Page 6 of Rogue of My Heart

Penny stepped behind him, following his gaze down the deserted hallway, the only thing remaining Raine’s teasing scent. That, and the images racing like feral dogs through his mind. Some of them lewd, he’d admit.

How soon could he make that reality, he wondered?

“That gorgeous creature is our bluestocking?” Penny asked in dazed incredulity. “Remind me to consider the brainy ones in the future.”

“My bluestocking,” Christian corrected.

Penny jammed his broad shoulder against the doorjamb. “So that’s the way of it? Soft heart like yours, I knew it was coming at some point.” He sighed, the sound genuinely mournful. “Well, now we’re doomed.”

Christian looked away before his face betrayed him. His severe upbringing and everything he’d had to do to succeed had beaten any sense of benevolence out of him.

He didn’t have a soft heart. A generous heart.

Slightly more generous than Penny’s perhaps.

But for the girl on the veranda, he was willing to expose his—even if he lost it in the process.

Three

Christian was waiting for her the next morning, lounging in the doorway of the duke’s study like a panther stalking his prey. Teacup in hand, he took a leisurely sip and let his gaze roam the length of her and back. His calculated study was the most erotic thing she’d ever experienced—and all without being touched. She kept her expression placid, she hoped, as her chest flushed beneath starched cotton.

My, what would being kissed by the man, which she’d spent half the night contemplating, be like if his straightforward but pointed scrutiny scorched?

Most likely, it would be a disappointment, as the two careless kisses Raine had experienced to date had been.

“Are we ready to proceed with the project?” She halted before him, amazed her voice sounded steady with such wild anticipation seizing her. A stunned breath struck as she looked into his eyes and understood she felt much more than she should have. This was dreadful, an attraction between them a breach of an elemental tenet of servitude. A domestic did not, could not, foster feelings for a guest. A guest in a ducal home. A man notorious enough to be written about in the gossip sheets. A man known for his profligate lifestyle and his magnificent timepieces. A man well above her station.

A man who would break her heart into a thousand pieces if she let him.

He raised a dark eyebrow and sipped from his teacup. “Are you done?” he asked and turned to move into the study.

She tilted her head in question. “Done?”

“Your face, just then, was like one of my watches when I crack open the casing. A lot of moving parts.” His deep voice drew her into the room, where he added with a cunning look thrown over his shoulder, “I apprenticed with a very brilliant horologist who once told me, deliberation can arrest innovation.”

She settled in the armchair before the desk, her stack of translation materials where she’d left them the day before. Christian’s tools were perfectly placed, as well. A precise row, an exact arrangement from largest to smallest. Interesting. A conscientious man with the things he cared for. “Go with your gut. Is that what you were supposed to take from that charming bit of horological wisdom? For a man, I’m certain that’s excellent advice. Women are not often afforded the opportunity to rise to such a challenge, Mister Bainbridge.”

His burst of laugher had her glancing up from the letter she’d spread across glossy mahogany, another opportunity to dive into the blasted blue of his eyes. Another opportunity to note the wicked dimple denting his cheek. “Let’s agree,” he said, sliding a cup of tea across the desk when a man had never poured tea for her in her life, “that within the walls of Devon’s exhaustively regal study, you’re afforded every opportunity to rise to such a challenge.”

She pressed her lips together to hold back a smile. “So I’m to speak freely. And this benefits you how?”

Christian popped the loupe into place against his left eye, picked up a small screwdriver, and turned his attention to the metal parts spread before him. “That, Miss Mowbray, is still to be determined.”

The hour passed quickly, quietly, contentedly. There was an ease in being around Christian Bainbridge, which Raine understood was not customary or conventional. His regard warmed her, brief strikes when he stretched or took a sip of tea, that made her feel like a thick, woolen shawl had been placed about her shoulders rather than a sharp blade edged along her skin, as masculine attention usually brought. She was attractive, and men were weak. Indeed, her appearance was a drawback rather than a source of good fortune, as beauty was for a woman of highborn birth. Thinking of the times she’d had to push the scuffed bureau in front of the attic door at Tavistock House suddenly came to her, and she frowned. Placed her quill on the desk and leaned back in her chair to watch Christian work.

Five minutes at her leisure, she decided with a glance thrown at the mantel clock Christian had modified earlier, a device that had never before kept accurate time. Fascinated, she watched him adjust the wheel of a pocket watch, pause, then go in for another alteration.

“There’s nothing faulty with the piece. Just a loose hairspring.” One side of his mouth kicked up. “It’s aging, like skin that starts to sag. Springs lose their elasticity, as it were.”

“It’s lovely,” she murmured, unable to look away from the long, slim fingers manipulating the tool with true artistry. He was gifted. More talented than anyone she’d ever known. Foolish, to be this attracted to a man so far from her reach. To be compelled to know him better, to share the scant, uninteresting bits of her life with him.

“A Bainbridge open-face duplex chronometer, to be precise.” He removed the loupe, leaving a shallow dent where it had pressed into this skin, and slid the watch across to her. “Take a look. It’s a superb model. Probably the one I’m best known for.”

“The most accurate,” she said and grasped the watch, the metal casing warm from his touch.

He tilted his head, his lips curving in pleasure. “The chattering ninnies included that bit, did they? Sometimes gossip is as precise as my timepieces.”

She rotated the watch, the silver filigree chain sliding through her fingers. “This is beautiful. I’ve never seen the like.”