What extraordinary license you give your employees, Mr. Burke.”