A Lady Without Peer, page 18
Philomena gesturing enthusiastically as she explained the intricacies of the vocative case to Ramsdale along the length of Oxford Street.
Philomena grabbing him by the hair and kissing him so passionately he’d nearly started unbuttoning his falls.
“Your move, Ramsdale.”
He advanced another pawn, a random, dilatory maneuver that fit into no larger strategy.
“How fares your bill?” Ramsdale asked. Amesbury always had bills churning about in the House of Lords.
“Which one? My bill for the establishment of a board to oversee the turnpike trusts is meeting with significant opposition, but then, we knew it would. I’ll not be worn down by a bunch of pinchpenny barons who can’t see that roads are the key to the realm’s commercial success. Yes, we can ship a great deal by sea or canal, but how do the goods get to and from port, I ask you?”
As the game wandered along, Ramsdale lured Amesbury from one political diatribe to the next, though the marquess occasionally tossed in references to Lady Maude’s attributes as a hostess, waltzing partner, and musician.
Before his lordship started mentioning how many teeth the lady possessed, Ramsdale brought the chess game to a close. The marquess played without guile, simply moving pieces about in reaction to Ramsdale’s initiatives.
Such a man was easy to manage, and thus Ramsdale made the game look much closer than it was. Ramsdale did not, however, allow the marquess an unearned victory.
“Will you be attending Professor Peebles’s retirement banquet?” Ramsdale asked, returning his pieces to their starting positions.
The marquess put the black queen on her square. “Phineas Peebles? Why do you ask?”
“I was under the impression he was a family connection. Am I mistaken?”
Amesbury considered the queen. “You are not mistaken, though Peebles disdains to recollect that notion. Academics can be eccentric.”
The marquess, who’d waxed loquacious about turnpikes, excise taxes, and the economic implications of imported French soaps, said nothing more.
“Peebles has a daughter,” Ramsdale said, setting the white king on his square. Ramsdale had looked for a resemblance between Philomena and her cousin Lady Maude and found little. Lady Maude was dainty, blond, and graceful.
Philomena was substantial, plain, and ferociously passionate.
“Peebles has a daughter, as do I,” Amesbury said. “A pity Maude could not play us a few airs while we enjoyed our chess. She’s very skilled.”
Skilled, not passionate. A proper lady had no use for passion, and if asked a week ago, Ramsdale would have approved of that view.
Then Philomena had shown up at the Albion, wearing those ridiculous blue glasses, waiting two hours for a chance to earn some coin.
When all the pieces had been positioned, Amesbury turned the board so he had the white pieces. “Shall we play again? I’ll not be distracted this time by your parliamentary questions. You can fool me once, Ramsdale, but I’m wise to your tricks now.”
Amesbury shook an admonitory finger at Ramsdale, the gesture intended to be playful.
Ramsdale was not charmed. The moment had come to raise the topic of paying addresses to Lady Maude, and Ramsdale wasn’t charmed by that prospect either.
“The hour grows late,” he said, the most trite of clichés, “and I’m not entirely recovered from ruralizing in Berkshire. I’ll thank you for a fine meal and a good game, my lord.”
Amesbury was too much the parliamentarian to show his dismay at this abrupt departure. He rose and accompanied Ramsdale to the stairs.
“You were hoping to spend more of the evening with Lady Maude, I venture. How can the chessboard compare to a young woman’s accomplishments? Perhaps next week you’ll share another meal with us. I’m free on Wednesday, and I know Lady Maude will rearrange her schedule at her papa’s request.”
Such an obedient female, was Lady Maude. Obedient, and… dull, bless her soul. Ramsdale would not have to exert himself to win her or woo her, wouldn’t have to compete with Catullus or the mysteries of medieval law Latin to gain her notice.
“My schedule is as yet unsettled,” Ramsdale said, making his way to the front door. “Perhaps I’ll see you at Peebles’s retirement banquet?”
This question was the equivalent of moving a pawn to distract from a larger strategy, a random exploratory gesture that amounted to nothing.
“Not likely. Why don’t we plan on Thursday if Wednesday doesn’t suit?”
“Perhaps the following week,” Ramsdale said as the butler handed him his greatcoat. “I’ll send ’round an invitation when I’ve sorted out my current obligations.”
“And gained the permission of your cook,” Amesbury said. “I know how the bachelor household is run. The right countess could spare you all that.”
Hunt season had begun in the shires and apparently here in London as well.
“I’ll bid you good night, my lord, and thanks again for a lovely evening.”
Ramsdale did not run down the steps, though he set a brisk pace—a very brisk pace.
Chapter Five
“This is the worst codicil so far,” Philomena said. “I’ll need to start a list of terms I can’t translate and have Jane help me with them.”
Ramsdale had taken to wandering the library rather than making notes. That’s how convoluted and hopeless the sixth codicil was. Philomena had been able to translate the first three at sight, the fourth by consulting a few references, and the fifth by consulting every reference Ramsdale’s library boasted.
Five days remained before Papa’s banquet, with three codicils to go and not a Duke or de Motibus Humanis—the portion of the work Hephaestus referenced most often—in sight.
Ramsdale peered into the lens of a telescope that was aimed at the leafy canopy of the square across the street. “You’d consult Jane rather than your father?”
“Papa thinks I’m teaching your sister French.” That scheme had been Ramsdale’s own invention, though for the past few days, the earl had been distracted—taking very few notes, mostly staring into space, while Philomena stumbled and thrashed her way through Hephaestus’s verbal puzzles.
“Teaching Melissa her French, right.” The orrery gained his notice next. He gave Venus a gentle nudge with one finger and set the planets in motion. The solar system had been crafted mostly of copper, and midday sunshine pouring through the window turned the heavenly bodies to fire as they traveled in their orbits.
“My lord, if you’re bored, I can struggle on here without you. I’m sure you have better things to do.”
Better things to do than distract Philomena from her Latin, which Ramsdale did without even saying a word. The pull and stretch of his breeches over his thighs as he paced the library was a declension Philomena had never noticed before: need, want, desire, yearning, longing.
Ramsdale’s mouth had become a conjugation of possibilities: I kiss, you kiss, he kisses, we kiss…
He halted the sun, moon, and planets. “I shall be going out. I can have your luncheon served here or in the breakfast parlor.”
Philomena was certain that “going out” had not been on his lordship’s agenda two minutes ago, but getting rid of him would be a relief.
Mostly. “In here will suffice. We are running out of time, and so far, I can’t see a single clue among all of Hephaestus’s rantings.”
He’d gone Old Testament on them with the fourth codicil, pearls before swine, a dog returning to its vomit, all quite graphic and unpleasant, and much of it an exhortation in Ramsdale’s direction.
“I’d rather you not consult with Jane, if you can avoid it.”
“I can avoid it.”
He crossed to the door, then paused and scowled at Philomena. “You are working too hard. You are tired, and I’ll not have it said I was inconsiderate of your welfare.”
Sleepless nights spent alternately regretting and reliving certain kisses and long evenings consulting Papa’s reference books had cost Philomena much rest.
“While you have grown snappish, my lord. Be about your business. It’s not as if I’ll make off with your uncle’s will.”
Philomena had offered, daily, to take the will home with her, where those references would be closer at hand and the distractions fewer. She’d have to hide her work from Papa, and that didn’t sit well, but her concern was moot.
Ramsdale was adamant that she work in his town house. He had latched on to the notion that further clues to the Duke’s whereabouts lurked among his uncle’s small collection of rare tomes, all of which were housed in the earl’s library.
“You’ve tried to make off with the will,” Ramsdale said. “You pester me daily to make off with that document, when you expressly agreed to do the work here.”
Philomena rose, her back protesting even as other parts rejoiced to be free of the chair.
“I had no idea how complicated your uncle’s prose would become. I had no idea you would be perching at the reading table like a mother cat at a mousehole. I had no idea…” Philomena stood before Ramsdale, truly looking at him for the first time that day. “You are tired, and you see your own fatigue when you look at me.”
“Too much waltzing, one of the hazards of my station.” Still, he didn’t march off to his appointment, if any appointment he had.
“Do you want to kiss me again?” Philomena hadn’t planned to ask the question, though it had filled every corner of her mind not already crammed with Latin.
Ramsdale’s expression became very stern. “What I want doesn’t matter, Miss Peebles. I should not have taken liberties with a young woman who has enjoyed a sheltered existence and, in a temporary sense, could be said to be under my protect—”
Philomena kissed him, mostly to stop him from spouting a lecture about propriety, deportment, and the temptations of the flesh.
Also, because she’d thought of little else but kissing him for days.
The experiment was a failure. Kissing Ramsdale in his library, Philomena found none of the surprise, none of the tenderness and wonder that she’d experienced in the shadowy alley. She might as well have been kissing the planet Saturn, warmed by the sun but inert metal for all its fiery—
Ramsdale’s arms stole around her and pulled her close. “Drat you—” He drew the pencil from Philomena’s chignon and tossed it over his shoulder. “All week, I have tried…”
That was encouragement enough. Philomena resumed kissing him, her pace more leisurely. Ramsdale was apparently not indifferent, but he was held hostage by gentlemanly scruples, for which Philomena had to like him.
“All week, my patience has been tried,” Philomena said against his mouth. “Are you truly indifferent to a woman whom you’ve embraced so passionately?”
Jane said men were like that. Their pleasures did not involve their finer feelings, but Jane was a spinster, as best Philomena knew.
Ramsdale twisted the lock above the door latch. “Are you truly more interested in a lot of damned Latin than you are in my kisses?”
Philomena answered him without words, until tongues tangled, the world fell away, and she had the earl pressed up against the door. Delving into great books was a fine pastime for a lively mind, but as the mind gorged, the heart could starve.
Ramsdale had shown Philomena that with a single kiss.
“You are interested.” Philomena glossed a hand over Ramsdale’s falls. “I grew up in a house full of biological treatises and rude university boys. You are interested, my lord.”
Ramsdale captured her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Ladies aren’t supposed to be interested, and regardless of your father’s reduced circumstances, you are a lady who enjoyed a sheltered upbringing.”
Amid the joy and desire coursing through Philomena, confusion blossomed. Papa’s circumstances weren’t reduced, though compared to an earl’s, they were humble. Comfortably humble.
Too humble for Philomena to have designs on a peer of the realm. “I am a spinster, my lord, and you spoke in error. I did not enjoy a sheltered upbringing, I endured one. My situation was all the more frustrating because I had access to the best literature penned here or on the Continent. The French have a far more enlightened view of women than we English do, and their women are doubtless happier as a result.”
Ramsdale sidled away from the door and picked up the pencil he’d tossed aside earlier. “The French women you call happy I call left to fend for themselves, unprotected, even disrespected.”
Nothing killed a tender moment as quickly as a philosophical disagreement.
“I’m sure the ladies of France would rather we’d killed fewer of their menfolk in the recent hostilities, instead of quibbling about the respect the women are owed now.”
Ramsdale slid the pencil back into Philomena’s coiffure. “I concede that point. I will also admit that, on the one hand, my knowledge of Hephaestus and his life will prove invaluable if we’re to identify clues to the location of any part of the Duke. On the other hand, if I sit here any longer staring at your mouth, or your hands, or your other attributes, I shall go daft. We are at another impasse, Miss Peebles. As a gentleman, I apologize for my blunt speech. As a man, I owe you honesty. This arrangement is not working.”
Philomena took the pencil from her hair—it was pulling at her scalp—and set it on the blotter.
“This arrangement is working well to get the will translated. Not another scholar in all of London, save Jane or my father, could undertake this exercise half so expediently as I have, and they’d charge you—”
Ramsdale put a finger to her lips. “Miss Peebles—Philomena—I am trying to be a gentleman. You agreed to translate the will in exchange for coin. I would be the basest scoundrel imaginable if I parlayed that agreement into an exchange of favors no gentleman would ask of a lady.”
That finger slid across her lips, down her cheek, down her neck, to trace along the décolletage of Philomena’s day dress. One touch, and she was muddled beyond speech.
Ramsdale was propositioning her.
No. He was trying not to proposition her.
“You don’t even like me,” he said. “I know well that kissing a man out of curiosity or boredom isn’t at all the same thing as liking him. We have an animal attraction. I’ve been attracted before, doubtless so have you. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
Had he spouted off in some obscure eastern dialect, Philomena could not have been more befuddled.
“I do like you,” she said. “You are honorable, you are considerate, you are patient and determined. You are… I like your voice. When all I knew of you was the strutting earl, I did not care for your company. Now I know the man who keeps the fire built up, who insists on escorting me, who makes sure I eat and refuses to let me toil until all hours. You gave me a rose.”
He studied the floor, a complicated parquet of blond oak. “Nobody gives you roses?”
“Nobody gives me roses, violets, or even daisies. Nobody fixes my tea just how I like it. Nobody demands that I put my books aside to take a pleasant stroll in the early evening sunshine. Nobody listens to me spout off about the lesser-used Latin cases.”
“You are passionate about the vocative.”
Also the locative, which everybody forgot. “I like you, my lord. I like you.”
Happy surprise accompanied Philomena’s words, because they were utterly true. The last, grumpy, lonely part of her still didn’t entirely trust Ramsdale—he’d had years to hunt for the Duke, so why take on that challenge now?—but she did like him.
And his kisses.
“He’s no longer interested in offering for me.” Lady Maude sounded about eight years old, while her papa felt closer to eighty-seven. Late nights arguing politics took a toll, and young people these days were given to needless drama.
“Ramsdale will certainly not offer for you if your mouth becomes set in that unattractive pout, my dear. He’s been back in Town but a fortnight, and he was most attentive to you when he took a meal with us.”
“I am a marquess’s daughter,” Maude said, opening the cover over the pianoforte’s keys. “He can’t think to do better.”
Amesbury set aside his morning newspaper, for he’d get no reading done once Maude started on her finger exercises.
“Don’t put on airs, my dear. Ramsdale could well marry the daughter or sister of a duke. The earl has ever been close to the Duke of Lavelle, for example.” Ramsdale and Lavelle had met under Phineas Peebles’s roof, of all places.
Maude placed a sheaf of music on the rack, though after all these years of diligent study, she ought to have every drill and scale memorized.
“Lavelle’s sister is married. Why must men be so fickle, Papa? Ramsdale showed me marked attention last Season. Everybody said so. Then he disappears to Berkshire, and it’s as if he forgot all about me.”
In all likelihood, given the blandishments available in the countryside, he had. A man of Ramsdale’s robust nature didn’t hare off to Berkshire just to watch birds.
“If it’s any comfort, Ramsdale could barely give me his attention for the duration of a single chess game. Once you left us, he was incapable of focusing.”
Or he’d been bored.
“I adore a rousing game of chess.”
Rousing game of chess was an oxymoron, even with Ramsdale, who enjoyed deep stratagems and wily ploys. A pity the earl wasn’t much inclined toward politics.
“One of your many fine accomplishments,” Amesbury said, wishing for the thousandth time his marchioness had not abandoned him for the celestial realm. Her ladyship would have known what to do with Maude, who seemed one Season away from becoming shrewish and demanding.
And the poor lady was barely twenty years old.
“A countess must be accomplished,” Maude said, beginning on an infernally gloomy minor scale at an interval of a sixth. This was one of her favorite exercises, one she could execute in every key.
“My dear, might you start off with a graceful air? I’ll repair to the library, and the happy strains of your pianoforte will lighten my mood as I deal with the day’s correspondence.”
