“And cucumber sandwiches aren’t copper ores,” she added.
His brows climbed, and he was momentarily stunned into silence.
She laughed again. “It was worth it to research the minerology of Britain, if only to see the look on your face.”
“You researched…? Why?”
“It’s important to you.” Her gaze dropped, and he didn’t know what surprised him more, the fact that she had taken the time to learn about geology because it mattered to him, or her sudden shyness. She was never shy, yet here she was, bashful as a girl fresh from the schoolroom.
Leaning close, he kissed her.
When they pulled back many moments later, they both breathed heavily. He said in a gravelly voice, “I wish I’d brought you something from London—jade hair combs, or ruby ear bobs.”
“Such things are pretty, but I’ve no need of them. How’s a governess to explain why she has jewels hanging from her ears and costly ornaments in her hair?”
“A fair point. Dispiriting, but fair. But,” he added, brightening, “I do have books for you. They’re arriving tomorrow with my luggage. Travel accounts of far-flung places, and the latest by the Lady of Dubious Quality.”
She stroked her fingers down his arm. “How well you know me.”
“I wish to know you as deeply as anyone can know another.”
“Why?” she asked with genuine curiosity.
“You have seen and done so much,” he answered. “Survived so much. There are worlds and worlds inside you.”
“I’m a resource to be exploited?” She lifted an eyebrow.
“You are a person to be known and cherished. For as long as I can have you in my life, that’s what I desire.”
It gnawed at him, that goddamn farthing, always reminding him of his duty and the pressures of his position.
Now and again, he wished to throw that fucking coin into the ocean. Guilt washed over him—he couldn’t push away the lesson his father had been so careful to impart. But hell if it wasn’t a burden that he sometimes wanted to flee.
Stories of kings and princes disguising themselves to live amongst the normal people sounded damned appealing.
“Keep speaking such things,” she said softly, resting her head on his shoulder, “and I’ll open for you like a vault.”
Where to start? “What do you like best about being a governess?”
She was quiet briefly. “There’s a moment, a beautiful moment, when I give one of my pupils some knowledge. The fact that Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Padua in 1678, making her the first woman to receive that degree—in the West, at any rate. Or that the oldest library in the world was founded by Fatima El-Firhi, at the university she also created. These jewels are placed in my students’ crowns, making every one of them into empresses.”
Her eyes glowed as she spoke, and her smile was as radiant as any queen’s diadem.
“You give them the power to believe in themselves,” he murmured.
“It’s a beautiful power. One I wish every girl in every land could possess. That is my ambition, you know.”
“As a governess?”
“Not forever. I hope to save enough that I might start a school for girls and give them the gift of learning.”
“What a wonder you are,” he said softly.
She chuckled. “A conduit for learning, nothing more.”
“Everything more.” He turned onto his side to face her. “There’s an art to teaching, and while there are many poor practitioners of that art, there are those with prodigious gifts. Not just of knowledge, but of this.” He rested his palm between her breasts, and her heart beat steadily beneath his touch.
She kissed him, then leaned back, her expression melancholy. “Being the headmistress of a school carries with it its own responsibilities and considerations. Including the fact that whomever is in charge of a school must possess what society considers faultless moral character.”
He exhaled, understanding like a vise squeezing the air from him. “Romantic affairs are not part of that faultless moral character.”
“When I eventually leave Tarrington House,” she said, her voice low, “we can have no more contact with each other.”
His lips pressed into a tight seam. Because he had been on the verge of asking her to be his mistress, for as long as she was willing. To the best of his knowledge, his father had not kept a paramour. Owen had planned to remain faithful to his future wife—yet the thought of parting from Cecilia had been a spear through his heart. Keeping her as a mistress wasn’t an ideal solution, but it had been the best he’d been able to grasp.
Even that could not be.
“I’d never stand between you and your dreams,” he said at last.
She stroked a hand down his face, and her silence confirmed what he suspected. Theirs was an affair that could not last.
“Ellie’s only eleven,” he added. “So we have considerable time ahead of us before we need to contemplate any of this.”
“Many years,” Cecilia said with a gentle smile.
The night’s sounds surrounded them, crickets and frogs singing in the darkness, forming a protective barrier between them and the world.
“Was it very terrifying,” she asked, “casting your first vote in Parliament?”
The change of subject was a momentary relief from pondering saying goodbye to her. He admitted, “I had expected to be shaken to my marrow. Easily, I was the youngest man there, green as a summer hayfield. And yet…When it came my turn to speak, the most curious thing happened.” He rubbed his thumb across her bottom lip. “You were in my head.”
“Me?”
“What you taught me.”
She made a small, alarmed noise. “On the floor of Parliament, you demonstrated how to lick a woman’s quim.”
He laughed. “You also taught me how to own my authority. It was there, the strength you showed me how to responsibly wield. I looked into all those men’s faces, some of them friendly, many of them hostile. The young man fresh from Oxford would have been afraid to make his opinion known—might have even caved to the pressure to vote against his conscience. But I wasn’t that inexperienced lad anymore. I felt confident in my strength, because of you.”
“Because of you,” she said, tucking a lock of his hair behind his ear. “You were already heading toward your destination, I merely guided you to the road that would get you there a little more directly.”
Threading his fingers with hers, he lay on his back and looked at the night sky spread above them. He hadn’t been able to see the stars in London, yet it made sense that if he could see them, it was with her beside him.
“It was a difficult thing to give a boy,” he said softly, “that farthing.”
“A considerable responsibility to lay on a child’s shoulders,” she murmured.
“Not every boy would be weighted down with it.”
“You aren’t every boy,” she pointed out. “You’re you—someone who feels deeply, and that is a wonderful quality.”
He snorted. “Not to Englishmen, it isn’t.” He’d held himself apart from the other aristocratic boys at Eton and Oxford, the ones who had felt entitled to their privilege, which meant that his circle of friends had been small. Small, but valuable.