All or Nothing by Rose Lerner

Author:Rose Lerner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rose Lerner
Published: 2016-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Simon had come to Throckmorton to work. He’d brought Maggie here so he could work. And now for the third day in a row he was accomplishing nothing, because he would rather be talking to her than doing anything else on earth. He bubbled over with things to say to her.

He sat dutifully at a library table with his books spread around him, and he’d been staring at the same illustrated plate of archways for the last twenty minutes.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this way. Well, he could remember the last time he hadn’t been able to concentrate on work—that happened all the time. But this happiness...

No, he did remember: Clement, years ago. Deep down, he’d been afraid he’d never feel this way again. That at five-and-twenty, he’d had his chance at a great love and ruined it. But that was foolish, wasn’t it? He was only five-and-twenty, and England was full of people.

Just now, England seemed very full of Maggie, in the best way possible.

He looked up—raised his eyes the merest fraction—and there she was, curled up on a sofa and frowning slightly over her letter. That dip of her brow in profile was a lovely thing. He copied it in miniature with his pencil, on his fourth try satisfied that he had done it justice. And then he was drawing her. The graceful line of her profile, the curve of her ear, the upsweep of her hair disappearing under a smooth bandeau with a few ringlets tumbling over, the slope of her neck and shoulders. He supposed by her loose posture that she wore her short stays today.

Easy familiarity with another person’s underthings was an intimacy he hadn’t had in a long time. Yes, his thwarted arousal at being surrounded by her scent and linens was annoying, but he had missed sharing quarters with someone other than a valet.

As he mused, his hand added the surrounding architecture without conscious direction: bas-relief wooden columns, delicate gilt ironwork on the spiral staircases and the balustrades of the second story of bookshelves, the portrait of Clement’s grandmother that hung between the windows.

It was a neat little drawing, but his favorite thing in it was still that first curve of her eyebrow.

“Do you think white plaster or red brick would look better reflected in the lake?” he asked, more to start a conversation than because the question preoccupied him overmuch at the moment.

She glanced up, mouth working pensively. “I think red brick would look best at noon,” she said at last, “but white would show more at all hours of the day.”

“Then we’re of one mind.” He was inordinately pleased by their agreement, and by the aptness of her observation. “I—”

“I beg your pardon,” she said apologetically, “but I want to finish this letter to my mother, and my spelling in Portuguese isn’t good enough to allow for distractions.”

Her tone was conciliatory, her smile charming, but his heart sank. Every part of him sank; the high ceiling appeared suddenly further away.

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