Why that ignited a little glow of pleasure in his chest, he couldn’t say. It wasn’t as though he could speak for her. It wasn’t as though he knew he would. They’d been acquainted for all of five minutes.
“Oh…haven’t decided yet,” she hedged, glancing away and plucking at a loose thread in the coverlet.
“You mentioned your family wanted an advantageous marriage for you, but you didn’t introduce yourself as nobility.”
His observation seemed to displease her. “No. But my father owns a shipping company, and the thing to do is marry off rich heiresses to impoverished lords.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat that he wished didn’t convey the depth of his derision on that score. It wasn’t that he thought women shouldn’t marry above their rank.
It was that he instantly and intensely hated the idea of her being married.
She was young, but old enough to have been made a mother many times over. Maybe twenty and five or so…So why wasn’t she spoken for?
John allowed his notice to drift to another photograph, this one of a woman in a dark dress seated in a velvet chair. She posed like one would for any master of portraiture, looking off into the distance. Her features carefully still.
From her place at his elbow, Vanessa said, “This is my eldest sister, Veronica. The Dowager Countess of Weatherstoke.”
“A Countess. How fortunate for her.”
“I wouldn’t have traded places with her for the entire world.” The melancholy note in her voice made him glance up at her, but her faraway expression didn’t brook further discussion.
He saw the resemblance between her and the woman in the portrait. Hair the color of midnight. Bright eyes, a heart-shaped face, and elegant, butter-soft skin.
“My family is visiting her in Paris, where she lives among the beau monde,” she said, her voice injected with a false, syrupy insouciance. She picked up the photograph as if to hide it from him, examining it with a pinched sort of melancholy. “Veronica is the beauty of the family.”
“No,” he insisted more harshly than he meant to. “No, she is not.”
She peered up at him oddly, her gaze had become wary and full of doubts he dared not define. “Yes, well…the photo doesn’t do her justice.”
“It doesn’t have to. She doesn’t hold a candle to you.”
CHAPTER 4
Vanessa’s focus had been arrested. Nay, seized and held captive.
The air thickened between them and the storm seemed closer now. The wild chaos of it slipping into the night. Invading the space between them. Prompting her instincts to prickle and her hair to stand on end.
She was a kitten who’d stumbled into the den of a lion. Nothing more than a light snack. Something he could pick his teeth with.
So why did she have the very feline urge to arch and glide toward and against the lithe strength of his form?
To search for warmth. For protection.
His body, as iridescent as it still was, radiated as much heat as the firelight. His shoulders were wide and his arms long and thick beneath the fitted lines of his crimson jacket.
His features were distinguished, compelling, the product of centuries of such ancestors breeding his sort of perfection. His eyes weren’t just blue, they held a startling lapis brilliance, as if backlit by something electric, like lightning. His spun gold hair was caught behind him in a queue. It shone lambent, as did his gauzy specter, barely able to catch the light that pierced through him rather than reflected off him. The square chin above his high, white collar framed a wide, hard mouth that curled in such a way, she might have called it cruel.
His eyes were kind, but that mouth was most certainly anything but.
The word depraved came to mind.
A corner of his lip lifted as she stared at it rather rudely. Not quite a smile, but the whisper of one.
The ghost of one.
He cleared a gather from his throat and turned away, dispelling the tension as he drifted over to the camera.
“So, this device is what you use to capture these photographs? This…camera?”
She would never not smile at the way he said that word.
Shaking off whatever had held her mesmerized, she hopped to engage. “Yes. Would you like to see how it works?”
“Very much.”
Vanessa had to stop herself short of clapping her hands like a delighted child. Photography was one of her passions, and while many people were curious about it, she’d never had the chance to show it to someone quite so captivated.
Or, rather, captive. But who was she to split hairs?
His feet levitated some six inches off the ground, and his hands locked behind his back in a posture befitting an officer of his class. He looked down at her from over his aristocratic nose and she had the sense he mentally disassembled her for examination whilst she assembled her tripod.
“I eavesdropped on you and Bess before,” he admitted.
“Oh?” She wasn’t quite certain how she felt about that, so she remained silent on the topic.
“I’m given to understand you didn’t go to Paris with your family because you’d rather stand on the frigid shores of the deepest lake in the world and try to photograph a creature that only exists in folklore?”
She glanced up from where she screwed on the mounting bracket. “And?”
He gave a rather Gallic shrug. “It can’t be astonishing to you that someone might remark upon the decision. It seems…rather out of the ordinary.”
Vanessa tried not to let on that his assessment stung, as if she weren’t aware that her behavior was remarkable. That she was doing what she could to make the most of her exile without advertising it. She didn’t allow herself to look up at him as she pulled the accordion-style lens and box from her case with a huff. “I’m a woman who is only interested in extraordinary.”
“Evidently.”
She cast him a censuring look as she affixed the camera to the tripod. “So says the iridescent apparition levitating above me.”
“Touché.” He twisted his mouth into an appreciative sort of smile as he studied her. “So, you believe in ghosts and lake monsters. What else? Fairies? Vampires? Shapeshifters? Dragons?”
“And why not?” She crossed her arms, wishing he didn’t make her feel itchy and defensive. “Did you know a woman, Mary Anning, found dinosaur bones the size and shape of the long-necked mythos of the Loch Ness Monster only decades ago? Which means creatures like Nessie have existed, and perhaps still do.”
She held her hand up against his reply. “And if you go to church, they’ll tell you about angels and demons. Saints and spirits. Like you, for example. I’ve done extensive readings on the supernatural, and the stories are eerily similar across all sorts of nations and civilizations. If the native peoples of Australia and also the Scandinavians have similar myths of flying serpents and dragons, doesn’t it seem like their existence might be possible? Probable, even?”
His mouth pulled into a tight, grim hyphen, even as his eyes twinkled at her. “Historically, I’d have said no, but at the moment it does seem ridiculous to argue the point.”
“‘There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” she quoted, wagging a finger in the air like some mad scientist as she bustled around her camera, checking bits and bobs. “Truer words were never written.”