KIT SKETCHED while Rose read all that pleasant long afternoon.
And the longer he spent with her, the more he wanted her.
Rose was much more than just a pretty face. He’d known that, somehow—known it in his gut before he’d even really known her. But now he knew for sure.
“You’ve never seen these buildings,” she commented after translating the text accompanying several more figures. Eleven, or maybe twelve—he’d lost count. “In person, I mean. Have you?”
“No.” He placed the sketch board facedown on the table and stuck the quill into the inkwell. “I’ve always dreamed of traveling abroad to study the classical buildings, but”—he couldn’t help but laugh at himself—“I don’t know how I’d communicate.”
“I’ve also never been outside of Britain.” She shifted to angle toward him, her dark eyes growing hazy. “I’d dearly love to go to Italy—to travel anywhere, really, where I could see the world and try speaking the languages I’ve learned to read and write.”
“How many?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She lifted a shoulder in an elegant shrug. “I’ve never counted. Ten, eleven…maybe more. You get to a point where new languages become easier, where the words and grammar parallel ones you already know.”
“You get to that point,” he said, then smiled when she laughed.
She was charming in that easy dismissal of her abilities. And she shared his dream, to travel. Although it was clear she wasn’t talking about traveling with him, Kit couldn’t help but remember her mother’s matchmaking hopes and think that such a talented wife could assist him not only in the study of architecture, but to go far in other ways.
And Rose was kind, too—willing to sit with him all day and patiently translate his book. He enjoyed her quick laughter, her ready wit.
She returned his smile, displaying adorable dimples. He wanted to kiss those little indentations, one on each side, then settle warm on her mouth.
“You must have done well in school, though,” she said, startling him back to reality, “in order to get where you are today.”
He shook his head to clear it. “I did fine in my other subjects. I had to.”
“What do you mean?”
“My parents both perished in ‘sixty-five—”
“The Great Plague?”
“Yes.” That year of horror. “Did it not affect your family?”
“We went off to Tremayne, an estate my family owns near Wales. We were safe there. Isolated.”
“We weren’t,” Kit said succinctly. “My father was a carpenter, my mother a secretary and housekeeper for a local widowed noblewoman. They owned no land; we had no place to go.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Do you miss them terribly?”
“I did, but it’s been twelve years. My sister, Ellen, was but six when they died. She remembers very little of that life.”
“But you remember your parents well.”
He nodded. “My mother was the daughter of a cleric, and she taught us how to read. My father taught me how to build. They were good people.”
Not that that had saved their lives. The few titled families in the area had escaped before falling ill, but common folk like the Martyns hadn’t any choice but to stay behind. Kit and Ellen had survived, but their parents had not.
The Martyns, Kit had resolved—what remained of them—wouldn’t be left behind ever again.
Leaning closer, Rose laid a hand over his. “What happened after they passed on?”
“I was sixteen and determined to care for my sister, but we had no income, after all. Alone in our tiny cottage, we nearly starved.”
Her fingers tightened on his, and she leaned closer still, swamping him with her rich, floral scent. “Oh, Kit…”
He waved off the sympathy. It would do him no good. He’d long ago learned to face life’s problems and work toward solutions. Wallowing in self-pity got one nowhere.
“When my mother’s employer, Lady St. Vincent, returned to Hawkridge after the danger had passed, she felt great remorse for having left our family behind. Accordingly, she took in Ellen and sent me to Westminster School. She saw to it that I was made a King’s Scholar and promised to send me on to university if I did well. So I did,” he concluded simply.
He’d been given a chance in life, and he hadn’t been about to waste it.
“Did she follow through with her promise?”
“Indeed, she did. She sent me to Oxford, and not on charity, either. She paid my expenses and made sure I was treated as well as the best.”
He waited a beat, hoping Rose would say he was the best, as good as all the titled lads at school. But she didn’t, of course. She hadn’t been raised in a world that believed that.
Glancing down to their connected hands, she looked startled and pulled hers back. “You enjoyed your years at Oxford,” she said. “I can hear it in your voice.”
“I was anxious to finish and get on with life, but the years were hardly a trial. Rand was there, a Fellow already—we’d been friends since childhood. And a few students from Westminster School ended up there, too. Gaylord Craig—”
“The Earl of Rosslyn?”
From the tone of her voice, he gathered she didn’t like the man. “You know him?”
“I met him last night. He’s your friend?”
“Of a sort. We were never close, but I always got on with everyone.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said, sounding as though she meant it.
Perhaps he was making inroads, he thought with an inward smile.
When she licked her lips, he wanted to kiss off that delicious sheen. “Someone’s here,” she said.
He heard footsteps on the marble in the entry, and the low murmur of Graves’s voice followed by one with a higher pitch.
“That will be my sister, Ellen,” he told Rose, rising. “Will you excuse me?”