Page 19

TEN

Briar

“You’re really certain about this?” Markham sighed as he looked up at the building.

I grinned. “Certain.”

Well, as certain as I ever was. It was never easy to feel particularly certain about anything when I was around this man, to tell the truth. Especially when he was kissing me.

I tried not to think about that morning as Markham had surprised me in the morning room, kissing slowly down my neck as I’d poured out my morning tea.

Tried to pour out my morning tea.

“Good morning,” he had whispered.

It had been all I could do not to turn around and start taking off the waistcoat that was starting to become a real temptation.

Something had shifted in our…relationship.

Not that we were in a relationship. Obviously.

But whatever it was between us, it wasn’t just friendship. Friends didn’t go around kissing each other all the time. At least, none of my friends did.

The kissing hadn’t progressed—and though we hadn’t talked about it, I think both Peregrine and I were clear on that. No touching, no taking off clothes, no ecstatic peaks. Just kissing.

Another rule, this time unspoken. And I was pretty sure we were going to break it, just as we’d broken the other ones.

But right now, we were working. Once again, I wanted Peregrine’s opinion.

“It’s a dump, and you’re an idiot to even consider buying it,” Peregrine said briskly as he looked up at the dilapidated townhouse my carriage had dropped us before.

I chuckled as I pulled the key from the pocket. “That’s a shame. I told the owners I would buy it.”

“You did what?—”

I laughed as I walked up the steps towards the large front door. “Well, not exactly. But I am serious about this place, Peregrine. I think you’ll see why when we get in.”

He was muttering behind me as he followed, mostly about women who pretended to need the opinions of others when in fact they knew precisely what they were doing. I couldn’t argue with him. Not completely.

I’d wanted Peregrine as a neutral, honest person in my life. My advisors just told me what I wanted to hear and did whatever they wanted. I was tired of being ignored, tired of none of my ideas even being considered.

My friends didn’t understand it. Not that having all this money was a burden, but it was, in a way.

Georgiana was the only person I could be mostly honest with, and she was a dowager duchess who earned a living from gambling.

She understood contracts and clauses, not callable bonds and cost of equity.

Peregrine could.

He wasn’t wrong. I knew my own mind. I just needed someone to talk to about it. And that person, somehow, was him.

Peregrine coughed as we entered the hallway, years of dust rising up from our footsteps. “Nice. Were you thinking of putting, I don’t know, a dust museum into this place?”

“Not quite,” I said, nudging him with my elbow and stepping forward. “But not far off.”

I loved this style of architecture. Neo-classical, designed and built by a gentleman who had gone bankrupt not long after, and had left the place to itself.

The hallway was more an atrium. Full height, two story ceiling had several globular skylights, allowing sunshine to cascade slowly through the dusty air.

The cornicing and paneling was truly elegant, while the elegant columns on each side of the four doors leading off it, one on each side, was pure Greek inspiration.

The place must have been beautiful, once. It was still beautiful now, in a way. Not a way Peregrine, the Duke of Markham appreciated, however.

He coughed again. “I don’t get what you see in this place.”

“That’s because you have no vision!” I said, stepping to the left and opening the door. “Perhaps this will give you a clue.”

Peregrine stepped forward with an irate look on his face, as though I was keeping him from something very important.

By the time he’d joined me in the doorway, his expression had changed. “Oh my.”

‘Oh my’ just about covered it.

The previous owners truly had a vision. This room was six bay windows long and almost as wide, continuing on down half the street.

The ceiling had a beautiful gold frame around the walls, and the rest of it was taken up with a painting of Greek gods and goddesses, bathing in a lake, laughing, splashing each other.

And in the room?—

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Markham said weakly. “That’s not?—”

“A plunge pool, yes,” I said, delight pouring through me. “Empty now of course. It’s better than I had imagined—the engravings really didn’t do it justice.”

“No, I suppose not.”

I swallowed. Focus on what was before you. “The plumbing is still in good repair apparently, and?—”

“You’re thinking of a spa,” Markham said slowly.

I turned and grinned, joy flowing through me. “A members only women’s club, indeed. There are so many men’s clubs here?—”

“Of all kinds,” he turned with a grin as he stepped around the edge of the luxurious pool.

I glared, but couldn’t hide my excitement for long.

“I thought, why not have one just for women? There’s a room that’s the perfect mirror of this on the other side, I thought to turn it into a place for massages.

We can transform the second floor into relaxing spaces—meeting rooms for members, a drawing room, a library?—”

“And the third and fourth floors?” Peregrine asked, gazing about the place in wonder. “This place is huge, Briar. It’s going to take a serious amount of work to get it to the quality you want.”

I shrugged. “I thought accommodation on the third floor—like a hotel but better. And then restaurant, kitchens, and storage on the fourth.”

I’d gone over the blueprints with a fine toothcomb, and I was pretty certain I could manage it. I had the money for a good architect.

Peregrine brushed some dust from one of the gold benches that lined the edges of the room. “You really think you can do it?”

His voice was low, his tone testing.

I swallowed. I knew what he was doing. Obviously if I brought this proposal to the board, my advisors were going to shoot it down before I could even run through the numbers.

It was a risk. My trust preferred to buy buildings already in use and just let them out. Passive income. Low investment, but low risk.

Low excitement.

This was a project.

“I know it’ll need a lot of work, and not just the physical building,” I said, dropping to sit on the edge of the plunge pool.

My legs and skirts hung where there should be water.

Where one day, I hoped, there would be again.

“Considering what sort of members I want, deciding what I want the feel of this place to be. But I…I really think I can do it, you know?”

Peregrine was wandering down the opposite side of the pool to me, but he halted and grinned. There was something so comforting in the way he looked at me.

Yes, he was handsome. But there was something very strong, very dependable in that look. Like I’d been searching for it all my life, and just hadn’t noticed.

“I want to thank you,” I said hesitantly.

Only now did I notice how any words spoken in this place of marble and tiling echoed around. My cheeks flushed, burning with heat, as my own words were repeated back to me by the echo.

Thank you…thank you…

“Why?” asked Peregrine, a furrow appearing on his brow. “You’re the one putting me up. Putting up with me.”

“There is that,” I said, trying to tease but finding myself breathless. “But you’ve given me confidence in myself, and I don’t think I had ever thought that was possible. You’ve made me feel like I can…not necessarily do anything, but do great things.”

The way he was looking at me…his gaze was burning as though he could see right through me. Something about him had changed, after Peregrine had admitted to me just how pained he was about his stupid actions in the past.

There was a bolder Peregrine before me, but it wasn’t cocky. I mean, he was. But he also seemed…more centered. I couldn’t explain it.

“Buy it.”

I blinked. “What did you say?”

Peregrine shrugged. “Buy it. It sounds like you know what you’re doing—and even if you don’t, you’ve got the vision, right?”

I rose, shoes scraping on the marble. “You mean that?”

“Why do you need my approval, Briar?” Peregrine said softly.

I swallowed. “I don’t.”

Not on paper. But I did, somehow. He’d built something incredible with his friends, the whole world was sitting up and taking notice of what the Gambling Dukes was doing. And I had never done anything. Not like that.

“It’s getting late,” I said with what I hoped was a nonchalant grin. “I suppose you’ve got somewhere to be this evening. Someone to meet.”

We hadn’t asked. I’d wanted to, but knowing the answer might have been painful. Peregrine and I hadn’t conversed about the future—I still didn’t know what this is.

“What, you’re going to buy this place without looking at every room?” Peregrine said with a raised eyebrow, turning and heading to the atrium. “Come on. There’s so much more to discover.”

Markham

More to discover? What sort of nonsense was that?

The trouble was, it sounded so good. Even I was almost impressed by my own drivel.

Briar certainly looked impressed. At least, there was a warmth to her eyes I hadn’t seen before. Or was it just her excitement about the building we were in?

She was right, it was spectacular. We crossed the atrium and took a look at the room on the mirror side of the plunge pool. Its wide windows and gorgeous high ceiling would make it perfect for drawing room.

I didn’t bother to point this out. She’d already thought of it, I was sure, and the last thing I wanted was to make an ass of myself in front of Briar.

She was starting to mean…something, to me. Kissing her this morning, I’d almost forgotten for a moment that we weren’t together—that we were just two people who lived in the same townhouse.

But we couldn’t be unique in that, could we? Plenty of people crossed that line, and I’d bedded her before I’d ever thought she might offer me a place to live.