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Authors: Theresa Romain

BOOK: Season for Surrender
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Tomorrow
, she told herself. Tomorrow she'd snap a few more pieces into place. Before this house party was done, she'd have Lord Xavier laid out bare before her.
A shiver spun through her body, making her limbs tremble.
Chapter 6
Containing a Theatrical Fantasy
“
The Taming of the Shrew
. Are you familiar with it, Miss Oliver?”
Louisa's head snapped up at the interruption. She squinted into the clear light of early afternoon; a familiar figure was backlit against the tall library windows. “My lord. I'm sorry, I didn't realize I wasn't alone.”
She rose from her crouch before a low shelf of tall, slim ledgers. Bobbing a passable little curtsy, she shook her rumpled skirts back into reasonable order.
“Do stop prostrating yourself, Miss Oliver. You're my guest, not a housemaid.”
Xavier hitched a slender, fussily tooled volume into the crook of his arm, then strode over to Louisa's side and handed it to her.
“It's a play by Shakespeare. Somehow it was separated from its fellows, and I know you're flustered by that type of disorder. So here you go. Arrange it as you like it. Next to
As You Like It
, if you like.”
Louisa smiled. “Literary wordplay, my lord. Are you trying to charm me?”
“There's no point. I know you can't be charmed.” He gave a lopsided smile, then half turned to drag his fingers along the edge of a shelf. Under the snug charcoal-dark superfine of his coat, his shoulders flexed, the edges of his shoulder blades pressing outward.
To see the lines of his body, just for an instant—Louisa held her breath at the unexpected intimacy of it. He turned back at the sharp sound of her inhalation, his brows raised in a question, and she made a sudden, impulsive decision.
“My lord,” she began, tightening her fingers on the Shakespearean binding. “You're right.”
His jaw dropped. “I'm
what
?” He rubbed at his ears. “I'm sorry, I must not have heard you properly.”
She held up a quelling hand. “My lord, I'm all too familiar with
The Taming of the Shrew.
I've been shrewish to you, and I wish to offer a truce.”
“Am I to be your Petruchio, then?”
Petruchio—the man who'd mastered the shrew, who'd tongued and ravished his Kate into submission.
Lord, yes
. “Decidedly not. Your friends aren't witty enough to support you as one of Shakespeare's heroes. What I propose is that I shall be a bit less difficult. If you will extend me the same courtesy.”
“Are you suggesting I've been difficult?” Again, the expression of elaborate shock.
Louisa mirrored his posture, folding her arms. “Come now, my lord. I've promised not to be shrewish with you, so you can't expect me to pick up that thread of conversation. I'm only asking you to treat me with the same respect you would one of your male associates.”
Gray eyes met hers. “They rarely wear such fetching frocks, Miss Oliver. I would find the pretense difficult to sustain.”
She shook her head. “Honesty, please, my lord. You don't have to say things like
fetching
to me. I'm not going to leave if I'm not complimented every two minutes. In fact, I'd much rather receive no compliment at all than an insincere one.”
She gestured at her patterned muslin day dress. “This is clothing, my lord. It covers my body. It doesn't have anything to do with my real self.”
She wrapped both hands around the edges of the bound play, stilling herself. Drawing her posture up straight. He wouldn't suspect how she'd unsettled herself by saying
my body
to a rake for whom flirtation was as easy as breathing—especially when she wanted him to touch her.
When he studied her without replying, she made an impatient gesture and laid the play on the nearest shelf. “Excuse me, please.”
She crouched again, intending to continue her survey of this long-neglected collection of books. Determined to ignore the tall man lurking behind her, she scrutinized the bindings for some clue as to where to begin. The old, cord-banded spines on this shelf were not marked. Anything could be here, waiting to surprise her.
Xavier loomed over her, and the hair at the nape of her neck stirred in the eddy of his slight movements. Then he sank to the floor, leaning against the very shelf she was looking at, and stretched out his long legs.
“You're wrong, Miss Oliver. When you choose your clothing, you do reveal something about yourself.”
He looked at her aslant. “Your gown is simple, yet it follows fashion. This shows that you care about practicality but do not wish to do yourself a disservice by appearing a frump. In the same way, your hair is coiled back from your face, yet its twists have been carefully arranged. In your every choice, you balance the demands of the world with the demands of your own self.”
Louisa sank from her crouch to a seat on the floor, an arm's length away. “Oh.” She stopped; shook her head. “Thank you?”
She smoothed her skirt, wondering at all he'd read into the floral-patterned fabric. One hand reached up to touch her hair, as though it had altered when spoken of. “I'd never thought of it all that way. You surprise me, my lord.”
He lifted his chin and looked at her directly. “Likewise. Please, Miss Oliver, don't assume that every compliment I give is insincere. I might candy my words, but they do have real substance.” His expression turned wry. “Well, sometimes they do.”
A knot of something tense between her shoulders began to relax. “That's more than many in the
ton
could say. Certainly more than most would admit.”
She leaned against the shelf next to him, feeling an odd tug of companionship. It came from the informality, maybe; sitting not on furniture with her back straight as a yardstick, but on the floor, her legs folded up like a child's.
There was nothing improper, exactly, about sitting like this, yet she felt as though she'd left propriety behind her at long last. She sat close enough to the infamous Lord Xavier to breathe in his clean scents of starch and spice; close enough to judge the span of his biceps beneath his coat. Would her two hands meet around it? She felt an almost irresistible urge to try, to wrap her fingers around some part of him and clutch this moment close.
His eyes were not wholly gray, she saw at this close distance; there was a rim of warm brown around the edges. The indentation of his upper lip was sharp.
Careful, Louisa
. Her hands flexed. She pressed them to the floor at her sides; then, to cover the gesture, pushed herself to her feet again.
Xavier sprang upright in one sure movement. “So, Miss Oliver. Now that we are all business, fulfilling our wager of time, what shall we look at? I think you were studying something particular when I came in.” He began to prowl the shelves, looking up and down one bookcase, then the next.
“You may call me Louisa, if you like.”
He stumbled, catching himself on a shelf of dreary-looking historical tomes. “May I? You shock me again.”
“How gratifying. But you mustn't expect me to keep this up, my lord. I'm not a shocking person by nature.”
Xavier untangled his feet. “I wonder about that.”
He brushed off the mussed cuffs of his coat, twisting the trio of buttons trimming the sleeves. “If you honor me with your name, I can do no less. I've already told you not to curtsy. You must stop
my lord
-ing me, too.”
“And call you what? Xavier?”
“Yes. Or—well, no, that's not the same as a Christian name, is it?” Twist, twist, twist, went his fingers on the button. “That's my title. But since I've been the earl virtually since birth, that's all I've ever been called.” His brows knit, as though the realization surprised him.
“Even by your family?”
He shrugged. “Jane and her mother. That's it. Lockwood more distantly. We're a sparse family tree.”
“What of the other young ladies whom you threaten and intimidate with compliments on their clothing?”
Twist, twist, twist. “You are the only such lady. If the subject of clothing entered my conversation with another female, it would have a . . . different nature.”
Her hands tingled. She could guess what he meant; could see it as clearly as though it were painted on a series of magic-lantern slides.
He would come backstage at the opera to find a lush woman like Signora Frittarelli in her dressing room. He might call her by her first name when he entered, or he might merely draw close, fixing her with those mesmerizing eyes. They need not speak at all as he trailed clever fingers over her neck, down her bosom, into her bodice. His mouth would follow his fingers, hot and demanding, and clothes would be loosened, removed, cast aside.
And then . . .
Louisa stopped herself. Between her legs, she'd grown damp. Talk of letting one's imagination run away; she had put herself in the place of that passionate woman, wishing for his touch, no matter how practiced it might be or how little he might care for her.
He was good to look at, good to breathe in. And he was watching her, a little smile on his lips, as though he'd been observing the scene acted out in Louisa's mind.
“It's fine,” she said in her crispest voice. “If you like to be called Xavier, I will—”
“Alexander,” he interrupted. “That's my Christian name. Or you could call me Alex. I think I had a nurse once who called me that.”
He looked puzzled again. “It sounds odd to my own ears. Yet it
is
my name.”
“All right,” Louisa said. “Alex.”
He gave a final twist to a button, then nodded. “That's settled, then. So. What were you looking at, Louisa?”
“Oh dear. That
Louisa
is going to take some getting used to. Alex.”
“I could call you something else instead. I'll return to
Miss Oliver
, if you're repenting of our agreement. Or sweeting. Or muffin.”
Louisa choked. “Muffin? If you call me that in front of my aunt, I believe she'd die on the spot a happy woman. You'd fulfill her desires for gossip and matchmaking at once.”
“A large burden to place on a mere two-syllable word,” he murmured. “The idea is tempting. So. Books, muffin. Is there something you'd like to look for, muffin?”
“If you call me that again,
muffin
, I'll be looking for something to throw at you.”
He gave her a sidelong glance, a lopsided smile, then crouched to study the shelf she'd been looking over when he entered. “I'm not sure what these are,” he said. “They look like ledgers.”
He tugged one from the shelf, handling the old binding with such care that Louisa wanted to stroke his rumpled head. “This one seems to be an old book of receipts.” He held the book at arm's length. “Do look. Is this a set of instructions on how to make muffins?”
Louisa turned her head away to hide her smile. “You are a wicked man.”
“Simply because I tried to decipher an old cookery book, I am deemed wicked? Dear, dear. You are a harsh mistress, muffin.”
He closed the book and gingerly slid it back onto the shelf, then pulled out its neighbor. “Let's see if there are any more muffins in this book.”
“I warned you, I will throw something at you. Your vocabulary is lamentably small, my lord, if you can only think of—”
“Alex.”
“Right, yes. Not
my lord
. Alex.”
But he didn't seem to be speaking to her. He was flipping a page back and forth, squinting, his dark brows pulling into a puzzled line. “Alex. It's the only word I can read.” Holding the book out to Louisa, he stood again.
She studied the gnarled, handwritten block letters. “Here's an Eleanor . . . another Alex . . . a Cuthbert.”
“Cuthbert? Dear God, what a dreadful name.”
Between the names, the page was covered in seemingly random strings of consonants and vowels. “I think,” Louisa decided, “this book is encoded. The only things in English are the names. If you can call Cuthbert an English word.”
“I don't think any other language would wish to claim it.”
She looked up at him. “What is this book? Have you seen it before?”
“Never.” With a nod toward a table against the far wall, he said, “Come, let's lay it out. No sense in handing Cuthbert back and forth.”
“Now you're sharing Christian names with books?”
“Are you envious? Do you want more names for yourself? Muffin?” He held up his hands as he backed toward the sleek mahogany table and chairs by the tall windows. “I'm not calling you a name. I'm only thinking of food.”
“My kingdom for a speck of honesty.” Louisa rolled her eyes. A good gesture; she'd appear to be exasperated, and a little amused.

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