“My younger brother is similarly burdened, but his names are shorter,” Stephen said with a smile.
Peaches only continued to watch him expectantly.
Stephen thought to ask her why, then it occurred to him that he already knew the answer. He tried not to sigh. “Must I recite the rest?”
“Yes, you must.”
He had to sigh then. “Very well. I am the very fortunate possessor of the titles Viscount Haulton and Baron Etham, which means that I can get a decent seat at one or two restaurants in London. My father is the current Earl of Artane, which gets me decent seats at the theater. My PhD is in medieval studies with an emphasis in medieval languages and literature. Now, who are you?”
“Peaches Alexander,” Peaches said, shaking his hand, then
pulling hers away. She sat back down and looked up at him. “That’s it. You know the rest. School, closets, intentions, being one step away from a Dickensian level of destitution.”
He sat down and resumed his position with his elbows on his knees. It put her almost within reach, which he thought was something of a boon.
He studied her by the light from his fire and the soft incandescent lights he refused to give up. She was, as could have been said about her sister, remarkably lovely. But he could safely say that he’d entertained the thought of having designs on Tess Alexander for less than five minutes before he realized she was just not the woman for him—and that had nothing to do with her looks, her personality, her passion for his passion, or the issuer of her passport. She had been destined to marry John de Piaget and he’d known that without knowing it.
Peaches, however, was a different story entirely.
“What led you to choose chemistry?” he asked, because he realized he’d been staring at her without speaking.
She sighed. “Because it was the hardest academic thing I could think of, and I was in a houseful of sisters—well, besides Cindi, of course—who were all trying to be as different from my parents as possible. I had originally thought that maybe med school would be the right path, but decided my first year of college that it wasn’t what I wanted.”
“What did you want?”
“I wanted to make a difference,” she said. “Somehow.”
“And you didn’t think that would happen in a lab?”
She looked at him evenly. “Sorting socks isn’t glamorous, but at least I saw the sunrise and sunset every day.”
“I wasn’t criticizing,” he said mildly. “Just curious. What now?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Regency research, I suppose.”
Which he was happy to let her get back to so he could digest what she’d said and plan his next move. He reached for his book, then stopped when he realized she wasn’t finished with her questions.
“What do
you
want?” she asked.
You
was almost out of his mouth before he had the good sense to engage the filter between his brain and his tongue. His
mother had made certain he’d been born with it and his father had honed it from the time Stephen had said his first words, he was certain. He set his book back down and cleared his throat.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what do you want?” she asked. She made a circle with her pointer finger that encompassed his entire room. “This somehow doesn’t jibe very well with the other you. The one that carries the sword. And then there’s the nobility you that I don’t even know, but I understand wears a tux and has a chauffeur and a Rolls. And a valet, as I’ve already seen.”
“Humphreys is my social secretary.”
She only laughed. “I think he’s more your keeper.”
Stephen might have—very well, he most definitely would have taken offense if anyone else had said the like. But somehow, coming from that astonishingly pretty woman sitting across from him—nay, she wasn’t pretty. She was beautiful. But not in a hard, manufactured way. She was beautiful, true, but made even more so by an artless, almost vulnerable aura she projected that he hadn’t had the chance to see until just that moment.
He realized with a start, that she was honestly interested in what he was thinking.
“I’m very content with my life,” he said, because he wasn’t about to say anything else.
“What part do you like the best?”
“Isn’t your degree in chemistry, not psychology?” he asked lightly.
She only stared at him, a smile playing around her mouth, then she bent her head back to her book. “You need to go to Scotland soon.”
“I went to medieval England recently. I think that will last me for a bit.”
She didn’t look up. “You’re crabby.”
That didn’t begin to describe it. She had unerringly found his weakness and exploited it. He had difficulty, he could almost admit, trying to reconcile the different parts of himself: scholar, swordsman, and heir to a pile of stones that made him catch his breath every time he returned home.
He somehow wasn’t surprised how unerringly Peaches had dissected him and left him lying there on the table.
He tried to get back to his reading, truly he did. But it was almost impossible. The longer he sat there, the more anxious he became.
“I never thanked you for the clothes.”
He blinked. “What?”
She shot him a look. “I know you rescued me last weekend, and more than once. The gown was absolutely stunning.”
He could only incline his head slightly. Words were beyond him.
“This is pretty snazzy, too,” she said, fingering the sleeve of her sweater. “And the shoes fit.”
“Humphreys has a good eye.”
“And you have good taste.”
“He does the work and I take the credit.” He took a deep breath. “You looked lovely then, as now.”
She studied him for a moment or two. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“About what?”
“About the clothes. You let me think they were from David Preston.”
He shifted uncomfortably. In fact, he had to fight the urge to get up and pace. “You weren’t—” He paused and tried again. “You didn’t seem—” He set his book aside and rubbed his hands over his face. “Must we have this conversation?”
“I think you need a green drink.”
What he needed was a cold shower and not just for the usual reasons. He desperately needed something to bring good sense back to its normal place of prominence in his life. He looked at Peaches seriously. “I didn’t think you would accept them if you’d known they came from me.”
She rubbed her hands over the knees of her trousers. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I misjudged you. I misjudged quite a few things.”
“David Preston?” he asked, because he was too stupid to keep his mouth shut.
She opened her mouth, then shut it at the ringing of her phone. She sighed. “Sorry.”
“No, go ahead.”
She nodded, then picked up.
Stephen retrieved his book and dived right back into it. It was
a fascinating treatise on marriage in the Middle Ages that he paid attention to for approximately ten seconds until he realized that Peaches was talking to none other than David Preston himself, that promiscuous, empty-headed, hard-hearted Duke of Kenneworth, who was missing one of his extremely valuable ceremonial swords.
Stephen wished he’d poached a handful of them.
“David, I really appreciate—”
David interrupted her. Stephen put on a neutral expression and waited for Peaches to sort things as she cared to. After all, he had no claim on her. He couldn’t actually even claim her time as a researcher. He fully intended to pay her, though Tess had warned him the day before that Peaches wouldn’t take any money from him. It was difficult to tell Peaches she couldn’t date Kenneworth when he couldn’t hold her job over her head.
Not that he would have anyway. If she wanted him, he wanted her to want him freely.
He listened to her protest that it really had been a lovely weekend and that she’d simply gotten lost and been rescued and taken home. She had left a message with his secretary to that effect. She protested further that dinner wasn’t necessary and what a surprise it was to learn David was in Cambridge.
“Seven?” she asked. “Well, I might be—yes, that’s true.” She took a careful breath. “I’m doing research for the Viscount Haulton.” She shot Stephen a quick look. “Yes, I suppose you could pick me up at his office if you like.” She paused. “Yes, see you then.”
Stephen buried his nose in his book, because it seemed safer that way.
Silence reigned supreme for several very long, very uncomfortable moments.
“That was David Preston.”
Stephen looked up and smiled. “Was it?”
She was looking as neutral as he was trying to feel. “He wants to take me to dinner.”
“Lovely of him, of course. Did he say how late he would be keeping you?”
She looked quite miserable, which he found very encouraging, actually. “I hope not late. I’ll have to catch a train home—”
“Stay,” he interrupted.
She blinked. “What?”
“I’ll find you a spot within walking distance of the college,” he said, reaching for his phone. “Then you won’t have to travel back and forth to Sedgwick.”
“But I didn’t bring any clothes.”
“Humphreys has excellent taste.”
She looked at him seriously. “Stephen, you can’t buy me a new wardrobe.”
“Why not?” he asked lightly.
“Because I can’t let your butler buy me knickers!”
“He’s my social secretary.”
She didn’t smile. “It makes me uncomfortable. The idea of any of it makes me uncomfortable.”
He felt his smile fading. “Does it?”
“Doesn’t it seem a little strange that you’re dressing me to go out with another man?” she asked, looking at him evenly.
“I’ll have Humphreys buy something ugly for tonight.”
She took a deep breath. That didn’t seem to satisfy her, for she took a handful of others. She finally set aside her book and stood up. “I have to run.”
“Run?”
“You know,” she said, making a running motion with her fingers. “Run. As in, moving very quickly along a flat surface in tennis shoes.”
“Trainers.”
She glared at him. “Yes, those.”
He set his book aside. “I’ll go with you.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Do you run?”
“Ian MacLeod suggested it.”
She put her hands on her hips and scowled down at him. “Do you always do what he tells you to do?”
He banked his fire. “Only when he has a sword in his hands.” He brushed off his hands and looked at her. “I started at Eton, actually. One does what one must, don’t you know, to get along with one’s responsibilities.” Or get away from them, as the case had been on occasion. “Do you have gear?”
“I never go anywhere without it.”
He waved her toward his loo. “Make yourself at home.”
She looked at him briefly, then picked up a backpack and walked away. Stephen took the opportunity to make a quick call
to Humphreys, who was more than willing to find something exceptionally lovely for Peaches to wear that night.
It was twenty minutes into a run in which Peaches wasn’t even breathing hard that he realized he was perhaps dealing with something he hadn’t expected.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked.
She looked up at him. “Enormously. You?”
“Oh, yes,” he panted. “It’s brilliant.”
“Should we go on, or are you finished?”
He leaned over and tried to catch his breath. “I’m fine.”
“Did I tell you that I run the Seattle marathon every year?”
He almost sat down. “No, you did not, you vile wench.”
She laughed. “You realize that wasn’t English, my lord.”
“I have an entire collection of things not English I could use on you.”
She patted him on the back, which just about finished him off right there.
“You had probably better save your breath for them, hadn’t you?”
He heaved himself upright and pursed his lips. “I don’t suppose you’d want to carry me back to school, would you?”
She only smiled at him and ran away.
He watched her go. The only benefit he could see to doing something that restored her good humor so thoroughly was that at least he would be nursing sore muscles whilst she was out to dinner with a man who wasn’t him.
And then he, poor fool that he was, followed after her.
P
eaches
looked at herself in the bathroom mirror of a bed-and-breakfast room so luxurious, she didn’t dare speculate about the nightly cost of it. Just the fact that it was within walking distance of Stephen’s college sent shivers down her financial spine. She could only hope that Stephen was getting a break with a weekly rate. And if not, she would just have to trade him out her work for the accommodations. She wouldn’t make any money—in fact she would probably end up owing him money—but she wouldn’t feel like she was bankrupting him. Or being the recipient of his charity.
Not that he would have termed it such. Tess had often commented on his generosity, both with time and means, but Peaches had never expected to be the beneficiary of either.
Life was strange.
She jumped a little at the sound of her phone ringing. She wondered if it would be impolite to just let it ring through to her voice mail. The last person she wanted to talk to was David Preston. He had been charming the night before, attentive, said all the right, flattering things. If she had gone out to dinner with him a month earlier, she would have been absolutely
giddy with delight. He was, as she had noted several times before, just right.
But last night instead of finding him flattering and charming, she had found him conceited and unpleasant. His interests were seemingly limited to complimenting himself and disparaging anyone from Artane. She had actually been rather surprised by the viciousness of his attacks on Stephen.
And rather ashamed of herself that she had, at one point, probably been all too willing to agree with them.
The only saving grace of the evening had been that Stephen had been waiting with his office door open when David had dropped her off, which had allowed her to avoid any unwanted advances. David had been quite obvious about his irritation that she’d offered a friendly handshake instead of a passionate embrace, but she’d found herself surprisingly unconcerned about what he thought.