“Never mind,” she said. “I assure you, he’s expecting me. Can you take me to wherever he spends his evenings?”
“His… bedchamber?”
The boggled look on the young man’s face was slightly gratifying. At least it didn’t seem likely that her future husband often received nighttime visitors in his bedchamber.
Her future husband.
Dear Lord.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Humphrey, my… lady?”
“Humphrey,” she said. “All right. As untoward as this seems, I am probably going to be living here soon. I have a very nice maid named Emmie with a lifetime supply of French pastry, and if you help me locate His Grace right now, I will make sure that she shares with you.”
Selina Ravenscroft, pastry fairy, did the trick. Humphrey opened the door the rest of the way and led her through a series of narrow and puzzlingly dark rooms.
Where was the rest of the staff? Were they all abed?
But she shook off the thought, because Humphrey led her up two flights of stairs and then—she winced—started shouting, “Your Grace! You have a caller! Your Grace?”
Peter materialized in the hallway.
He was still dressed as he’d been at their house for dinner, but his cravat was untied and dangling around his neck. His dark curls were wild, as though he’d scrubbed his hands through them a time or ten.
He looked baffled and a little vulnerable, and the way his cravat framed his bare throat made her want to put her mouth just there and lick him.
Oh God, she was going to hell, wasn’t she? She was here to explain why marrying her would ruin his life and tell him he ought to reconsider.
She wasnothere to lick him.
“Selina,” he said, coming close enough to grab her hands in his. She felt a shock of warmth in her body as his bare fingers met hers. “Why—how did you get up—” He paused and turned to his manservant. “Thank you, Humphrey. That’s all for tonight.”
Humphrey looked extremely relieved to be dismissed. He fairly sprinted back down the hallway as Peter ushered Selina into a firelit chamber. It was dim, but the whole house had been rather dark, and her eyes were adjusted well enough to make out a sparsely furnished room. A desk, a few stacks of books upon it, and several more stacks on the floor. Two chairs pulled together in front of the fire.
“Peter,” she said, and then promptly ran out of courage. “Maybe we should… sit. We should sit.”
“Yes,” he said. “All right.”
Her backside had barely met the chair when Peter started talking again. “I’m sorry,” he burst out. “God, Selina, I’m so—I’m so sorry. I know you didn’t want this. I just couldn’t”—he hesitated for the briefest of moments and then forged on—“I couldn’t think of anything else to do except to go along with it.”He reached out and took her hands in his again. “Tell me what I can do to make it right.”
It was so altogether unexpected that Selina stared. “You’re… sorry?”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, I swear it. I know you didn’t want to marry me.”
“Peter.” His hands were warm and steady as they held hers. His fingers were long, his skin callused but not rough. She stared at his hands for a moment longer and then willed herself to look up and meet his gaze.
His eyes were dark in the flame-lit room and intent on her face.
Courage, she told herself.You are the woman who runs the most popular circulating library in England. Act like it.
“Peter,” she said again. “It’s not that I don’t want to marry you. I turned you down because—because—”
She could not say it. She was afraid to say it.
“It wasn’t because I don’t want you,” she whispered. “I do.”
His eyes flared with heat, with hope, so she rushed on.
