“What do you mean, never mind? You’re going to spend your money on books and then . . . ?”
She sighed. “If I tell you, you’ll laugh. And if you laugh, I’ll hate you forever.”
“I won’t laugh.”
She gave him a dubious look.
“Very well, I might laugh. But you’ll only hate me for a day or two.”
“I plan to take books home and open a circulating library.”
“A circulating library,” he repeated—without laughing . . . noticeably.
“Yes. I’ll rent out books to ladies visiting on holiday. And since I’ve little experience with libraries myself, I hoped to glean some ideas from yours. Do you believe me now, that I was out of bed with honest purpose—not with snooping or thievery in mind?”
He did believe her. A lending library for spinsters? Not even a champion liar could weave such a preposterous tale from nothing.
“Very well. I apologize,” he said. “I misjudged you.”
“You apologize?” She looked at him, shocked. “Those aren’t words I expected to hear from your lips.”
“Then you’ve misjudged me.” His faults might be legion, but no one could say he didn’t admit them openly.
“Maybe.” She folded her bottom lip and sipped on it. “Well, then. While we’re talking . . . perhaps you could suggest a book. What do you read, your grace?”
“I don’t read much of anything besides estate correspondence. Never seem to find the time.”
In demonstration, he lifted a newspaper from a side table and cast it aside. He felt a small twinge of guilt. Each morning, Higgs went to the trouble of ironing the thing, page by page. Griff seldom gave it a glance.
Instead, he moved to the room’s large desk and lit a pair of candles. There was a broken clock there he’d been meaning to tinker with—one of the Viennese curiosities his father had collected. Really, he should have been a tradesman’s son. He always felt more comfortable, more capable, when his hands were occupied.
Her questions followed him. “But if you did have time to read, what would you choose?”
“Plays,” he answered. For no particular reason, other than to have the question gone.
“Oh, plays. Those would be good for the library. The Spindle Cove ladies are fond of staging theatricals.” Clutching the counterpane about her shoulders with one hand, she used the other to pull the rolling ladder toward another bank of shelves. “Do you go often to the theater?”
“Not lately.”
“But you did in the past, then.” Genuine interest warmed her voice. “Why did you stop? How long has it been?”
His grip tightened on a screw he’d been loosening. No one questioned him about this. Not even his mother. He felt the unexpectedness of it first, like a cold splash of water to the face. But once the initial affront wore off, he was left feeling oddly relieved. Almost grateful.
Griff’s peers, associates, friends from the club . . . they must have noticed his retreat from society this past year. But if they wondered at the reasons and speculated amongst themselves, not a one of them had directly asked him why. Whether they lacked the courage or the interest, he didn’t know.
Pauline Simms had the courage. And the interest, it seemed. Her innocent question warmed a place inside him that had long gone cold.
For a moment he was tempted to answer.
But then he dismissed the idea. There was no way for a man of his wealth and rank to relate his personal trials to a serving girl without sounding completely insufferable. Miss Simms had been raised in poverty, with a simple-minded sister to protect and a violent father she couldn’t escape. Despite it all, she retained her pride and a sharp sense of humor. Was this girl supposed to pity him for missing the Theatre Royal’s spring season, when she’d never attended the theater for even one night?
She would chide him for his whinging, and justly so. He could hear it now: Dukes and their problems.
He worked another tiny screw free of the clock’s back facing. “I don’t see that it should be any of your—”
“Any of my concern,” she finished for him. “I know. You’re right. It’s not my business, but I couldn’t help asking. It’s the oddest thing, your grace. Even amid all the ancient, moldering volumes in this library . . . I find you the most unreadable book in the room. Just when I think I understand you, you confound me again.”
“Simms, I’m a man. I’m not that complex.”
He set aside the clockwork, intending to call an end to this literary interlude and send her upstairs to her chamber. But when he looked up, he saw her.
All of her.
And his voice ceased to function.
She stood perched on the second highest rung of the ladder. The counterpane had slipped to a downy cloud on the floor, and she floated above it—just a wisp of woman, wreathed in the thinnest, most fragile linen shift he’d ever seen. The thing had been worn and washed and mended so many times, it was like a lace of cobwebs rather than proper fabric. And when she swung her body in front of the shining oil lamp?
The shift was utterly transparent.
He could see everything. She didn’t have a boyish figure at all. No, she was all woman. Her small, apple-round br**sts were capped with dark ni**les. Her belly was sleek. When she perched on the ladder, stretching on tiptoe for another book, the curve of her silhouette called to him like a familiar melody. Arched foot, slender calf, sweetly flared thigh . . . and a rounded, graspable bottom.
True, hers wasn’t a Rubenesque, buxom figure. No artists would paint her lolling about in white sheets. There was something wild and elemental about her. They’d be inspired to depict a dancing nymph or chasing dryad. Hers was a body that would always show to its best advantage in motion.
And bare.
Brilliant. Now his imagination rioted with thoughts of her naked and moving.
She turned on the ladder, facing him.
Eyes, he told himself. Stay focused on the eyes. She had lovely eyes, with that startling leaf-green hue and her impossibly long eyelashes. He needn’t let his gaze wander anywhere else.
Not to her spritely br**sts.
Nor the enticing, dark triangle nestled between her thighs.
Damn.
He was a man, as he’d told her. Not that complex. The reaction in his groin was pure, simple, and about four extra inches of straightforward. Surely she didn’t realize how she appeared. She couldn’t realize, or she’d jump down from that ladder at once and cover herself.