“What were you thinking about just now with your eyes all dark and drowsy, hmm?” He clucked his tongue as if he already knew the answer. “Naughty, Jane.”
She cleared her throat. “I’ve no idea to what you are referring. And I cannot fathom why you’ve come all this way for a mere scrap of lace, as you put it.”
He averted his attention to the stack of books on the cart, lifting one after the other. “Seems someone’s developed a sudden interest in birds.”
“It should come as no surprise. I declared as much when I left you. And you made it perfectly clear it didn’t matter. So, whatever I discover, is for my sake alone,” she said, wondering what had actually compelled him to seek her out. It certainly wasn’t to return her mask.
She had her answer when he spoke again.
“There’s no reason for you to think that my birthmark has any real significance. And it is lunacy to imagine, for a single bloody second, that it could tell you where I came from.”
Ah, there it is, she thought and smiled to herself in triumph.
Would a man who was determined to let the matter rest truly come all this way simply to repeat himself? Or was he reluctant to acknowledge his own curiosity had been roused after a lifetime of never finding the answers on his own?
She scrutinized his profile as she approached.
He wasn’t as aloof as he pretended to be. She knew the signs of curiosity well—the quick eye movements over every title, the splayed hand denoting the desire to absorb the contents of the book through his fingertips, the faint hmm of interest that he tried to cover by clearing his throat.
“You could be correct,” she said in stealthy agreement. “However, I try to look at everything through a broader lens. To see potential and possibility that, perhaps, others cannot.” She picked up a penny that rested on the corner of her desk. “A coin, for example, is not only a matter of currency but a scraping tool, a prop for an uneven table leg, a piece of jewelry, a hoe for digging a trench through a small patch of dirt for planting seeds, and so much more. Therefore, in my way of thinking, that extraordinarily detailed mark on your shoulder could be more than it seems.”
“It isn’t. It’s just a mark and nothing more. An accident of birth. It couldn’t be anything else. Even if it were, why should I care? That’s all in the past.”
“‘The’ man ‘doth protest too much, methinks,’” she said, borrowing a line from Hamlet after seeing the slender volume in his bedside drawer earlier.
“‘. . . and the lady shall say her mind freely,’” he retorted, adding, “even though she’s wrong.”
“The fact that you are standing here in my conservatory proves otherwise.”
He growled at her smug expression. “Listen to me carefully, Jane. I have no desire to become a new project to research, like your primer. It may start off with a bird in a book. But I know where it will lead. You’ll get it in your head to discover what it must have been like to grow up an orphan in the Dials, and put yourself in another precarious predicament.”
At first, she took umbrage to this presumption, imagining that he thought she was an idiot. But then she saw a shadow flicker beneath his heavy brow and high cheekbones, his features set with firm resolve. An uncanny light seemed to shine from within his gaze, burning white-hot in the icy depths with warning, and yet, something about it warmed her.
“Are you actually . . . concerned for my welfare?”
He issued a low, gruff grunt through his nostrils and turned back to the books, thumbing through them absently. “I’d be more worried about the rogues of St. Giles coming to my doorstep and blaming me for unleashing a bluestocking plague upon them.”
She nodded, easily accepting his truth. After all, she’d already theorized the true reason he’d come here and it wasn’t because of her. He was interested in information about the mark, even if he refused to admit it.
Seeing him pause on a page she’d marked with a slender red ribbon, she moved beside him and pointed to the illustration. “I thought, perhaps, the bird might have resembled a cormorant instead. The wings are similar, you see.”
“Mmm . . .” he murmured in agreement. “But the bill is wrong.”
“Precisely. Yours is rather like”—she drew an invisible arc over the book’s depiction—“that.”
“No, it’s more like this,” he said, covering her hand with his, guiding her fingertip.
“I beg to differ, but it’s like . . . this . . .”
It was only when the roughened pad of his index finger glided with tingling friction along the length of hers that she realized they were essentially holding hands. Miss Churchouse would be scandalized. And they were standing quite close, too. Close enough that, if she were to tip back on her heels, her head would rest against his shoulder, and the superfluous cushion of her buttocks would brush his thigh.
Her skin contracted at the realization, drawing tight beneath her clothes. But she made no move to stand apart from him. She lingered instead and listened to his steady, even respiration and felt the instant that her own lungs assimilated to his rhythm without conscious effort.
A strange development in her own physiology, indeed. A current seemed to flow between them as if they were both holding the coil of a Volta battery.
Infinitesimal seconds passed. She studied their fasted hands—his nails trimmed nearly to the quick, the skeletal rise of scarred knuckles beneath tanned flesh, and a dusting of dark hair peeking out from beneath his cuff. His manus was a fascinating combination of elegance and strength and savagery, much like the man himself.
“How does that memory of yours work, exactly? What did you call it . . . nee—”
“Mnemonic sketchbook,” she said distractedly, rambling on as his finger continued an analysis of her digits. “And I’m not entirely certain. When I was much younger, I used to imagine a tiny artist standing at a paint-spattered easel on the front portico of my brain. Then an army of bespectacled clerks would take each page and file them away in an endlessly cluttered cabinet that has never been sorted to this day. Regrettably, the process frequently keeps me from recalling information precisely when I need it.”
“Mmm,” he murmured low and deep, as if it made perfect sense to him.
Strangely, she wasn’t sure what she’d just said. It was all a blur. And it only became worse when he turned her to face him with a tug of her fingertips. Lifting her hand, he examined the lines of her palm, the pad of his finger tracing tingling paths along each shallow trench.
“Such soft little hands,” he said. “I should think you’d want to wear gloves to protect them. And yet, I noticed that you were only wearing one earlier. I have to wonder where the other might have gotten to.”
A ragged breath stumbled out of her as her mind conjured the image of her lost glove dangling scandalously from the statue’s appendage. And when she looked up at Raven to see a glint in his eyes, she felt a flush of embarrassment rise to her cheeks.
There was no way he could know . . . Could he?
Before she responded with a declaration of innocence, a familiar crash and cheer rumbled through the house from the direction of the north wing.
Raven glanced toward the door. “What was that?”