Chapter Three
His touch demanded a kiss.
She rocked up on her toes and mashed her lips to his. It was the only way to take control; otherwise Jonas would have the upper hand.
But, he did have the upper hand—smashed to her breast because she’d flung herself at him and his gloved hand had gotten stuck in between. Sensations ricocheted through her body. The aroma of spicy soap, the cool leather on her skin, and five fingers spread wide high on her chest. Nerves singed from his hand resting there.
Heat shot to hidden flesh between her legs. She had an older, widowed sister. She knew what was happening.
Unfortunately, nothing was happening.
Her mouth locked on his, but neither kissed. What was she supposed to do?
This was nothing like last night’s soul-shattering kiss. The element of surprise was hers, and she’d botched it. Horribly.
Dropping back on her heels, she peeked at Jonas. The outer corners of lapis lazuli eyes crinkled above her, taking in the angles of her face before dipping to his gloved hand.
“My hand.” Jonas removed it from her breast as one might remove their hold on a fragile dish.
Hugging the Halsey tome, she inched away, unable to look him in the eye. “That was a disaster.”
What did she expect? Artful, expert kissing? She spent more time with dusty relics than men. Flirting and kissing were two skills she’d not mastered. Lust was easily understood. What to do with it was another kettle of fish.
“Livvy—”
“Please don’t.” She swiveled around and returned the book to its shelf. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“Probably the same thing that overcame me last night.”
His rich baritone message soothed her pride, but with every sense jangled, she couldn’t face Jonas. Not yet. She gathered papers on her desk and ordered them into two neat stacks and re-ordered them again, willing her cheeks to cool off. They were, no doubt, an unattractive shade of beets.
Snow blew past the tower’s lone window. She rubbed her stomacher, the yellow embroidery ripped from catching the jagged ends of broken mosaics.
“I should be a gentleman and leave,” he said to her back.
“But you’re not going to, are you?”
“No.”
She swung around and rested both hands on the desk behind her. “You have a talent for leaving when I want you to stay, and staying when I’d prefer you go.”
Jonas pulled a chair out from the work table. He turned it backward and straddled the seat. During her desk organizing, he’d removed his hat, gloves, and heavy outer coat. Blue velvet stretched across wide shoulders, the coat flapping open with a casual air. Black leather breeches molded to his thighs, the cut showing he’d patronized one of London’s finer tailors. Pirating must have been lucrative, indeed. The Jonas of her youth wore ill-fitting homespun and when he grew larger, the Captain’s oft-mended cast-offs.
With Jonas’s good looks and natty attire, most women would see a dashing man. She saw Plumtree’s quiet rebel son, the young man who’d claimed he didn’t care about wearing patched-up clothes.
Her heart softened. She knew better.
“You look rather comfortable,” she said. “Planning to stay awhile?”
“Long enough for you to explain yourself.” His gaze roved over broken pottery. “What are you’re doing in here?”
Jonas was leaving England for good. She could tell him. Confession was good for the soul. Who better to unburden herself with than a childhood friend? A confidence shared with Jonas would be a confidence kept.
But, this was a Christmas Day visit, a time when most souls hunkered down with family.
“I could ask the same of you. Why are you here and not with your grandfather?”
Jaw resting in the flat of his hand, his smile was tolerant. “If my worst sin is a short walk in the country, consider me guilty. You, on the other hand, have your share of secrets. Time to ’fess up.”
Secrets and sins. They could be one and the same where she was concerned. She couldn’t toss out a quip or clamber out a window to escape this. Her reckoning was coming.
To begin it with Jonas could be freeing.
She pulled a thin volume off the desk shelf and passed it to Jonas. “My big secret is this.”
He read aloud the gold-embossed spine. “An Exhaustive Study of Vallum Hadriani by Thomas J. Halsey.”
“I wrote it.” She waited, her brows pinching. Relief didn’t come.
“You wrote the book in your father’s name?”
“After he took ill last year. His notes, my words. I was at his side when he wrote most of them…have been since you left.” Her chin tipped high. “I may not have a university education, but I know as much as any antiquarian. I’ve been on nearly all my father’s summer excavations, helping him catalogue Roman relics.”
Jonas skimmed the volume in hand. His keen study wandered from the page to the table’s historic treasures before drifting back to the desk with its neat stacks of paper.
“You’re writing another one in his name,” his deep voice intoned.
“Yes.”
His face grave, Jonas set the book on the work table and folded his arms on the chair’s back rest. The toe of her shoe traced circles on the floor as if she were a girl caught cheating on her sums. This was supposed to be freeing, this confession to a friend, but the grim line of Jonas’s mouth made her push off the desk and pace the floor.
“Say something, please.” She wiped damp palms down her skirts. “I can’t bear this silence.”
“Livvy, surely you don’t plan to continue this deception. The Antiquarian Society will eventually find out.” He nodded at the desk. “Your father’s publisher will, too, I suspect.”
“I know.” Heels striking the floor, her voice dripped with misery. “I didn’t intend for everything to go this far.”
“One thing I learned while in service to the Earl of Greenwich, academic societies set great store on the integrity of their field of study.”
She walked the wide planks, wringing her hands. “It was only supposed to be that volume behind you.”
“What happened?”
She sighed heavily, looking to the pristine world beyond the window. “Fame from the Learmouth find.” Her pacing took her to the mullioned glass. “The book I wrote in my father’s name did well…better than his others.”
“Cause for celebration.”
“In a way, it was. I’ve always wanted to write fiction. Adventures about Roman generals.” She touched the window with both hands, a woman trapped in a world of her own making. “And then Father’s publisher sent a letter last month requesting a book on the Learmouth excavation.”
“And you said yes.”
“The offer was too good to turn down. Of course, they don’t want me. They want Thomas J. Halsey.”
“And you’re taking up your father’s work until his return.”
The frosted glass chilled her palms. A long-held ache rolled from her belly into her chest, lodging itself behind her breastbone.
“He’ll never work again, Jonas. He’s dying.” Her forlorn voice drifted through the tower. Lonely. Sad. A little lost. Her father was the sun and the moon to her.
Chair legs scraped behind her. Steady footfalls crossed the floor. Looking up, the stalwart face of her friend reflected in the glass behind her. Silent. Comforting. A man easy to be with.
The same man she’d kissed hotly one night and with disastrous results moments ago.
Jonas didn’t ask for her father’s tale. Nor did he hug her as he’d done the day she’d told him her beloved cat, Julius Caesar, had died. She was eleven years old, then. Tears had flowed that day and big-hearted Jonas had wrapped his arms around her until she could cry no more.
Was he trying to keep his distance now?
He might want safe detachment. She did not. The tale was already started. She’d see it finished.
“Summer of last year, we were at the Learmouth excavation. Everything was going well, except Father complained of his arm tingling. He insisted on climbing a tree to get a birds-eye view of the site,” she said, staring at the peaceful world beyond the tower. “When he was in the tree, a spasm wracked his body and he fell.”
“But he survived.”
“He did, but he hasn’t been the same since…in body or mind.”
“The Captain thinks your father works with you here in the tower.”
Warming both hands on her skirt, she faced Jonas. “Because Mother and I need everyone to believe it. At least until this book is published and—” she tipped her head to the hearth “—that chair sells. We know we can’t keep up this ruse for much longer.”
“Your father is infirm?”
“Infirm?” A pitiful laugh rippled through her. “This summer, he walked with a cane. Now he’s bedridden.”
“With no chance for recovery?”
“None.” Her eyes squeezed shut and she hugged herself, needing blessed blankness. “Most days, he doesn’t recognize me…his own daughter.”
“An ailment of the mind,” Jonas said softly. “And you are carrying the weight of providing for your family.”
“I do what I can.” Head resting on the wall, she opened her eyes. “It’s why I broke into your bedchamber. I stole his old watch from you.”
“The watch I won in a card game?”
“Yes.” Her voice thinned. “It’s baffling. He doesn’t recognize me, but Father can recall certain personal objects with perfect clarity. He kept badgering Mother about his watch, fixating on it. He didn’t know it was gone. The physician said it’s good to surround Father with things he does remember. Helps his mind. So, when I heard you were in Plumtree…”
“You decided to get it back.”
“I didn’t think you’d miss it.”
“If it brings him comfort, keep it.” He chuckled and set his hands on his hips. “You know you could’ve asked me for it. I’d have given it to you.”
“And risk having to explain why?” She shook her head. “I couldn’t take that chance.”
Jonas smarted as if she’d flung ale in his face. Hands still on his hips, he shook his head, taking great interest in the toes of his boots. She took a half-step off the wall and stopped when blue eyes pinned her.
“Livvy, you know you can trust me, same as ever.”
But I can’t count on you to stay.
“Thank you, Jonas.” She gave him a thin-lipped, obligatory smile. “Please understand, I couldn’t be sure…”
“Because I’ve given you no reason to be sure.”
“There is that. You are leaving.”
“Yes. There is that,” he said, his voice sad and final.
Tucking hair behind her ear, she tried for a cheerier smile. “I am grateful for your help bringing up the chair, but I must get back to work.”
Daylight faded outside. She donned her shawl and walked stiff-limbed to the hearth. Crouching low, she touched a taper to an ember. Behind her, she expected Jonas to gather his things and leave the tower. She was graceless when it came to social niceties. Elspeth would know what to do. Her sister always did. But, really, was there a pleasant way to do this? Dismiss a long-lost friend?
Jonas bored holes in her as she lit candles set at intervals on the work tables. Globs of dried wax mucking up the table attested to long nights in the tower. At her desk, she lit an iron candle stand. Her side vision caught Jonas kneeling in front of the curule chair.
“Are you restoring all these artifacts?” he asked.
“The smaller pieces, yes.” She blew out the taper. “It’s the larger items like that chair that bedevil me.”
“I can fix this.” He bent lower, inspecting the joint where ivory attached to wood. “Since I’m not leaving until Twelfth Night ends, I may as well do some good. It’ll give me something to do.”
“Won’t the Captain miss you?”
“He’ll miss the chance to harangue me about taking over the family business.” Jonas tested fragile hinges on the chair. An eye to the rusted metal, he shrugged off his coat. “Take this, will you?”
She held the blue velvet, a mute witness to Jonas bending this way and that. A touch to another hinge. A thoughtful hum as his fingertips ran the length of all four chair legs. Capable hands testing, poking, skimming ancient wood with the gentleness a surgeon gave a desperate patient. Last night, her senses sung a different tune when studying those hands.
“Finding anything I should know about?” she asked.
He slanted a grin at her. “Yes. This old wood is telling me I should work on it.”
“You? Pardon me, Jonas,” she said to his profile. “But you don’t know one jot or tittle about Roman antiquities. Your offer is generous, but I’m not sure it’s wise.”
He chuckled, examining the upper arch. “Your Roman chair, it’s furniture. Don’t forget, I come from generations of furniture makers.”
“Which you turned your back on ten years ago. This isn’t a practice piece.”
His hands grazed the back rest’s upper curve, pausing to push a spot as if he tested a wound. “I’m aware of the gravity here. You forget. The Captain apprenticed me when I was eleven years old.”
Hugging his velvet coat, she couldn’t argue with his experience. While she spent time with tutors, Jonas had learned the cabinetmaker’s trade at his grandfather’s side. He tilted the chair into the hearth’s light, his forefinger tracing knobby carvings. Jonas checked wood flecks on his finger. He even sniffed the wood.
“Some rot here, but the rest of this arch is intact. If you won’t let me work on it, you’d better have a care how deep you work the grain or you’ll split it in two.”
“You see that in the grain?”
“I do.” He stood up and dusted off his hands.
She passed back his coat. “You really think you can save it? Even the hinges? After the ivory legs, those hinges and the carvings will be what collectors inspect the most.”
Jonas slid into his blue velvet coat. “You’re selling this to collectors?”
“One collector. He has a number of interested buyers, if the chair remains intact.”
“I’ll need to borrow some of the Captain’s tools, but that shouldn’t be a problem,” he said, collecting his heavy coat and hat and gloves.
She folded the ends of her shawl over her chest amused at her refusal of Jonas’s help turning into a discussion of how he would help. “Your working on this chair would free me to write the next book.”
“In your father’s name? Or yours?”
“My father’s. No one will accept my name on a manuscript.”
“Why not? You were spouting facts about Londinium and Roman generals when you were ten years old.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Irritating, wasn’t it?”
“Endearing.”
His lone word, said in his deep rumble of a voice, satisfied her to her toes. Fragile threads of friendship strengthened on his singular affirmation. The truth was Jonas understood her. He always had.
“I’m afraid it will be my hand on the manuscript and Thomas J. Halsey on the book.” She fixed her shawl again, pulling the wool tighter. “Once the book is done and the curule chair restored, I plan to put this all behind me.”
Jonas rubbed gold trim on his tricorne, a gentlemanly smile ghosting his mouth. “We’ll have a few weeks. We can manage it together.”
Firelight shined on his tall, black boots. Jonas was handsome but not in the conventional sense. He was big, his size akin to braw Highlanders. Town gentlemen were tame by comparison. Jonas would never spout flowery phrases or write poetic letters. But, he’d keep a secret and be the friend to catch you if you fell from an adventure that went awry.
And her heart ached that he’d not be around to catch her again.
This was all she’d have. A few weeks with Jonas.
The hat rotated in his hands, a sluggish end-over-end circle as his gaze locked with hers. “Well, I expect the Captain and his cronies are impatiently awaiting my return.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice quiet. “You should get back to your grandfather and his guests.”
Jonas stepped around the Roman chair, his broad shoulders seeming to take up the room. She followed his blue velvet-covered back as he picked his way through the relic-strewn floor to the stairs. He slipped on his black frock coat and black tricorne in silence. Her palm pressed her stomacher. Butterflies camped there.
“You will be back tomorrow?” she called out. “To fix the chair.”
Jonas gave her a swoon-worthy smile. “Bright and early.”
She’d never swooned a day in her life, but her knees didn’t know that. They were jelly. “Bright and early. I look forward to it.”
He disappeared down the winding stairs. She froze in place, listening to his descending steps until the old oak door scraped open and shut. Grabbing her skirts, she sprinted to the window to watch Jonas walk home. Winter covered the evening world in white. Bits of diamonds could be scattered in the snow, sparkling beautifully. Jonas emerged from the side of the tower, trudging through the fluff. Light from her window cast a mellow glow on the ground, and Jonas walked through it. Gentle wind trifled with his coat. His black boots stopped their trudge. He turned and waved. Nose pressed to cold glass, she waved back.
Was it possible his blue eyes shined clearer and more lively? For her? Palm flat on the icy window, she felt Jonas, his warmth and presence lingering until he disappeared in the night.