“It’s true.” He knew his strengths. “I am analytical. French, Latin, German? All of that is just learning the rules and then following them. Recognizing patterns in grammar, conjugation… I’m no savant. I am a monkey who has memorized a routine.”
The confession tumbled from his lips before he could recall it. Unease prickled his skin. He had never expected to find himself sharing such personal details with anyone, especially Miss Winfield. Yet with her, he felt like he could be himself without judgment. He held his breath in anticipation of her response.
“It sounds like an impossibly complex routine to me.” She narrowed her eyes at him, unconvinced. “You must be a very gifted monkey.”
“I am a well-connected monkey,” he corrected with a grin. “Agiftedmonkey could use his skill with languages to write a poem for a pretty woman.”
She smiled back at him shyly. “A poem about roses and strawberries?”
“Tart and sweet.” It was all he could do to withstand a sudden urge to kiss her.
“What about music?” she asked suddenly. “I saw your performance. The three of you are brilliant.”
“Bryony and Camellia are indeed brilliant,” he said with feeling. “I am just up to my same tricks. Memorizing scales, following notes on the page, predictable patterns of chord progression.”
“It’s still music,” she said staunchly.
He inclined his head. “I can play it, but I cannot create it. Not like my sisters. That’s what makes them true artists and me a background accompanist.”
“No.” Miss Winfield lay a gentle hand on his arm. “Your analytical nature is what makes you London’s premier problem-solver.”
He gave her a crooked smile. “I’m not the best because I’m the only one?”
“You’re the only one because nobody else can do it.” Her eyes shone. “You are gifted. The details you memorize, the patterns you see that no one else can… Thatisyour talent. You use it every day to help other people.”
His throat grew tight, and he glanced away.
Talented. Gifted. No one had ever said those words to him before. Not his prodigy siblings, not his doting mother. Certainly not the father who had never spared the time to notice his son transforming himself into a high-performance automaton in ill-fated attempts to gain approbation.
Perhaps Heath had been searching in the wrong place.
When Miss Winfield looked at him, she didn’t see a future title. He wasn’t his pocketbook or his pianoforte or his Society connections. She saw him as a worthy gentleman with God-given talents that he used to help people.
Who could ask for a better reputation than that?
Heath wanted to swing her into his arms, press a kiss to her lips, shout to the world that she made him the happiest of men.
He did nothing of the sort. He would not dare.
Throughout his entire life, Heath had witnessed how shunned his sister’s bosom friend Faith Digby had been simply for being born to a lower class. How opening a charity school had decimated his previously respectable sister Dahlia’s social standing.
In order to keep helping people as he had been doing, Heath could not accept the same fate. Gifted or not, it was his very position within Society that allowed him to help make it better.
He could not let anything jeopardize his carefully maintained social standing.
Not even love.
Chapter 15
Heath stared up at the brick façade before him.
This printing house was one of dozens of similar wretched embarrassments who mistook scandal columns for journalism. This particular publisher had been losing money for years, in part due to an inability to stand out from its competitors. Until now.
In absence of a knocker, Heath rapped directly on the peeling door. He had easily traced the origin of the anonymous caricatures to this address. Soon, he would have the name he sought.
A rat slid out from the shadowed interior when a young boy cracked open the door.
The lad glared up at Heath. “Wot?”
