Master of Love (14 page)

My God, he feels good.

Hard and soft, dangerous and safe. Masterful and very male.

But her rational librarian self wouldn't allow total surrender of all good sense. How to explain what was happening here, why she was making such a fool of herself? What if Daphne were to see? Ashamed and confused, she broke off with a whimper and tucked her head into his shoulder.

She felt an agony of embarrassment that he was toying with her. She couldn't bear to be merely another in his string of conquests. But what was the alternative? Hold on to her pride, slap his face, never know what it was to kiss the lips of this gorgeous and intriguing man? Was that a better fate?

He stroked her hair and whispered, “Shhh, Callista.” His big hands fell lower to rub soothing circles across her back, and she felt him sigh. He tipped up her chin and leaned back to look into her eyes. The corners of his sumptuous mouth pulled flat into a little moue that should have looked ridiculous on a grown man. He managed to turn it into a sensuous gesture that left her wondering what else his mouth could do. “You think I'm a fool, don't you?”

“Most often, I have no idea what to think of you, my lord.”

“Do you think you might call me Dominick?”

Could that be a wistful, lonely note in his voice? “Such an address would hardly be proper.”

“Perhaps not.” He sighed again. “But I dare to hope we're becoming friends.”

“I can't be . . . that kind of friend.” Lord knew she wanted to be. She felt, low in her core, a restless yearning she'd never experienced before. Her rational side knew the cost would be high. Perhaps it would be worth it? And yet she didn't want to be one of his many. She wanted him to be hers alone.
Idiotic, romantic dreamer,
she thought, chiding herself fiercely, startled at the intensity of her feelings.

“I know,” he said. “That's not what I have in mind.”

“Then what?” she cried, frustrated and confused.

“Have you never been kissed before? Gentlemen must have fought duels to kiss a mouth this delightful. Do you know how often I dream about this sweet bow on your top lip?” He traced it with his fingertip.

Fire danced across her flesh, and she found it very hard to think, beyond a vague awareness that he'd quite successfully evaded her question. “I . . . I've been kissed before. There was a young lawyer in Paris rather fond of me.” He'd perhaps been working himself up to a courtship when they'd had to move back to London.

“And he didn't follow you? The dolt.”

“Well, he did have a practice in Paris based on the civil law. We have the common law here, you know.”

“I'd never let a trifle like the common law stop me from courting you.”

His quip left untouched the fact that he obviously wasn't courting her at all. Something was growing between them, although for the life of her Callista couldn't figure out what it was. She couldn't bear to think she was merely his current conquest, and something about it didn't feel that way. But what did she know? She had no experience to judge by and would be the worst sort of naïve fool to think it could be anything else. Yet when they spent time with each other and talked of books or dined, this thing between them felt good and real, like a slow coming together of two minds. And when he looked at her as he did now, his lazy smile curled down her spine and his brandied drawl stirred her blood to a slow burn.

She felt an edge of panic flutter within—she was in far, far over her head, and without any means to get out.

He held both her hands and leaned down to touch his forehead to hers. “Come out with me, Callista,” he whispered. “The Philosophical Society is sponsoring a talk on David Hume this Wednesday at the British Museum. Professor Jamieson will be lecturing at the Edinburgh conference, and the organizing committee is bringing him down from the University of Edinburgh to drum up interest. There'll be a reception afterward, with many of the scholars you know in attendance. Please, say you'll come with me.”

And, like a fool, because she was beginning to fear there was little she would refuse this mesmerizing man, she took the leap.

“Yes, I'll come.”

Chapter 8

T
he late-afternoon lecture—“British Empiricism and the Scottish Enlightenment: The Influence of David Hume”—was more crowded than Callista expected. The buzzing audience settling into seats at the British Museum lecture hall consisted not only of gentlemen from the Philosophical Society and book collectors she recognized, but also a throng from the fashionable upper ton, including Lady Vaughnley and an exquisitely dressed Lady Barrington. The latter was on the arm of a widowed earl recently out of mourning; she gave Dominick and Callista no more than a passing nod.

Dominick
—more fool she, Callista now used his Christian name in her head, although never out loud.

High society was apparently quite eager to see the notorious Professor Jamieson—infamous in their world not for his radical interpretation of Mr. Hume, but for the countess who'd left her husband and now lived openly with the University of Edinburgh scholar. When he began to speak, he dedicated the lecture to her—“my dearest Sophronia.” Sophronia, Lady Bentley, sat worshipfully in the front row of the auditorium and hung on the professor's every word. The two clearly adored each other and had chosen, Dominick informed Callista after the lecture, simply to ignore the scandal caused by their affair. Lady Bentley was no longer received by the elite families among whom she'd lived her life, and Callista saw many ladies give her the cut direct. The countess, however, seemed neither to notice nor to care, beaming at her “Jamesie,” as she called the professor when Dominick introduced Callista to them after the lecture, and looking amazingly content with her lot.

“Makes you wonder, doesn't it?” Dominick bent his head to ask her as he led her away to the refreshment table for a glass of negus. “Is it love or philosophy that turns people into such fools?”

“Surely that's far too harsh,” she retorted, smiling at him over the rim of the spiced wine. Not even his cynicism could spoil her pleasure today. The lecture had been wonderful, brilliant and moving with the professor's obvious passion for his lifework. And Dominick was the perfect escort: attentive to her comfort, humorous in his asides, a pagan god come to earth to squire her about. She'd had naught to wear save Marie's blue silk, but her friend had produced a most elegant velvet half cape in a dark pewter to complement the gown. With a matching velvet ribbon around her throat and her hair up in a complicated series of ringlets that took Marie an hour to put in place, Callista felt as pretty and pampered as she ever had. She'd tried to insist to Marie that the lecture invitation formed part of her work duties, but her friend would have none of it. “It's a social outing,
chérie
”—Marie spoke as if to a dim-witted child—“and I will not have you shaming Couture by Beauvallon by appearing in public like a dowdy English frump.”

“Too harsh?” he snorted, smiling back. “Not harsh enough, if you ask me.”

“Has your status as lothario jaded you to the point of such scorn?” she asked him tartly. “Even if you don't believe in love, doesn't your patronage of the Philosophical Society convince you of the value of that work?”

“Philosophy is valuable enough, if you don't let it take over your life,” he tossed off casually, steering her from the crowded room into the pleasant cool of the terrace beyond. “But love”—Dominick shook his golden head, burnished in the twilight—“will ruin you. Poor Lady Bentley has lost the esteem of her circle and become an object of ridicule. Half the people in this room are here tonight so they can gossip about her tomorrow. Professor Jamieson is regarded as too much of an absentminded eccentric to be held fully accountable. In his case, I think it
is
both philosophy and love that's ruined him.”

“And yet, they seem very happy.”

Dominick's shoulders tensed, as if Callista's quiet words made him uncomfortable. He turned away from the glowing gaslight of the reception to face the gathering dusk of the London evening. “Yes, the poor fools do,” he muttered.

Mr. Claremont and Mr. Plumptre rushed up then, all a-flutter about a mix-up in dates over when Professor Jamieson was to give his keynote address at the Edinburgh conference. Lady Bentley was insisting she and dear Jamesie had already made plans to travel to Ireland at that time, since the professor had assured her the conference wasn't until a month later. The Philosophical Society president and secretary both begged for their patron's assistance.

With a sigh, Dominick settled Callista among the Cambridge tutors whom she met regularly at his luncheons, all in attendance tonight at Jamieson's lecture and fiercely debating its merits out on the terrace. He headed back inside with the society officers to settle the dispute, promising Callista he wouldn't be long.

Mr. Thompson, the youngest of the scholars, politely asked what she thought of the lecture. He wasn't yet a tutor but was up for consideration next academic year for the prestigious fellowship, which conferred both status and lifetime security of employment. She dove happily into deliberation with him and the others over the finer points of the Scottish versus the German Enlightenment.

“And did you note,” asked Mr. Thompson excitedly, “how Professor Jamieson championed the Scottish Enlightenment in an almost point-by-point rebuttal of the argument laid out by Amator Philosophiae in his latest essay in
Philosophers' Quarterly
?”

“So you caught that, did you, lad? If only you could be so perspicacious in your own essays,” Mr. Walpole, the senior of the tutors, teased, stroking his impressive gray beard as Thompson blushed. “You're referring to Amator's paper ‘In Defense of Passion, Versus the Rationality of the Enlightenment.' Brilliant stuff! That's the sort of thing you should be writing, Thompson, if you want to make fellow. If you ask me, my money's on Amator over Jamieson.”

The group launched into an animated discussion of the mysterious anonymous scholar writing as the “Lover of Philosophy.”

“He's up to five essays now, isn't he? All analyzing the nature of love?”

“Did you read his piece ‘The Aesthetic Theory of Love'?”

“Yes, and I hid it from my wife, along with that companion essay in the next volume, ‘On the Distinction Between Love and Desire'!”

“What about his first essay, ‘On the Relation of Beauty and Morality'?”

“The most original thing I read in ages! I've assigned it to my students for two years now as required reading.”

“Wonder why he hides behind a pseudonym?”

“Yes, who is he?”

Callista had read the essays herself, as she made it a point to keep up with significant new authors; she agreed the scholarly articles were wonderfully incisive in their explorations of the philosophy of love, passion, and desire, from the time of Plato to the modern age. Speculation raged in their group about Amator's true identity: an American professor trying to break into Anglo circles, a self-taught genius, a brilliant young prodigy schooled outside the Cambridge/Oxford system, perhaps a European aristocrat?

Attracted by their lively debate, others joined in, while some of the tutors made their excuses and left for evening engagements. The stream of attendees heading down the terrace steps toward their carriages grew, until Callista found herself alone with two young gentlemen of the ton to whom Rexton had introduced her before the lecture began.

And whom she'd caught pointing at her while whispering in each other's ears after the lecture let out.

She looked around, somewhat uncomfortable with the company now remaining, but saw Dominick still inside engaged with the scheduling debacle.

“So you like books, do you, Miss Higginbotham?”

She recalled the speaker as Lord Overton. As he puffed out a garish orange and green waistcoat, the impression he'd made earlier of an obnoxious popinjay deepened.

“I don't think she'd mind us calling her Callista, would she? No need to bother with formalities among friends.” His partner Mr. Harris was equally obnoxious, a tall and reedy American over for the grand tour with more money than manners.

“We have just been introduced, sirs, and hardly know each other well enough for such liberty of address,” she said coldly. She moved toward the reception room, where she made out Dominick's broad back bent toward the shorter forms of Mr. Plumptre and the professor, both gesticulating wildly.

Lord Overton blocked her path. “We could get to know each other much better,” he proposed, leering into her cleavage.

She pulled her half cape closed and pursed her mouth. She'd played this scene out before but hadn't expected to have to do so today. She'd assumed the waves of gossip at the lecture were about the scandalous Lady Bentley and her open affair with Professor Jamieson. With a bolt of hot shame, she realized the gossip might also have been about her.

“You work for Rexton, don't you?” asked Harris.

“Yes, I am a book dealer and librarian,” she answered stiffly, trying to edge away from the pair without causing a scene.

“Is that what you call yourself?” chortled Overton. “Leave it to the Master of Love to become bored with tucking away a dancer or actress. Mark my words, Harris”—he dug an elbow into his companion's ribs—“he's setting a new trend. By next season, it'll be all the rage for every man about town to keep his own ‘librarian'!”

“So she's under Rexton's protection?” Harris asked his friend, as if they weren't standing right in front of Callista, still blocking her way.

Anger and humiliation rolled across her skin, kicking up a sheen of perspiration in the cooling twilight. “I'm sure I don't know what you're implying!”

“You're a smart girl—I think you do,” said Overton, smirking. “Is it an exclusive arrangement, or are you free to ‘arrange book collections' for other gentlemen as well?”

“Yes, my book collection is quite in need of reorganization,” Harris said with a snigger. “I have a volume that could use attention right now, in fact.”

“I am not available,” she ground out. Lord, these men were truly loathsome. “Now, if you'll excuse me.” She tried to shoulder through them, but Overton grabbed her arm.

“I think you should reconsider, Callista,” he hissed in her ear. “I'm sure Rexton wouldn't mind. Harris and I are prepared to be generous.”

“I am not what you take me for. Now let me pass!” She began to feel panicky and struggled to look past their bulk and catch Dominick's eye.

“You won't hold Rexton long, you know.” Overton's face twisted into angry lines in the dim light. “Everyone knows how quickly he moves on. You'd be wise to have your next protector lined up.”

She pulled away, but her continued resistance seemed to further infuriate him and he wrenched hard at her arm.

“Let me go!” The crack of her palm against his face resounded across the emptying terrace. All remaining heads turned toward them.

Dominick was at her side in a few long strides as Overton and Harris stepped back.

“Are you all right?” His touch to her shoulder was tender, but murder gleamed in the gaze he turned on the two men. “What have you done?” he demanded of them.

“My apologies, Rexton.” Overton bowed. “ ‘Twas an unfortunate misunderstanding, is all. No harm done.”

“I think your apologies should be directed toward Miss Higginbotham.” A pulse pounded in Dominick's temple.

“All is fine, Lord Rexton.” Embarrassment burned a tight knot into the back of her throat, and she wouldn't meet his gaze. “Please do not concern yourself.”

The popinjays both muttered apologies and bowed to her while keeping a nervous eye on Dominick. They backed up for a hasty departure.

Callista was mortified. She'd made everything worse by causing a scene. It wouldn't take much imagination for the few people lingering on the terrace to guess what made her slap the man.

“Come, let's get you back to Bloomsbury. Meacham has the horses around the corner.” Dominick took her arm gently and said nothing more until he'd handed her into the carriage and settled her against the front-facing squabs.

“What happened, Callista?”

“You needn't worry yourself, my lord. I'm fine.” She picked at the fraying threads on the thumb seam of her glove.

With a sigh, he stripped off his own gloves. When his long fingers stroked down her cheek and raised her chin so she was facing him, she had to bite her tongue against a whimper that arose in her throat.

“Callista, please look at me.”

Reluctantly, she raised her eyes.

“You were insulted whilst in my escort. It's very much a source of my concern. He propositioned you, didn't he?”

“Actually, they both did.”

His lips tightened into a flat line and he withdrew his hand into a fist. “I'm sorry, Callista. I'll make sure those two pups understand the error of their ways and do not subject you to such insult again.”

“They think I'm your mistress.” She blurted out the words. She wondered if Lady Vaughnley and Lady Barrington were responsible for the rumors that had come to this.

That stopped him. “Those maggots.”

He reached for her again and ran both hands down her arms. She inhaled sharply at the tender spot where Overton had wrenched her arm.

“You're hurt,” he said, frowning. “Let me see.”

He moved to push aside her cape, but his concern only prodded like a poker at her shame to stir it into hot anger. “I don't care about my arm! The problem is men making insulting suppositions and trying to coerce me into their beds!”

He braced his elbows on his knees and reached across the small carriage space to take her hands in his. “My poor Callista, what have you been through since your father's death?”

His compassion was even worse. She pulled from his grasp and shifted away on the seat. “It's not just me! London hosts thousands of women like me, on our own for various reasons, trying to earn a respectable living and support our families. Do you know how few avenues of employment are open to us? The assumptions men make? That we're all
whores
”—she spit out the word—“available for your needs? You men amaze me.”