Page 28 of The Lady Plays with Fire

“If you stay here, you’ll miss the dancing afterward.”

Her shoulders rose and fell, a shrug of indifference. “I’d rather read a book.” She gestured toward the nearest shelf with the candlestick. Her hand wobbled beneath its weight—or because she was, indeed, as nervous as she appeared—bringing the flame perilously close to more than ample tinder.

“A curious occupation for someone with a headache.” He stepped forward then and relieved her of the burden, setting the candlestick on the desk instead.

She wove her fingers together in front of her skirts, as she had that first night at the theater. “The truth is, I cannot dance. I never learned.”

“Your father did not approve?” Some clergymen were sticklers, he knew.

“My father died,” she said matter-of-factly. “After that, the expense of a dancing master was out of the question.”

“Ah. I understand.”

And he did. His own father’s death—Graham had been just nine years old on that fateful day—had set in motion a number of changes.

Too late, Graham had discovered that a good deal more of them ought to have been of the penny-pinching variety.

She looked skeptical at his claim, though not as skeptical as he might have expected. Her lips formed a circle a long moment before any sound issued from them. “Why?” she asked at last. “I mean, why did you follow me here? Wouldn’t you rather be at cards or supper or dancing with Agatha or Anna?”

He slid the candlestick farther along the desktop so that he could rest one hip against that sturdy piece of furniture. “I wouldn’t. And as for why . . .” It was his turn to shrug. “You intrigue me, Miss Addison.”

She blinked. Again her mouth curved into an O—prelude to another why?, he thought. But before she could speak the word, something passed over her. A sort of . . . tremor. She unfolded her hands, smoothed her skirts, squared her shoulders. What he had mistaken for a shiver was transformed into a wave of resolution. And then she lifted her chin, looked him square in the eye, licked her lips, and whispered in a voice gone slightly hoarse, “Do I, my lord?”

If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought she was trying to flirt with him. Did she intend her pose to be seductive, the question to sound sultry? Surely not.

Though, for an innocent country miss, she was doing a passable job of it. He bit down, hard, on the soft skin behind his lower lip, stifling the smile that threatened, fearful it would be misunderstood. The Misses Clearwater could only dream of being half so appealing.

“Had you found anything worth reading?” he asked when he could trust himself to speak, gesturing with his chin toward the shelf behind her. “I’m sorry for intruding on your solitude. You must get precious little of it, living with Mrs. Hayes. Perhaps that’s why you go about London all on your own.”

She nodded, then seemed to realize how her answer might be interpreted. “I mean, yes, the library is well stocked . . . adequately stocked,” she corrected herself. Her eyes twinkled in the flickering candlelight. “Not much history, though. And I would never dare to complain of Mrs. Hayes’s treatment of me. She has been generous and more than kind.”

He was in no position to dispute the claim, though she hadn’t really addressed his particular charge. He could hardly imagine anything worse than being forever at another person’s beck and call, his time never his own. And he still wondered whether some part of Julia wished Mrs. Hayes more capable of holding her tongue, especially at the theater the other night.

“Your family—your brother—is not bothered by your decision to continue in service?” Graham could only wonder what he would have done if his sisters had lived and still been his responsibility at the time of his inheritance. Would they have shown a similar determination to fend for themselves, particularly in the leanest years, when he could have offered them very little alternative, certainly nothing that guaranteed a roof over their heads that did not leak?

“Why should he be?” To his surprise, she did not sound affronted by the question. “I always knew I would one day be a governess, or a lady’s companion. Very few daughters of clergymen can afford to form grander expectations. My father was not the previous viscount, you see—the title came to my brother after his death, from a distant relation.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and looked her up and down, taking a curious sort of pleasure in her inability to decide whether she despised his notice, or enjoyed it. “You might have married. Might yet, in fact.”

Her eyes flashed, and he suspected her of blushing, though the light was insufficient to say for certain. Again, that curious sort of shiver passed through her, as if she were at war within herself, part of her eager to make some cutting retort and the rest reluctant to risk weakening his interest.

If she only knew how unlikely that was, how her occasionally wicked tongue or mischievous glance only made him more determined to know her better.

“I don’t think so, my lord. For then I should have to give up my independence.”

“I was not suggesting you give yourself to some brute who would crush your spirit, Miss Addison.” He pushed away from the desk and took half a step closer to her. “And I suspect even a country clergyman’s daughter knows that matrimony offers other, more . . . intimate benefits. Not that those benefits cannot be had in other ways,” he added, probing her intentions.

Instinctively she turned from his piercing look and discovered, a moment too late, that he had reached up to tuck a wayward curl behind her ear. Her heated cheek grazed his palm. Then, quickly correcting herself, she dropped her chin to avoid his gaze. Dark lashes swept over her cheeks. “What I know, my lord, is that this conversation does neither of us any credit.”

From the neighboring drawing room came the rumble of furniture being moved, and someone—probably some unfortunate soul dragged up from the servants’ hall—began to tune a fiddle. So, the Misses Clearwater had got their way. When the party returned from supper, there would be dancing. The fiddle began to scrape out the opening notes of a reel.

Graham trailed his fingertips over Julia’s shoulder and down her arm to capture her hand, which was bare and icy cold. “Will you dance, Miss Addison?”

“I told you, my lord, I can’t.”

“You said you never learned. But you might still make an attempt, in the privacy of this library, with me.”

Ah. There it was, the tiniest hint of a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. “You’re insufferable—did you know?”