When she glanced at him again, he was once more absorbed in the contracts, turning the pages silently.
“It would surely be more comfortable to read in my father’s office,” she couldn’t stop herself from murmuring.
“Not so,” he replied. “The din from the workshops is disturbing.”
“You might ask him to close the casements.” Papa liked to be able to survey the entire workshop from his office, but even he acknowledged it could be loud, with the lathes and potters’ wheels. There were casement windows to dim the noise.
“I am quite comfortable here,” said St. James. “Though I do treasure your tender concern for my comfort.”
“Should I not?” She consulted her notes and added a gram of soda to her mixture. “As your wife, I insist you retire to a more refined space, befitting a gentleman who once read law.” She bit off the wordwifewith emphasis.
“My dear, I would not be parted from you, not even by a regiment of workmen hammering away,” was his silky reply.
She imagined chasing him from the room with a pair of fire tongs, the sturdy tool that lifted items from the kiln. It cheered her enough to carry on, but not enough to allow her to forget he was there.
And that was what Bianca really craved. This man had already taken up too much of her attention, and now he was spoiling her concentration simply by sitting there, his legs elegantly crossed and those spectacles on his nose again. How did a man look more appealing with eyeglasses, instead of like a nearsighted quiz?
Even worse, she could see his leg from the corner of her eye. He had very shapely calves. Bianca wasn’t above noticing a finely muscled leg on a man, but before it had always been passing curiosity and nothing more. There had never been the remotest chance she would do more than look.
But this man... The world expected her to go to bed withthisman.
She had tried not to look at his legs the night before—nor at any part of him—but he seemed determined to draw her eye. Even in his plain, sober clothing, wearing spectacles and reading a dust-dry contract. Obviously he knew he was a handsome man. Bianca was wildly annoyed that she had to know it, too.
She made a valiant effort, but it was too much. Within the hour she gave it up, threw down her pestle, and jumped off her stool. “Very well, I shall lead you on a tour. After that I expect to have this workshop to myself.”
He removed his spectacles and studied her. “Do I unsettle you?”
“I prefer to work in privacy.” She stressed the last word. “You unsettle me as much as anyone being in the room would. There is a reason my workshop is in this wing, quiet and removed. Shall we?”
“Of course.” He stowed his eyeglasses and tucked the contracts under his arm, then followed her out the door. “A strong lock,” he observed as she put in the key.
“Very strong. What I work on would be quite valuable to a rival.” She tucked the key back into her bodice, flushing as his gaze followed, and lingered on her bosom. “This way,” she said brusquely, tugging up her fichu as soon as she’d turned her back to him.
Outside in the southern courtyard, she turned to him. “Do you know how pottery wares are produced?”
He smiled at the blunt question. “In broad strokes.”
Bianca shook her head in disgust. “The way I know how to play the harp! In other words, not at all. This way.”
She led him first to the clay house, with its sloping ramps to the canal and the road, to allow barrows and wagons to be drawn up to the door. “Here is the first step,” she said, striding through and pointing as she went. “The clay is brought in to be inspected and weighed. It must be clean and pure or the wares produced from it will be rubbish. Charles there is responsible for making sure it is so.” She nodded to her distant cousin, who was watching her and St. James with undisguised interest.
Bianca’s face heated. Today she deeply regretted how enmeshed her family was in the pottery works. They had all been invited to the wedding festivities the day before, and all had seen her, instead of Cathy, emerge from the church on St. James’s arm. She knew what they must all be thinking: Bianca the outspoken spinster had somehow ended up with her sister’s intended husband!Poor fool, she supposed they were thinking when they looked at St. James himself, the man who’d almost won the sweet, lovely Cathy and instead had got her.
She hoped Amelia was busily spreading word that Cathy had run off with her true love, and that Bianca had acted only out of concern for the future of the pottery works, making a marriage for purely business reasons. If there was one thing Bianca couldn’t bear, it was people staring at her. And while her marriage might be a scandal, there was nothing interesting about it.
“From here the clay is brought to be mixed.” She led the way through a doorway and down a wide ramp. “Different pottery requires different mixtures of clays, precisely measured.”
St. James stepped up and peered into one bin. “Which is used in making your plum pot?”
She flushed at the memory of him in her bedroom, inspecting her private things. “That is something else—porcelain, not pottery. There is a different workshop for it.”
“Oh? How is it different?”
“Entirely,” she said brusquely, and no more. The porcelain workshop was a tender subject, and not one she wanted to discuss with him.
From the clay rooms they went into the production hall, which was a collection of workshops divided by shoulder-height walls. A walkway ran the length of the hall, with periodic staircases descending to the floor, and it was not unusual to see Papa storming down one of them in a temper, having spied a workman neglecting his work or engaging in unsafe or illicit behavior.
She led her husband through the hall, pointing out and explaining the throwers and turners, making items on the pottery wheels; the modelers, carving out of clay; the grinders and polishers, smoothing the surfaces of the unfinished pieces; the slip-makers and mold-makers, making delicate ornaments from the water-thinned clay called slip.
