Mischief by Moonlight (15 page)

The next day, she returned to Jasmine House, leaving Edwina to stay with Maria.

Edwina missed Josie. London wasn't the same without her, and though Josie had seemed a little improved at her departure, Edwina was still worried about her, and sad for her sister's heavy loss. She hoped Jasmine House would offer the solace that Josie so clearly needed.

And it was strange, but without Josie around to needle her about Lord Mappleton being a bad choice for a husband, Edwina was finding herself thinking about her sister's concerns, when previously she'd been so able to ignore them and focus on her goal. Well, perhaps it had been the case that because it was
Josie
who was speaking about Mappleton's appeal as a suitor, she hadn't paid attention.

“
Do
you
really
enjoy
his
company
so
much
that
you
wish
to
see
him
morning, noon, and night?
” Josie had probed.

Edwina really couldn't afford such thoughts. Mappleton was all she'd ever hoped for in a man, and very likely he was going to propose. He would be back in Town any day.

Then she would be free—free of the stifling world of Jasmine House and its pinchpenny living and, most of all, though she could never have admitted it so baldly, free of a future as Mama's companion. She loved her mother, but now that she wasn't dragged down by gloom, she could admit that she didn't want to live out a spinster's existence caring for her.

So it would be Mappleton, if he proposed, and no looking back. She might not think his company scintillating, but she was confident she could control things between them, and to ask for more than that from marriage would be greedy. She certainly didn't expect it would be anything as exciting as what she'd felt with Whitby, and that was as it should be.

What had happened with him in the library had shown her she was vulnerable to fairy-tale wishes, to the dream of a man who would love her just for herself, one she could love in return. But she was a practical woman, and she knew that marriage, as much as she'd ever seen of it, had little to do with love. And she'd been burned enough by Mr. Perriwell to know that she didn't dare risk her heart with any man. A smart marriage was about power and playing your cards right. Mappleton was going to offer the family and future she'd been hoping for, and he would
do
.

A knock on her bedchamber door arrested her hands in the process of tidying a few stray hairs as she examined her coiffure in the looking glass. She had on one of the pretty dresses Maria had bought her, a gown the color of bluebells that fell in long, soft lines to swirl in a cloud around her feet.

“If you please, miss,” said Letty, one of the maids, “Mr. Whitby says he's misplaced the jewel box.”

Edwina ground her teeth. She'd sent Letty down to collect the box.

“Go back and tell him that I expect he'll be able to find it within an hour.”

An hour later, Letty returned to tell her that the box was still missing.

“Is it, by God,” Edwina muttered.

“Miss?” Letty said.

“Nothing. That will be all, thank you.”

She knew what he was doing: he'd told her to come down for the box herself, and he wanted her to know she wasn't going to get it until she did.

She told herself that not doing as he'd directed was the appropriate response to a man who seemed to think he could order her around, but she knew there was more to it, that she was also having to resist the urge to see him again. She'd found herself unable to stop thinking about him, and about what would have happened if Josie hadn't come into the library.

Something
inappropriate
and
wrong, that's what
.

She made herself wait until the late afternoon before she went out through the garden to the carriage house, where he'd been given space to do his work. She would collect her box and make certain Jack Whitby understood that she was
not
his for the ordering about. That in fact, this was the end of any interaction between them.

The door to the carriage house was half-open, and a rasping sound was issuing from within. She paused in the doorway and poked her head a little way in. Maria kept just the brougham; it was parked near the wooden door to the alley, which left space for Whitby and a number of pieces of furniture.

He was a few feet inside the house but facing away from her and crouching down below a high window, by whose light he was rubbing glasspaper along the leg of a chair.

The rough, light cloth of his shirt seemed just the right complement to the hard shape of his musculature, which was being intermittently described by the motions of his arm. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, revealing a tanned forearm and a neat wrist. His hands were surprisingly elegant in a sturdy way, his fingers long and their motions deft and economical. None of which should matter to her.

“Are you coming in or not, Edwina Cardworthy?” he asked without turning around, giving her a start. She'd been so quiet—how had he known she was there? She drew herself up and spoke to his back.

“I've come for the box. If you've managed to find it, that is.”

He put the glasspaper down and stood to face her, and something unruly in her rose up.

“It happens I have.” His light blue eyes held a glint of mischief that, idiotically, made her want to smile. She disciplined her lips into a line and lifted her chin.

“Why, what a surprise.” She remained in the doorway and held out her hand to indicate she would collect the box and be done with him.

He refused to look at her hand. “Come in. I'll get it.”

“I'll wait here.”

The corner of his mouth inched up, provoking her. She let her hand drop exasperatedly. “Do finally tell me what it is, Whitby, that you find so perpetually amusing about me.”

“Well, you
are
funny. It's the way you seem so stiff.”

He moved closer, and a whiff of his scent came to her; the clean scent of wood shavings, for goodness' sake, was giving her a thrill. But it was familiar now, and it whispered of closeness and excitement. “You're wound up tight as a spring, when if you'd only smile, the world would fall at your feet. But you won't smile. You can't let your guard down.”

What did he mean,
the
world
would
fall
at
her
feet
? Did
he
want to fall at her feet?

No, she didn't care what he wanted. Nor would she think about how he might
unwind
her.

He was closer now—she didn't know when that had happened—and she had to tip her head back a bit to see him.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said, horrified by the wayward huskiness that had crept into her voice. And the awareness that she desperately wanted him to kiss her again. Hadn't she been wanting his kiss all the time she'd been waiting to come down here? Hadn't the awareness of how much she'd been thinking of Whitby been the main reason she'd sent Letty first?

He crossed his arms and leaned his shoulder against the brick wall near the door, and a mocking glint came into his eyes. He had such an assured quality about him, as though nothing would ever set him off balance.

She told herself it was only to move away from him—she certainly wasn't going to
run
away—that she pushed the door wider and entered the carriage house, mustering her most queenly demeanor. A bee came in with her and buzzed lazily about the sunlit and shadowy spaces in the quiet room.

With the brougham to one side, he'd set up a number of pieces of furniture. There were two more chairs like the one he'd just been working on, plus a small round table upended onto its top. Beyond these, against the wall and near the brougham, was a singular piece that caught her attention.

She moved closer, drawn by its exquisite lines. “Oh. It's beautiful.”

It was a trim, delicate desk, just the size that a woman might like for writing letters. The modest top was large enough for someone to spread her things out a bit, and she envisioned an inkwell and a few sheets of paper and perhaps a bud vase neatly arranged. The wood was a rich, many-hued honey color, simple but not plain, and on each side a single, sturdy leg decorated with carved leaves descended toward a footed bar that elegantly held the desk's weight.

“Mrs. Westin commissioned it,” he said from behind her, “and I'm just putting on the finishing touches.”

“The wood is so rich-looking. Is it something unusual?”

“Oak. Strong and solid.”

But it looked elegant, artful. “I didn't know oak could look so rich.”

“If it's in the right hands…”

“Did you design this?”

“I do all my own designs.”

She acknowledged then what she hadn't wanted to consider: how much of an artist he was, an artist in wood. He made beautiful things—items of lasting worth—for clients like Maria Westin who could appreciate his work. Very likely one would have to be as wealthy as Maria to afford it.

He was socially beneath her, but he deserved to be proud of what he contributed to the world: beautiful, useful objects. And he was. She envied Jack Whitby his pride. He knew his own worth, and he would never let anyone convince him it was less than excellent. What would her life have been like if she'd believed in herself as deeply?

She saw now that all her life she'd engaged in a sort of reverse pride, believing that the only appealing thing about her was her looks. What if she could allow that there was much more to her of value, aspects that might even deserve respect and approval?

Those aspects might not be her recently acquired talents for charming the fashionable people of London; she wasn't
really
carefree and lighthearted. But maybe that didn't mean she was lacking—just different.

What if she, like Whitby, looked for and honored what was good in herself instead of always focusing on things not to like? She could celebrate the good qualities she had. Like loyalty; her family might aggravate her interminably, but she would always love them. Also, intelligence; she could solve complicated mathematical problems and appreciated books of all kinds, and she was capable enough to oversee the Cardworthys' finances. And she was very, very good with a needle and thread.

Accepting herself, she suddenly saw, could be a choice. So simple, and yet a revelation.

If only it hadn't been the wrong man who'd helped her see it. They couldn't be anything to each other, yet he did something to her. And she needed to know, truly, how much she affected him.

She turned to face him. “Why do you tease me? Why did you kiss me in the library?”

“Can you not guess?” He laughed softly, but there was something deep in his eyes. “You captivate me. Like a fine piece of oak, I suspect you've so many layers to you that a man could never uncover them all. You're like infinity.”

A burst of happiness sped through her. She wanted to rush into his arms.

But this man was not from her world. She
must
not allow herself to trust him.

“You compare a woman to a piece of wood,” she said, forcing disdain into her voice, needing to remind them both of the distance that must exist between them. “A gentleman would never do such a thing.”

He crossed his arms. “And there are many other things gentlemen do that I would not. I'd never beget a bastard, for one thing.”

She blinked at the bluntness of his words.

“There, see? My frankness didn't send you into a swoon. Do you know, Edwina, I once cared for a young woman who was fragile. I had to watch what I said all the time or she'd collapse in tears, and I eventually became glad I'd never been tempted by marriage. Many women are so sensitive that a man could never disagree with them properly. They sulk and fuss, or crumble to pieces. But you're not fragile, and you don't mind offending people if you disagree with them. I like that about you.”

“You like me because I'm difficult?”

“I like your spirit.”

She blinked. “You think I have spirit?”

“Of course you do. You speak your mind, and you care about what's right. You could have married years ago, but you never met the right man, did you?”

It scared her that he seemed to know so much about her. She straightened her spine, needing to arm herself so he didn't cozen her. “You're wrong. Any number of men in London understand my value and wish to treat me accordingly.”

“You may think you want to be put on a pedestal and admired. But I'd never do that to you. You're a woman to hold and touch and kiss. A woman to talk with and fight with and make love with.”

She sucked in a breath. His words showed her something completely new. They moved her. Her lips burned, yearning desperately for him to move closer and complete that in her which needed him so much. She struggled against it.

“I don't know what made me stand here listening to the words of a carpenter,” she said in a voice that should have been sharp, but it came out husky.

He looked at her steadily for long moments, so that she wanted to squirm under his gaze, but she held firm. Finally, as if coming to some decision, he said, “You're right. Forget what I said. No one would ever say we might be together.”

“It would be wrong,” she said.

But suddenly she hated him a little for starting all this, for teasing her and kissing her and ignoring the prickly shield she kept raised, for speaking words that made her believe she was special. In his arrogance, he'd stepped across the societal divide between them and done things that had made her want him more, and now, suddenly,
she
wanted that power.