Page 32 of A Sham Engagement

“You have obsessions?”

Elenora glanced back at the chaise longue, but Aunt Penelope and Lady Amberley appeared to be engrossed in one another’s company. “Yes, I do.”

“Pray tell.”

Was that real interest in his dark eyes? She couldn’t tell. “Well, you’ve already come across one. I love history with a passion.”

He nodded. “That in itself is not odd.”

“You can say that, because you’re a man, and no one minds if a man shows an interest in intellectual pursuits. It is considered out of the ordinary, and unladylike, for a girl. And I’m not just interested, but deeply obsessed. I read history books all the time—mainly about the Ancient Greeks. In fact, I taught myself to read Ancient Greek—but don’t tell Mama or she would be so cross. Mama thinks too much education for a girl is bad for her. She says men don’t like young ladies to be cleverer than they are.”

He smiled. “That might be true of many men, but it’s not true of me.”

She sighed. “Again, you can say that easily, but as ours is not a true engagement it hardly matters that you say you like a clever young lady. After this season and our engagement are over, and we return home, and Papa indulges in his newfound wealth and gambles again, sooner or later Mama will want me once more on the marriage market. And I doubt other men like you truly exist.” She sighed a second time. “And do not forget I have four sisters who are queueing behind me to have their debuts and find themselves husbands. They will marry me off to some pea-brained member of the Ton who can’t tell an Ionic column from a Doric.”

He burst out laughing, and the ladies’ heads turned to stare. He waved a hand. “It’s nothing. I shall take Miss Wetherby on a tour of the house and allow you ladies to talk in peace. No doubt you have a lot to discuss.” He stood and held a hand out to Elenora. “Come. I’m sure you’d like to see the rest of the house.” He leaned toward her. “Or at the very least escape from this room. I only use it when my mother calls—the décor is all for her.”

With only a momentary hesitation, she laid her hand in his and rose to her feet. “That would be lovely.”

Chapter Twelve

Jack closed the drawing room door behind them with a satisfying click. If his mother couldn’t be kind to Elenora then he would have to have words with her. However, the object of his pity didn’t seem to be too indisposed by the catechism she’d been subjected to.

“I would love to see your library first,” she said, steering clear of having to put her hand on his arm.

He didn’t pressure her but led the way across the hallway to the double oak doors on the far side. He pushed open one of the doors. “It’s one of my favorite rooms in this house.”

“Libraries are always my favorite rooms, too.” Following him in, Elenora halted and inhaled deeply. “I do think books, and particularly libraries full of them, possess the most delightful smell. They make me want to surround myself with them in big piles and just gloat over them. Magical. Yes, that’s it. Books are magical.”

An admirable sentiment. This was a girl who showed remarkable good sense. Not one of the vapid ninnies his mother had been accustomed to dangle, she thought seductively, under his nose from time to time. In all probability none of them had ever read anything other than the court social.

He stood back to allow her to look around, rightly proud of the size and content of his library. He’d spent the last twenty years compiling it. He would have to get his father to let him have the other two books in the series Elenora had borrowed. They were his books, anyway, as his father had bought them for him as a boy, so why they’d still been in his father’s library he had no idea. A fortuitous circumstance, perhaps. And if they were here, she’d have reason to come back to read them.

This thought startled him. Why would he want her to come here any more than was necessary? After all, theirs was a sham engagement, and after the end of the season he need never see her again. And yet… this thought troubled him more than he’d expected. He must be getting soft in his old age. His friends would probably agree. But she was, as he’d already said, very much an original.

Elenora, still standing just inside the threshold, gave a suitably impressed gasp. “And you have so many books.”

He nodded. “I’m proud to inform you that they’re not just for show. I’ve read a great many of them.” Most of the books, bar the ones he’d inherited when he took over the house, were ones he’d personally chosen for their content, and not just books bought by the linear foot to make their owner look intellectual.

“I should hope so too,” Elenora said, but not in the tone of someone wishing to insult him. “I could never have engaged myself, even in deception, to someone who doesn’t appreciate learning for the sake of learning.”

He smiled. “You are an odd girl, Elenora. And you are quite right.” She looked up at him. “But in the most enchanting way.” What was he saying? That she had enchanted him by her honesty? He most definitely was going soft in the head.

She studied him for a long moment with a serious look in her blue eyes. “No one has ever called me enchanting before, not even because they thought I was pretty.”

Rather a hole to dig himself out of. In a hurry. “Well you are, and if you can ever bring yourself to marry in the future, you will make some lucky gentleman very happy. I trust that if you do, you’ll have the sense to choose someone who appreciates your quirks.” My God, he was gabbling. What a fool he sounded.

“My quirks?”

He just might have dug himself in deeper. “The little things that make you into the girl you are. The things you think make you odd.”

She frowned. “And it is those things you think are enchanting?”

How puzzled she sounded. Had no one ever told her that her frank honesty was endearing? Far better than the dissembling of a girl coached in the ways of flattery and flirting. Best to reward her by being honest himself. “Well… yes, they are. It’s refreshing to talk to you.” He felt heat rise unexpectedly from his neck up to his cheeks, and turned away. “Please, peruse my book collection to your heart’s content.”

She didn’t appear to have noticed his discomfort, but took him at his word and hastened further into his library, running her slender fingers over the spines of the books as she studied their titles. What would it be like to have those slender fingers running over his arm? Or maybe over some other part of his body. He pulled himself up sharply. No. He was not going down that road with his thoughts. She was not the sort of girl to make a mistress out of, no matter how much he might be tempted by her looks and her charm. Even though he’d paid off her father’s debts, he couldn’t see the man tolerating it if he set Elenora up in her own establishment and made her his kept woman. And she had two older brothers, as well, who might not be happy about such treatment of their sister. Not to mention the fact that if she didn’t want to be a wife, she would definitely not want to be a mistress.

He pushed these thoughts out of his head with deliberation, and turned his head away from the spectacle of such a pretty girl exploring the room he held most dear in the house and finding pleasure in it.