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“John.” Reina sat up straighter in his lap and looked at him with a peculiar mixture of tenderness and exasperation. “This is all conventional thinking.”
He studied her with a faintly mocking smile. “Aye, it’s how most people view the world.”
“Conventional thinking stops people from imagining anything better for themselves. As for my marriage prospects . . . well, it’s no secret that half the British peerage is frantic to find wealthy brides to replenish their coffers. I daresay I could be a duchess before the week is out. But I have no desire to marry into some decrepit aristocratic family that lives off my fortune while secretly despising me.”
Doggedly John steered the conversation back to the central issue. “We both know if someone were to write out a list of ideal partners for you, I wouldn’t be on it.”
Reina stared steadily into his eyes. “Show me that list, and I’ll set fire to it.”
He took one of her hands and brought it to his lips. A beautiful hand it was, slender and capable, nails filed short. Long hours of writing with her propelling pencil had left an indentation on the side of her middle finger. The backs of the knuckles were slightly dry from frequent exposure to soap and hot water. Adoring every detail of her, he wove their fingers together.
“Reina . . . you’ve done extraordinary things in spite of all the obstacles in your way. But there are more challenges ahead, and you don’t need to add to them. If you marry me, you’ll be taking on yet more adversity. A kind you haven’t experienced and don’t want.”
She was staring at their joined hands, pale gold interlaced with deep brown. “I understand.”
“I’m not sure you do. I have to move through the world in a different way than you. Many a time and oft, I’ve been asked to leave a shop because they thought I was after stealing something. I’ve bought newspapers from sellers who doubted I could read. The slights and insults are constant, and they accumulate. If you marry me, people will say you’d lowered yourself. Behind closed doors, they’ll say far worse. I wouldn’t have you pay such a price for loving me.”
Reina’s head lifted. To his surprise, she looked mildly exasperated, and her lips curved with a cynical amusement he’d never seen from her before. “John. Your adversity and my adversity may be different varieties, but they behave in the same ways. I might be naïve about some things, but not this.” She paused to blow an impatient puff of air at a stray tendril of hair that dangled over one eye. “Any success or happiness I’ve ever known has come from ignoring the judgment of strangers. It requires effort. But I love you—and if you love me, the rest can be managed.”
John couldn’t resist asking dryly, “You believe ‘Love conquers all’? ”
Reina smiled at the phrase so often used in fairy tales that had never promised happy endings for people like them. “No . . .” she said, pausing to think of an alternative. “Love is worth fighting for.”
John was suffused with a feeling that reminded him of a long-ago night at the estate in Cardiff, when an orchestra of two dozen musicians had played in an alcove of the grand ballroom. As a young boy, he’d crept behind the silk folding screens that had partially concealed the musicians, sitting with them and thrilling to the reverberations of instruments all around him. He’d been able to feel the music between his ribs and on his skin, and in the floorboards beneath him.
He crushed his mouth into the crook of her neck and shoulder, and gathered her tightly against him. “Reina,” he whispered, overwhelmed. “I never knew my heart could hold this much feeling.”
Her arms went around him.
“Are you going to take me to bed now?” he heard her ask after a moment.
A grin tugged at his lips.
“You’ve been deciding important matters at a fast clip lately,” he pointed out dryly. “Most people would need more time to consider whether they want to take in an orphaned baby or marry the butler.”
“That’s how I always make decisions—I know my own mind quite well—and I hate to dither—” As she spoke, she clambered over him as gamely as a girl climbing a tree. The heavy skirts of her wrapper made her clumsy, and a stray knee nearly unmanned him.
He moved to help her, tugging at the swath of brocade that had trapped her knee.
Reina ended up straddling him in the chair, with her skirts piled over them both. She was so pleased with herself, so insufferably adorable, that he struggled not to laugh.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m showing initiative,” she told him. “As they taught us in law class, ‘Scito quando nudare.’ ”
After translating the Latin phrase in his head, John asked blankly, “Know when to disrobe?”
“In context, ‘Know when to unsheathe.’ A reference to sword-fighting. The professor was trying to improve our debate skills.”
“The sword is staying sheathed for now,” he informed her, even as his brain focused on the feel of her on his lap . . . warmer than before, with no slippage of fabric against fabric . . . almost as if . . .
He reached beneath her skirt. His hand closed over her bare knee, and a jolt of calamitous lust went through him.
“Holy hell,” he muttered, “are you wearing anything under this? At all?”
“It’s fully lined,” she protested.
John closed his eyes. The discovery had raised his temperature to a level between “Lancashire mill furnace” and “volcano.” Beneath the single layer of cloth that separated them, he throbbed with unbridled readiness to perform any filthy Latin term she might be interested in.
