Authors: Juliana Gray
Her words trailed off. The room—tidy and immaculate, its single trunk sitting at the end of the bed and its books stacked in perfectly leveled order on the shelf, altogether unlike the comfortable disorder of the workshop—was quite empty.
THIRTEEN
L
ady Morley appeared in Finn’s workshop doorway just after daybreak, sooner than he’d expected. “Good morning, darling,” he said. “Tea? I’ve just started the water.”
She stood stock-still and stared at him.
“Did you sleep well?” he continued. “I confess I’m a wreck. Spent the entire night here, fitting in the new battery and putting the motor back together.” He ran a hand through his hair and felt the ends stand up stiffly beneath his fingers. “I expect I’m a less than salubrious sight. Do sit down; you’re looking pale.”
Her eyes widened farther. With one hand she clutched at a shawl of light green India cashmere about her shoulders, the first sign of movement since she’d stopped in the doorway. “Pale?” she repeated hoarsely. “Pale?
Darling?
”
“I tried to find you last night, once bloody old Wallingford took himself off, but you’d quite disappeared, and I was too electrified, so to speak, to go to bed.” An understatement, of course, but how could he describe to her the sense of elation he’d felt at her words to Wallingford last night? How those simple words—
Mr. Burke is twenty times the man you’ll ever be, Your Grace
—had revealed a shining magnificent truth, her true regard for him, as clearly as if they’d lifted a veil from before his eyes. How they’d charged him with confidence, with determination, with purpose.
He could no more have gone quietly back to his room and slept than he could have gnawed off his own right ear.
Though, just now, she looked at him as if he were doing exactly that. He stepped toward her and took her hand and led her to the chair. “Sit, darling. You’re alarming me.”
“Alarming you?
Alarming
you?” Her voice rose in pitch, directly up the scale to land in some impressive octave well beyond its usual range. “I went to your room, last night, did you know that? You weren’t there.
Darling?
I sent word for you to meet me in the orchard, to talk about this . . . this
madness
. . . and instead . . .
Wallingford!
” She poured all her meaning into that one word, spitting it out with unbridled loathing.
“I was there, darling. I heard it all.” He looked down at her tenderly, at her beautiful face, the faint lines of fatigue just visible around her eyes and mouth. Her scent crept into the air around them, soap and lilies and morning air. “It took all I had not to march out from behind that tree and wrest you away, but I thought . . .”
“You
thought
?”
“I thought you might perhaps not want me to do it.” He reached out with his thumb to brush her cheekbone. “I thought the decision should be left to you. Whether Wallingford should know.”
Her face, already pale, seemed to lose its color altogether, though her eyes glowed brown and enormous. “Should know what?” she breathed.
“About this.” He bent his head to place a gentle kiss on her mouth.
He felt her surprise, felt the slight tentative movement of her lips under his, the pressure of her fingers as her hand slid up his chest to his shoulder, coming to rest on his neck, her thumb just grazing the lobe of his ear.
“This,” she said, breathlessly. She pulled back. “
This
isn’t right, Mr. Burke.”
“Finn.”
“Mr. Burke. We’ll be found out, and everything will be ruined . . .”
“No, it won’t. Wallingford and his damned silly wagers and tyranny.” He put up his other hand and cupped her face between his palms. “I won’t be bullied away from here, and neither will you.”
“Please. I can’t take any sort of chance. Neither can you, for that matter. You’ve your automobile, and your race.” Her voice faltered. “We can’t . . . how can it go on, if we’re . . . if we . . .”
“Sweetheart. Alexandra.” He stroked his thumbs against her skin and pressed another kiss on her lips. “I put together an entire automobile last night. Have you noticed?” Another kiss. “There she sits, ready for trial.” Against the tip of her chin, the line of her jaw. “
This
in no way prevents me from working effectively. Quite the opposite.” He drew back and smiled into her blurred eyes. “You
inspire
me.”
“This isn’t fair. I came here to tell you what a cad you are.”
“A dreadful cad,” he said, kissing her again. “Though twenty times better than Wallingford.”
“A hundred, but it’s not the point.”
“What is the point?” He lifted the shawl from her neck and placed a kiss along the delicate skin of her collarbone.
“That there’s too much to be lost if we’re discovered . . .”
“Nonsense. Wallingford can go to the devil. Send him there myself, if I have to.”
“. . . and too little to be gained otherwise.” Her hands tightened at his neck, and she spoke into his ear with an intense whisper. “I’d be dreadful for you. You’re so marvelously good, so pure and straightforward, and I’m weak and vain and mercenary . . .”
“You’re not,” he murmured, against her neck. “You pretend to be, but you’re not. If you were really mercenary, you’d have seduced Wallingford by now.”
She laughed. “You’ve got bags more money than Wallingford.”
“But he’s got position, grand houses, a title. You’d want that, if you were really ambitious, and not just pretending. Besides, you’ve a fortune of your own.”
She began to speak, but he lifted his finger and held it gently against her mouth. Her eyes squeezed shut, blocking him out.
He spoke in a low voice. “When I saw you approaching last night, I thought at first you were meeting
him
, that the maid had confused her messages. And then I heard you speak to him, I heard you
reject
him—
him
, the Duke of Wallingford—” He swallowed. “And I realized what an idiot I’d been, that I’d read you all wrong, that I’d allowed myself to believe what everybody else does, because it was the easiest thing. The most convenient thing.”
“They’re right,” she said, eyes still closed. “You’re wrong, and they’re right. You’ve no idea . . .”
Tenderness filled him. He leaned forward and pressed his lips against her brow. “I’m an idiot with women, generally. Most awkward fellow in the room. I don’t understand the first thing about this business of wooing . . .”
“Oh, God, Finn . . .” Her forehead dropped into the hollow of his throat. She nestled there, like a bird, the quick drumbeat of her heart striking madly into his ribs.
“But I shall do my best, darling. Proud, stubborn girl. I’ll wear you down, bit by bit. Seduce you with tea and oily smocks and engines and trips to Rome for motor races. With everything I have.” He bent his words into her ear. “Because you’re worth it.”
She stilled against him. Her hair felt soft and feathery under his jaw, making him want to pull out all her hairpins and toss them back on the floor and spread the gleaming strands about her shoulders. He brought his arms down to her waist and held her, absorbing the warm, compact feel of her, the way her body fit neatly into his.
She cleared her throat at last. “I begin to find all this talk of Phineas Burke’s genius rather hard to credit,” she said, in a voice that was remarkably clear, considering she spoke into his shirt collar. She leaned back and eyed him. “Because I doubt I’ve heard anything so perfectly idiotic in all my life.”
He leaned back his head and burst out laughing. “Oh, you splendid thing,” he said. He slid his arms away from her waist and down her arms to her hands, and kissed each one. “Lady Morley. Tell me, have you ever driven an automobile?”
* * *
W
hat if somebody sees us?” Alexandra hissed. She clutched the cold metal of the steering tiller as if it were a life buoy and stared ahead, her eyes unblinking and her back ramrod straight.
“Nobody will see us. Far too early,” came Finn’s voice, calm and steady behind her, and only slightly breathless from the effort of pushing the automobile through the tender spring grass toward the cart track leading to the village.
“But what if someone’s up already?”
“You’re assisting me in a motor trial. We’re hardly locked in an embrace, you perceive. Could you kindly remove your foot from the brake lever, my dear?”
She glanced downward. “Is that the brake? I beg your pardon.” She shifted her foot, and the automobile lurched forward at renewed speed.
The abrupt movement shook loose the question she’d pushed to the back of her brain all morning long: What the devil was she doing, really?
What was she doing, driving an automobile through the meadow grass with Phineas Burke?
She’d told herself, at the beginning, that she’d sought him out to discover information about horseless carriages. Not outright espionage, perhaps, nothing so brutal, but something like it. Some idea, some invention that might save the Manchester Machine Works, might save her future and Abigail’s, without doing Finn any real harm. Might regain for her the life she’d lost, the person she’d been.
But here she was, her lips still tingling from his kisses, her senses tracing every movement of his body with aching precision, without so much as a stolen nut bolt to show for it. And why? Hartley’s automobiles were steam powered, if she remembered correctly, while Finn’s was electric: She could learn nothing useful, nothing but theory.
And she had a feeling, a dreadful, sick feeling, that she’d known this all along. That her vague schemes had been a mere excuse, a useful fiction to disguise the real attraction of the little workshop in the olive trees: Finn himself.
If only she had the will to resist him. If only she could look at his tall, loose-limbed body, hear his deep, expressive voice telling her God only knew what thrilling things, without melting into a puddle at his feet. Puddles were weak. Puddles were transparent, with all their secrets and imperfections clearly visible to observers standing above them.
Puddles could be stepped on and splashed through and ruined.
But he’s not like that, she told herself. Phineas Burke was not a puddle-stomper, not by any stretch. Might she not, just for a short while, just to satisfy her curiosity . . . ?
No. She must not. She would not. She must return to her original purpose, to find a way to make that damned Manchester Machine Works profitable, if she were ever to return to London and her old life, if she were ever to give Abigail a chance at the future that was her birthright. If Phineas Burke’s workshop held no useful information for her, if she hadn’t the stomach or the knowledge for the task, then she must stop all this dalliance at once, before she committed the unforgivable act of falling in love.
Unless her reflexes had spoken true yesterday, in Finn’s wooden cabinet. Unless—oh God!—she had fallen in love already.
It must end now. Not another kiss. Not another . . .
“Darling, the tree!”
Her eyes flew open. “Christ!” she exclaimed, turning the tiller just in time to avoid the slender trunk of a young olive tree.
The automobile rolled to a stop. She didn’t dare turn around.
“Weren’t you looking?” he asked.
“I had . . . there was . . . a bit of dust. In my eye. Sorry. All clear now. Carry on.”
A surge of breeze struck the back of her neck, or perhaps it was his exasperated sigh. “You do realize how long it takes to repair an automobile in this wilderness, don’t you? No spare parts for miles. No skilled mechanics.”
“I don’t mean to criticize, but perhaps you ought to have considered that before you took out a year’s lease on a remote castle.”
“I considered it,” he said evenly, “but I decided that the advantage of privacy outweighed the risks. I planned every detail, with parts and supplies and a dynamo—a
dynamo
, Alexandra, carried by steamship and its own damned railway car—for electric power to charge the battery. I failed, however, to anticipate the introduction of an unpredictable new variable.”
“Unpredictable variable?”
“
You
.” He said it with rather excessive terseness.
“Oh, of course.” She fingered the tiller and examined her gloves. “Well, you did invite me to drive, after all.”
He sighed again. “So I did. In the very madness of my passion.” He went silent a moment, apparently considering the matter, and then said, “Very well. Keep your eyes open, then, if you please.”
“Right-ho. Eyes open.”
“Foot off the brake lever.”
Alexandra looked down and adjusted her right foot. “Quite off.”
The automobile began to move forward again, bumping through the grass toward the yellow gray line of the cart track up ahead. “Why can’t we simply drive it to the track?” Alexandra called, over her shoulder.
“Because, dear girl, I want to save the engine. In case I haven’t fixed it properly.”
“What do you mean, haven’t fixed it properly? Don’t you know if it’s working?” She glanced back in alarm. His hands rested on the rear of the motor-car and his tweed cap bent downward toward the grass between the large round balls of his shoulders. Beneath his chest, his legs moved like piston rods, steady and powerful.
He looked up at her. “That’s why it’s called a trial, after all,” he said patiently. “Again, darling, I’d be most abjectly grateful if you’d keep your eyes facing forward.”
“Oh . . . yes.” She turned back. The track was only yards away. “But you’re reasonably sure it will work, of course.”
“Yes, reasonably. I shouldn’t go to the trouble of pushing it out if I weren’t. Here we are, then.” The machine rolled more smoothly now, its front wheels easing into the dirt of the track. “Turn us westward, that’s it. The track’s flatter that way, and the glare won’t bother us. Now press the brake lever, if you please. Excellent.”
The automobile stopped, and Finn came around and reached inside, across her lap, to pull another lever with his hand. Heat radiated from his body, through his clothes and smock, and into the skin of her legs.
He straightened, his eyes just level with hers. “Now then, if you don’t mind sliding over a bit.”
“Sliding over?” she whispered. His face seemed far too close, those lawn green eyes far too alive with energy and anticipation.
He smiled. “I’m quite happy to teach you to drive her, at some point, but I’d rather do the trial run myself.”