“What are you reading today?” She tilted the book up to answer her own question. Which meant her fingers were mere fractions of an inch from his.
He wouldn’t even make her beg. She had only to drop to a knee and he’d agree to marry her.
She gave him a dubious look. “Weren’t you reading a different book on Druid ruins yesterday?”
“Finished it. This one’s rubbish, though. Better suited for tinder than reading material. Well, I mean—not that I’d ever do such a thing. One of the seven deadly sins, I’m all but certain. Have to ask Ainsley.”
She smiled and leaned against the back of the sofa, making herself comfortable. Around him. That counted as a proposal, right? “Where did you even come by it? I don’t recall that one being in our library.”
“No, the Tremaynes have better taste in books than this.” He closed it—though over his finger. There could yet be a nugget of insight worth considering, buried somewhere under all the rubbish. “I brought it with me. Trying to read all the existing texts about the liths and cairns in the Lake District. Research, you know. To pair with my own excavations.”
“He intends to set the record straight and expostulate on his theories about Bronze Age monuments and burial sites in a book of his own.” Telford dropped to a seat in the same leather chair he always chose and scowled at Oliver. “You should have a dog. What kind of English family doesn’t have a dog?”
Tremayne didn’t even look up from his own book. “I’m certain Darling would love that.”
“My sister and her cat weren’t part of your life until June. What was your excuse before then?”
Sheridan took a calculated risk and leaned a few inches closer to Beth. “He’s a pug. I told you. Now he’s nipping at others’ tails.”
She laughed. Her brother said something about a childhood wolfhound. Hardly mattered what. Beth had laughed again and still had her face turned his way. “Have you started the writing yet? Of your historical text?”
No lady in all his days had ever asked him about his research. Even his sisters. Who rather made it a point to change the subject each and every time he brought it up. Which meant there were a lot of subject changes in the castle.
That definitely counted as a proposal. Who would she want as her bridesmaids? He’d send them telegrams himself, telling them to hasten to the isles, if they weren’t here already. “Not yet. Well, notes. Reams of them. I don’t know how I’m going to pare it down enough, honestly.”
“Then you’ll have to write a whole series, I expect.” She plucked the current book from his unprotesting hands, careful to keep his page marked with her own finger but flipping to the table of contents. “If I have an arch-nemesis, it’s a blank, empty page. Everything I try to write upon one seems as rubbish as you say this is.”
She wrote too? Not research texts, he suspected. Much as she knew about island history, she seemed to lean more heavily toward lore. Legend. “Ah. Fairy tales. Like the one Libby read from Treasure Island.”
She blushed and cast a look toward her brother. She’d presented him with a new copy of the book on the evening that Sheridan had closeted himself in his room with his broken nose and migraine, he’d heard. “I imagine you think such tales foolish.”
“On the contrary. I find them critical parts of any culture. Often better indicators of how a people really lived than any other records can provide. Also.” He lifted a finger, as if about to deliver a clincher. Which he was. “They’re smashing good fun.”
She smiled again. Not in amusement. Not because of the others’ sniping or poking. But a smile as intimate as a kiss, and just as delicious.
Well. Perhaps not. Though he’d be up for the experiment whenever she was.
From the front of the house came the sound of a door blowing open, and a voice as blustering as the rain-soaked wind called out, “Anyone at home?”
Sheridan was on his feet in a flash. Fitzwilliam Gibson was without question one of his favorite people that he’d met on Tresco thus far, right behind his grandchildren. And their magician of a housekeeper. And of course Mamm-wynn, who he may have even considered tossing Beth aside for, if she weren’t still in love with her late husband and old enough to be, well, his grandmother.
“Back here!” He strode to the library door to wave a hand, just in case his voice wasn’t beacon enough. “Reading. And sulking. Depending on which of us you look at.”
After a rustle and a thud that must be mackintoshes and wellies being shed, Gibson appeared in the corridor, his smile as sunny as the sky was not.
“Fitz, is that you?” Mamm-wynn emerged, too, from the drawing room, where she’d been trying to talk her fingers into wielding her knitting needles. He’d have opted for her company instead of the library this morning, except that she’d asked Senara to come and read to her while she worked. And it was difficult to concentrate on rubbish Bronze Age theories when someone was reading Oliver Twist aloud.
He hurried forward now, though, to offer her his arm. Beating Gibson to the punch by half a second. Sheridan celebrated the victory with a wink for the old man, who pretended affront, then clapped his hands together. “Decided the rain wasn’t going to keep me housebound another day, so I thought I’d come and see the children.”
“Good.” Mamm-wynn twinkled a smile up at her old friend. “I can hardly stand all the dour faces today. They could use a distraction. Other than my pirate prince here, who seems happy as a puffin on Annet.”
“Well, of course.” Sheridan patted her hand. “I have you for company. Don’t miss the ladies stranded on St. Mary’s at all.”
She laughed that magical laugh of hers. “Oh yes. All the credit is mine, without a doubt.” She held him still rather than letting him lead her onward, poking her head back into the drawing room. “Thank you for reading to me, dearover.”
Miss Dawe had drifted close enough to the door to be visible. “My pleasure, Mamm-wynn.”
Gibson proffered an arm in her direction. “Join us, Nara?”
Her smile softened. “I should probably see if Mam has lost her patience with Ainsley and Collins yet. She had them pulling taffy, since no one wanted to dash to the confectioner’s.”
And heaven forbid Telly run out of sweets. “Tell them to come and hear whatever tale Gibson will tell us. Give your poor mother a reprieve.” In most society, he wouldn’t dare invite the valets to join them for the afternoon’s entertainment. But this was far better than most society.
Mamm-wynn patted his arm as they started down the corridor. “You’re a good lad, Theo.”
He lifted her fingers with his opposite hand long enough to drop a kiss onto her knotted knuckles, then set them back on his arm and grinned. “Say that again when Beth can hear you, will you?”
“And the ship, with all its ghostly pirates, sank beneath the waves, never to be seen again by mortal eyes . . . but for in the light of a full moon.”
Beth clapped at the close of her grandfather’s tale, laughing at Telford’s exaggerated shiver.
“I’ll have nightmares for a week,” he said, but with the first smile she’d seen from him in two days.