The Rake's Enticing Proposal. Lara Temple
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planted her hands on her hips. It would be a relief to do something useful to keep her mind off her woes.
‘I shall be happy to help. I shall need some pen and paper so I can keep a record of the ones I have and perhaps separate them by year or month. And I think I will insert a sheet of paper at the beginning of each with its date and some reference to the notebooks which precede and follow it as I find them. Once I complete that stage, I will compile a catalogue so we can see which volumes are missing.’
She turned to see if her plan met with his approval, just in time to see his smile tucked away.
‘Did I say something amusing, Mr Sinclair?’
‘Not at all. You are the very model of good sense, Miss Walsh, and I commend your plan of attack. Mallory would approve. Pen and paper you shall have.’
‘What shall I do with these strips of paper?’ Ellie asked as she picked up one of the notebook with two notes dangling like pennants from between the pages.
‘Leave them. No, in fact, if you find anything, bring it to me.’
* * *
‘Oh, look!’
Chase looked. It was the third time that expletive had burst from Miss Walsh’s lips in as many hours, accompanied by a look of delight that was beginning to grate on his nerves. Not that it was not a charming sight—her mouth softening into her rare smile and her eyes widened and lit with joy, turning them from mere brown to warm honey flaked with dancing sparks of gold and the tiny glimmer of green around the iris.
For the third time Chase found his attention wholly captured by her excitement. This time he tried for dismissiveness.
‘What have you found tucked inside his notebooks now? Another mouldering pressed daisy? An ancient Egyptian shopping list, perhaps? For ten yards of mummy wrappings and a sheave of papyrus?’
‘No. This was under the notebooks and it looks quite old.’ She approached the desk, holding a small leather-bound book with the gentleness of a lepidopterist balancing a rare butterfly on her palm. He took it just as carefully, memories flooding back.
‘You are right; it is very old. It is a book of hours given to my cousin by a friend of his, Fanous, an abbot at a Coptic monastery near his house in Qetara.’
‘It is exquisite.’
It was indeed exquisite. A monk had probably toiled for months over the detailed illustrations and squiggly Coptic letters. The picture was of a man and a woman in medieval garb standing hand-fasted and heads bowed, either in joint prayer or in mutual embarrassment. He could almost feel the tension between them and he breathed in, surprised at his unusually sentimental interpretation of the image.
‘It is a wedding, I think,’ she said, her voice low and serious. ‘Look here in the corner, that is the priest and those tables might signify a wedding feast. Those look like greenish pumpkins.’
‘Either that or rotund babes. Those two clearly look as if they have anticipated their wedding vows.’
Her mouth quirked almost into a smile and she tucked a strand of light-brown hair behind her ear as she leaned over him to turn the page.
Unlike Dru and Fen she didn’t dress or curl her hair, just dragged it back into a mercilessly regimented bun that did nothing to enliven her looks. But the deeper she delved into the notebooks, the more she unravelled. Her bun was slowly loosening its hold and though she kept tucking the escaping strands of hair behind her ears, they rarely stayed there, adding character and life to her face.
‘See? These are their children, helping with the harvest.’ Her voice was low and warm, lost in the imaginary world she concocted from the colourful illustrations. This is probably how she saw her little world with Henry—a safe, bucolic haven surrounded by gambolling lambs and sandy-haired babes or honey-eyed little girls with determined brows and far too much intelligence for comfort. Reality, as he knew only too well, was unlikely to be as pleasant.
She turned another page and caught a slip of paper before it fluttered to the ground. It was covered in Huxley’s scrawl and before he could take it she read it aloud, a frown in her voice.
‘“Fanous as Jephteh? Who else knew him?” Does that mean anything to you, Mr Sinclair? Or this list of letters? “J... M... P... S... C... E...at bull & pyramid”. How peculiar. It almost sounds like the name of an inn...you know, like the Horse and Plough, or the Lamb and Eagle.’
Her eyes were alight with interest and Chase took the note, adding it to the growing stack he’d been collecting. Nothing so far appeared to shed any light on Huxley’s request. He was beginning to wonder if Huxley’s last letter was merely the sign of a decaying mind and odd fancies. The untidiness of the study and Folly appeared to support that possibility.
Mallory should be able to clear up this conundrum, but according to Pruitt he left just two days before Huxley’s death to destinations unknown which was also peculiar, to say the least. Not that he suspected Mallory of anything improper. Huxley had taken him on as secretary when he was still a young man and he was as straight as an arrow, but it was still strange he’d disappeared so abruptly and not yet returned. Chase hoped the message he’d sent to his Uncle Oswald to have someone trace Mallory would settle that problem, but meanwhile all he could do was continue sifting through his cousin’s remains and hope something pointed him in the right direction.
So far the only items of interest were these peculiar notes such as the one Miss Walsh had just found, though they, too, probably meant absolutely nothing. Yet something about the letter and the peculiar disorder in the study bothered him.
And it was, unfortunately, not the only thing bothering him.
At the moment the more potent disturbance was Miss Walsh herself. Her excited ‘Oh, look!’ was bad enough when directed at him across the expanse of the desk. But having her a mere hand’s length away was proving more distracting than he would have thought possible.
Not that she appeared to share his discomfort in the least. She was wholly engrossed in the note, her finger gently tracing the letters so that he could almost feel the rasp of her finger on the paper.
He held himself still, resisting the urge to take advantage of the little book to lean closer to her. This close he could see where the well-worn muslin fabric curved over her breasts and hips. Even in that dowdy dress it was evident she had lovely breasts, not too small, not too large. His hands heated at the thought of how well they would fit in his palms, wondering whether they would be cool or warm, what colour her...
He cleared his throat, focusing on the fragile book. His imagination was always fertile, but it usually waited for more suitable subjects for its flights of fancy.
He reached for the scribbled strip of paper and, though he had not actively intended to, his arm brushed hers. He drew back, feeling stifled.
‘I’ll take that. And we had best return to our task if we are ever to finish.’
Her curiosity and excitement extinguished immediately, and the schoolmistress was back—calm, blank and faintly disapproving. He could have kicked himself for his petty rejection. He was definitely off form.
‘Shall I have Pruitt bring us some tea? My temper can be measured in direct opposition to my hunger.’ It wasn’t much of an apology, but her mouth relaxed a little as he went to tug at the bell pull.
‘You remind me of Hugh.’
‘Who is Hugh?’
‘My brother. We could tell the hour by his temper when he was a boy. If we had not fed him by five we did not need the clock to chime the hour. But once fed he was an angel for precisely another three hours. Mama always said it was because his mind was so hard at work. He is quite brilliant.’
‘I don’t have that excuse, unfortunately. How many of you are there?’
‘Five. Myself, Susan, Edmund, Anne and Hugh.’
‘You