Up until this instant, she hadn’t considered how very different Lord St. Alban was from Society, fromher. He so closely resembled the ideal, privileged viscount that one could forget. But who was he really?
A different man altogether, she suspected. One who intrigued her too much. This room, and him in it, wasn’t helping her Lord St. Alban problem.
“Did you have this room imported whole cloth from Japan?”
“Nearly.”
Her eyes swung up to inspect the expertly latticed woodwork on the ceiling. “I’ve never seen its match.”
“Not even in the mysterious Jiro’s studio?”
The mysterious Jiro. The words struck her at a wrong angle. Or rather it was the way he’d inflected the words. Something her ears picked up that she couldn’t quite lay her finger on. And turning around to see the expression on his face wouldn’t help at all. She would go absolutely tone deaf at the sight of him.
“Is there something you wish to know about Jiro?” she asked. “Does Miss Radclyffe require an art master?”
One second, then another, passed, a resounding silence filling the air. She’d begun to question whether he would reply at all when he said, “No, Miss Radclyffe doesn’t require an art master.Thatis atansu.”
Olivia saw that she’d begun to feather her fingertips across the intricate ironwork of a chest. “Lovely.”
“It’s a mobile storage chest used by the Japanese.”
She half turned toward him and almost took no notice of his naked chest. Or the bruises strewn haphazardly across its surface. Almost. “It’s bold, yet refined, too.”
“Boldness can be found in even the most refined objects,” he said before adding, “Unexpectedly so, at times.”
Again, she pivoted away from him, unable to hold his gaze when he spoke in so suggestive a manner. Yet wasn’t he playing into her plan? Hadn’t she come here to be bold?
Her courage, nay foolhardiness, failed her with each successive moment, her plan becoming impossible, an embarrassment, truth be told.Too bold.
She cleared her throat and focused on thetansu. She needed to be gone from this room, now, but her feet felt mired in quicksand.
“There aretansufor every use”—His voice sounded farther away now. Had he retreated to the sliding door? She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed—“clothing and food storage, money, linens, even apothecaries use them. Every ship trading along the Pacific carries one onboard for safekeeping valuables and as a sort of status symbol for trading purposes.Funa-dansu, they’re called, the most ornate of thetansu.”
Her eye caught his over her shoulder, and her body followed. It almost didn’t matter that this man, whom she’d kissed with a passion resembling a mystical experience, stood no more than fifteen feet away nearly stark naked. Almost.
“Did you carry afuna-dansuon your ship?” she asked, although she shouldn’t. She had an insatiable curiosity about this man.
“I did.”
“Did it stay with the ship?”
“It’s in the other room.”
“The other room?” His meaning caught up to her. “Your bedroom?”
He nodded once, a curt affirmation.
“Is your bedroom the same as this room?”
“Very similar, yes.”
She could have left it at that. But she didn’t want to. A closeness to him that she couldn’t account for stole through her. This room wasn’t only a world apart, it was the world within him, and she would know more of it. The feeling transcended simple curiosity. She felt on the edge of something new. She felt on the edge of knowing the very essence of the man.
“May I see it?”
A hard beat of her heart thudded in her chest. He didn’t have to say yes. After all, her request fell well outside the bounds of propriety. But what did Society have to do with her and Lord St. Alban?
“Certainly, my lady,” he said, his tone formal, or as formal as a man clothed entirely in a bath towel could manage. He managed it quite well, actually. “But you will have to excuse me while I clothe myself in something with a little more . . . fabric.”
