Chapter Twenty
James was led to the drawing room where Eleanor and Georgina were waiting. For a second, he simply drank in the sight of Eleanor, sitting primly on the edge of the settee, dark, silky hair in perfect ringlets around her face, poise so stiff and face so closed that she practically radiated ice. She was always so tidy and cool. He didn’t stop to wonder why Lady Sarah, who radiated warmth and charm, seemed more untouchable to him than this woman.
Eleanor’s gaze flickered over him. “You look like you’ve dressed yourself in wall hangings from Prinny’s most opulent palace.”
He grinned, pressing a hand to his waistcoat. “It’s silk damask,” he said fondly.
“It’s a very violent shade of red,” she muttered.
“The tailor called it claret red.”
“Like you’ve spilled wine on yourself…how fitting.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
Georgina glanced back and forth between the two of them. “I think we need tea,” she announced. Instead of ringing for it, she left the room completely, leaving James and Eleanor alone.
Which James was not quite as disturbed by as he possibly should have been. He sat beside Eleanor on the settee, in the spot Georgina had just left. There was an appropriate amount of space between them, but it felt like they were sitting shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. He was too aware of her for some small bit of space to make much difference.
“What did you need?”
“Do I have to need something to want to speak to you?”
She shot him a pointed look.
“We’re friends, aren’t we?”
Her smile was wry. “We are not friends.”
That cut. Rather deeply. He’d thought they were friends.
“Do you threaten to reveal all of your friends’ secrets if they don’t assist you?” she added.
“That’s your own fault. Your secrets are simply more interesting than everyone else’s.”
She huffed, but it was a noise that held amusement, not just exasperation. “How are you doing with Lady Sarah?”
“Fine,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation. For some reason, he hadn’t expected the question and wasn’t prepared for it.
Eleanor must have noticed the pause. “Do you have trouble speaking to her?”
“No,” he said quickly. “Of course not.” And he didn’t. He truly didn’t. Lady Sarah was very easy to talk to…it was simply…he never really remembered their conversations afterward.
Eleanor didn’t look convinced, but she was prevented from saying anything by the maid’s arrival. The woman set the tea tray on the low table in front of them and James’s attention was immediately caught by a plate of cakes. He grabbed one and popped it into his mouth before Eleanor could slap his hand away.
It was sweet and plain with currants. Still a little dry, but better than the seed cake, since he hated caraway seeds with a passion.
Either way, it didn’t much matter. James, whether he was fond of a food or not, still ate it. It seemed wasteful not to, and pugilists needed to keep their strength up.
Eleanor thanked the maid, and once she was gone, turned back to James. “Do these meet your approval?”
“Still too dry,” he said, after he swallowed and picked up another one.
She sighed.
Georgina peeked her head into the room then, but she didn’t enter. “Make sure she eats those rout cakes,” she said, before venturing off once more. If she was supposed to be Eleanor’s companion, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
James looked at Eleanor, confused. “What was that about?”
“I skipped dinner last night.”
This was troubling news to a man who had never voluntarily missed a meal. “Why?”
“I don’t make a habit of it, but sometimes I’m sketching or reading and time gets away from me.”
The pugilist in him was horrified. “You shouldn’t skip meals. It’s not good for your body. Cakes can’t replace meats and vegetables. And what of fruit? Do you want to get scurvy?”
She lifted one delicate eyebrow. “Currants are a fruit.”
“But you’ve buried them in flour and sugar. If I lived here, I would follow you around with a platter and feed you any number of wholesome things.” He said it as a jest, but a part of him wouldn’t mind taking care of her when she was too enraptured by her studies to remember to eat. The realization was startling for someone who’d never had a nurturing bone in his body.
And oddly sensual—he had a fleeting image of pressing a slice of orange to Eleanor’s lips, her tongue darting out to capture tart droplets of juice that clung to his fingers.
He shook his head to clear it, realizing he was venturing into dangerous territory.
“This isn’t much of a replacement for a meal, though,” he remarked before finishing half his cake in one bite.
“Very well. Now eat your dry rout cakes and stop pestering me.” Her lips twitched as she said it. She poured herself a steaming cup of tea and then set the teapot down again. “I can ring for something else. I know you don’t like tea.”
“How do you know I don’t like tea?”
Her mouth twisted wryly. “Because you drink everything else in about two gulps.”
It was odd, and probably ridiculous, that such an observation would cause a little pang in his chest, but cause a pang it did.
“Have you been watching me so closely, then?” He meant it to be lighthearted, but his voice emerged slightly husky.
“Only because you wear things like that.” She nodded at his waistcoat. “It’s a sort of fascinated horror, really. Like a carriage wreck one can’t look away from.” Then she proceeded to take a dainty bite of cake, as though she hadn’t just blithely insulted him.
He smiled in spite of himself. “You, Eleanor Townsend, are an utter nightmare.”
Her lips twitched again, and then spread to a full grin, and something in his chest lifted, or quieted, or fell silent. He didn’t know exactly what the sensation was because he’d never felt it before. But he did know that in that moment, he was not thinking of the future, or how much the porcelain tea set in front of him cost, or how he might buy one someday whether he liked tea or not.
He was simply there, in that moment, there and nowhere else.
…
Eleanor was feeling a little too complacent and a little too warm and a little too happy, and Georgina was showing no sign of coming back to the drawing room, which set off warning bells in her head.
Before she could bring the conversation back to Lady Sarah, though, as she knew she should, as she knew she must, James spotted her sketchbook, the corner of which poked out from beneath the table. She’d pushed it there when Jeffries had announced a visitor.
“What is this?” James asked curiously.
“My beetle sketches.”
Anyone else would have met those words with disinterest or vague distaste, but James actually leaned forward, looking eager. “What have you been working on, Cecil?”
She hesitated, too tempted, and the blasted man grinned.
“I never told you this, but I was quite impressed with your stag beetle sketches.”
She tried to stare at him coolly. “Were you?”
“I have no knowledge of entomology and even I could tell they were exquisite.”
Exquisite? Her coolness was thawing, albeit reluctantly.
“I’ve never seen more realistic drawings, or more thorough ones. It felt like I was actually observing what you had observed. You made beetles more fascinating than I’d ever imagined they could be.”
If he didn’t stop, her limbs might go weak.
“Did they put your article first? They should have put it first.”
She shook her head. “It was in the middle.” Her voice came out thick.
He caught her gaze. “Heathens,” he said softly. “Show me what you’re working on.” But he said it silkily, like he might say, “Show me to your room. Let me in your bed.” She felt her entire body heat.
“You, James MacGregor, are an utter nightmare.”
He smiled, because he already knew he was a nightmare, and she, inevitably, retrieved her work from underneath the table, because not even her family, no matter how much they loved her, could feign much of an interest when she began to talk about insects. James was the only one, when she wasn’t Cecil. He was the only one who knew her.
And he wanted another woman. Didn’t he?
She suddenly wasn’t sure. He wasn’t here to be taught something…he was simply here. With her. It seemed an odd course of action for a man who wanted to marry someone else.
But if she was wrong, it was a depressing thing to contemplate, and it filled her with a deep, hollow ache. She showed him her drawings, instead. She was too proud of them not to.
They moved closer to each other and bowed their heads over the book.
“What is this monster? That’s native to Scotland?”
“It’s very rare. I’d love to have one for my collection. I observed this from a distance before it flew away.”
“It looks too big to fly,” he said doubtfully.
“Oh, it can fly, believe me.”
“One of these got stuck in my hair once,” he said, pointing. “I’ve been petrified of them ever since.”
She laughed. It was difficult to imagine James being petrified of anything, let alone something so small. “They won’t hurt you.”
“They’ll just crawl over your head with their sticky legs,” he said distastefully.
They turned through a few more pages. “The males of this dung beetle are bigger than the female,” she said.
“That’s unusual, isn’t it? The stag beetles are like that and you said it was unusual.”
She leaned back, pleased that he’d been paying attention. “I didn’t realize you were interested in entomology.”
“I’m not, exactly,” he said with a frown. “I’m interested because of your interest.”
She frowned back. “Do you mean you’re feigning interest?”
“No, I mean it’s better through your eyes, if that makes sense.”
It did, in a way. It was flattering. Too flattering, coming from this man. To distract herself, she turned another page.
“This is one of my favorites,” she said fondly, pointing at the sketch of the black-and-yellow striped insect. “Clytus arietes.”
“A wasp?”
“No, it’s a perfectly harmless, perfectly gentle beetle. It simply looks like a wasp.”
“I don’t know if I could tell the difference,” James said.
“Most insects and birds can’t tell, either. That’s how it protects itself. It can even buzz like a wasp. It tricks everyone, and it survives.”
For perhaps the first time, something that was an asset in the insect world seemed a detriment in the human world. What was the cost of disguising oneself to feel safe? The only true urge of the insect was survival. But what of humans? What harm did such a thing do to one’s heart?
Eleanor’s thoughts scattered when a loose piece of foolscap fell from the book. Before she could stop him, James had picked it up, and he froze as he looked…at himself. Eleanor’s heart jolted. Damnation, she’d forgotten she’d placed those at the back of the book.
“I’ll take that,” she said quickly.
Of course he didn’t listen. In fact, he pulled out of her way as she reached for it. Contrary, impossible man.
“You really did sketch me,” he breathed. He sounded awestruck, as though he couldn’t quite believe it, and the stark contrast to his usual cockiness made something in her chest hurt. The first sketch visible before the foolscap was unfolded—unfortunately, there were multiple; it was a long sheet of paper—was James in full evening attire, jauntily holding a walking stick. He looked like a rogue, hair lightly tousled, cravat loose. He looked handsome.
The details were sketched carefully, meticulously, down to the curve of his broken nose. Eleanor felt an awful heat creep into her throat and cheeks. How dreadfully embarrassing. And how like James, not to give an inch to protect her from that embarrassment.
“I don’t look tall enough, though,” he mused, tapping his chin.
And there was the cockiness. He was never long without it, after all.
“If you’re not satisfied, you can simply hand that back to me and I’ll put it away.”
“No, thank you,” he said, leaning away from her outstretched hand. “I need to study them intently so I can suggest corrections. As a scientist, you should admire my thorough approach.”
She wondered if it was worth lunging over his body to snatch it away from him. Her pulse positively rioted as he slowly unfolded the sheet, because she remembered, in startling, vivid detail, her last sketch.
He opened the paper. His eyes skimmed the next drawing, which was James sitting at a table, hand around a tankard of ale, his expression both smug and intrigued—the first day they’d met. The day that had sent her life tumbling into disarray. What did it say about her that she’d grown used to the storm and was starting to fear the calm that would descend once he was gone from her life?
She knew the moment he saw the last sketch—his eyes widened, flashing blue. He tilted it toward her as if she didn’t know what it was, and she would have snapped at him, if she could have thought of anything to say.
In her defense, he wasn’t completely nude. Only from the waist up. She’d drawn him in traditional prizefighting attire—shirtless with light-colored breeches, stockings, and plain shoes. His fists were raised in a boxing stance, muscles deep and rippling.
“Well,” James drawled. “I’m flattered.” He set the foolscap on the table in front of them, and they both stared at it. “But you’ve never seen me without my shirt on. Unless you’ve been spying on me?”
“Of course not. I simply looked through some depictions of prizefights.” Her face burned. There was no simply about it. She’d been intrigued by James’s size, by the breadth of his shoulders, the strength in every coiled muscle, and she’d looked up depictions to see if her imagination might match reality.
It made her seem obsessed.
James cast a sidelong glance at her, and then he cleared his throat. It was a sign of uncertainty she didn’t think she’d ever heard from him before. “Honestly, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about these.”
The drawings? “Why?”
“I wanted to know how you see me.”
Something in Eleanor’s chest fluttered like wings. She answered just as quietly as he’d spoken. “And what do you think of them?”
“I like them very much. But then, I like everything you’ve drawn.” He tapped the sketch of himself, smiling slightly. “You’ve sketched me in such detail.”
And then she found herself speaking, with no thought to the consequences, and no care for how it would sound. Maybe it was the sudden hush. Maybe it was the distance between them, growing smaller and smaller as they talked.
Maybe it was the simple fact that he was here and not with Lady Sarah.
“You’re contrary and arrogant and you wear utterly ridiculous waistcoats, and yet…”
“And yet?” he urged. His breath fanned across her cheek.
“I don’t know how to look away from you,” she whispered.
He leaned closer to catch every breathy word, and then he opened his mouth to say something, but she never found out what, because another voice rang loud from the doorway.
“This looks cozy.”
“Robert!” Eleanor straightened, heart thrumming. “I was just showing Mr. MacGregor my sketches.”
“Were you?” Robert said. “Where is Georgina?”
“She left.”
Robert arched an eyebrow. “And you didn’t think to call one of the maids instead?”
“No.” She lifted a shoulder apologetically.
Robert lowered himself into the armchair across from them. “Well,” he said brightly. “You have me now. You can continue your discussion.”
What had they been saying? Oh, right—she’d just told James that she didn’t know how to look away from him. Eleanor felt her cheeks flame, and then felt Robert’s suspicious glare.
“I was just leaving,” James said.
“A pity,” Robert said, though he didn’t sound like he found it pitiful at all.
“I’ll walk you to the door.”
“I’ll have you know that I have very good hearing,” Robert called to them as they left.
For a moment, Eleanor and James simply stared at each other in the entrance hall, tongue-tied, and then James managed to work up some faint shade of his usual careless smile.
“More muscle in the arm.”
She blinked, wondering if he was speaking a foreign language. She’d thought he might mention what she’d said, in that unguarded, impetuous moment, but he didn’t. “What?”
“The drawing. My arms are bigger than that.”
She couldn’t help but snort. “Forgive me if I don’t consider you an objective observer in the matter.”
This time, his smile seemed more genuine. James reached forward suddenly, almost instinctually, as if to tuck her hair behind her ear, and then he arrested the motion, face stricken.
Her heart skipped a beat, hands knotting in the fabric of her dress. “James?”
“I should go. You told me morning calls are only supposed to last fifteen minutes.”
She watched dazedly as he shrugged into his greatcoat, there one instant and gone the next, and wondered what in the world had just happened between them.
Robert was waiting for her when she returned.
“What do you think you’re doing, Eleanor?” He didn’t sound angry—she had never really seen Robert angry—he didn’t even sound accusatory. Only curious. And a little worried.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s courting Lady Sarah, isn’t he?”
“I…” She’d thought he was, but he had come here, seeking her company, for no reason other than to speak to her. They had not discussed etiquette. They had not talked about Lady Sarah, at all, really. They’d talked about beetles and looked at Eleanor’s sketches and he’d laughed at her insults and they’d eaten dry rout cakes together. He had not seemed like a man intent on marrying someone else.
She was also quite certain they had nearly kissed. Again.
Surely it meant something. It had to.
“Has he told you he’s not?” Robert asked.
Eleanor shook her head, a sliver of doubt creeping in.
“I feel sorry for Lady Sarah,” Robert continued. “Between the three of you, she’s the one most in the dark, and she seems to genuinely like both of you. I suppose women with dowries are lied to all the time, but still, it seems a pity that you should be the one lying to her.”
And with those words, Eleanor felt guilt settle around her, cold and heavy, a darkness she couldn’t shake.