“Next!” Christina called, and the doors slid open. She stood several feet away from him, brushing at the lace waterfall and sweeping back tendrils of her mussed hair.
He followed her into the drawing room and sat beside her on the sofa. His smile was tight and false as others praised Romeo and Juliet; her smile was sweet but faint. Heart thumping, he felt stupefied by Christina Blackburn’s extraordinary effect on him.
He felt lost, yet somehow found, and did not know what to do about it.
*
Rain pattered thelibrary windows, a peaceful susurration, as Christina sat in a niche beneath the upper gallery. At a table across the room, John and Amy looked at a book of ancient history together, talking softly while John sketched ideas for costumes.
Reading one of her uncle’s books, Christina paused to glance at John. She had the sense that something was forming between him and Amy, something kind and affectionate and full of possibility. She smiled privately when she saw him smile, knowing he had been lonely for years.
So had she. Remembering slow, tender kisses with Aedan MacBride, she craved that shamelessly. And yet she knew, and must accept, that it was likely impossible. Though he felt a physical attraction, he would not let himself open up to love—even, as he had once said, with her. Intelligent though he was, for some reason he had chosen to believe that he would only endanger whoever he loved.
Perhaps she was only infatuated, she told herself. Then it would be easier if he did not love her. Then she could care about him as a friend. But she wanted more. Long lonely years and stifled passions within now wanted release and satisfaction. Wanted love.
For a little time, years back, she had experienced that with Stephen—when he was charming, when he was not soddendrunk or exhausted from a painting frenzy. Bed play had been good, thrilling, until she learned what a cad he could be, before he destroyed his health with the inner illness that drove him so hard.
Aedan had a reserved side, cautious, deep, and private. But he was not driven to the edge of madness. Beyond that protective layer, he was tender, kind, with a core of integrity that had already put the safety of others, of a wife, before his own needs.
Thinking of him, she felt a yearning tighten in her body in secret ways. Her cheeks flamed with heat.Stop,she told herself. Impossible, improbable dreams of love and happiness served no purpose now. What she felt with Aedan could not grow.
Soon she would have to leave and return to Edinburgh, the museum work, and Edgar, if she chose that dull compromise. Sighing, she turned another page in the book, and another, until her curiosity was caught again.
She did not hear footsteps until Aedan stood in front of her.
“Sir Aedan.” She closed the book. “Good afternoon.”
“Mrs. Blackburn.” He inclined his head. A smile tweaked his lips, was suppressed. He wore a neat black suit, a tall and devastatingly handsome man, pleasant and smiling and yet aloof.
“If you plan to work here, the library is a busy room today.” Her heart fluttered.
“It seems to be the place for rendezvous today,” he drawled as Amy’s trill of laughter floated across the room.
“John asked Amy to pose for a figure in his mural. She is very pleased.”
“I see that.” Rocking back on his heels, hands behind his back, he cleared his throat. “We’ve had a good bit of rain this week, and the moorland is awash with mud. The hill is a mire, too. I sent the men home for the day. No work can be done for the time being.”
“I thought so, and did not venture out to the hill. Did you want to discuss the weather, or the digging, perhaps?”
He shook his head and looked oddly awkward suddenly. “No. I have been remiss, Mrs. Blackburn.”
“Remiss?” They had both stolen kisses, returned them, stolen them again.
“I should have shown you the Dundrennan Folio by now.”
“Oh, I had nearly forgotten you mentioned that. I would love to see it.”
“Come with me.” He held out a hand, but dropped it as she stood.
She followed him into the adjacent study. He closed the door partially, then went to a tall mahogany cabinet. Inserting a key, he opened the narrow glass doors, removed two hefty boxes covered in black linen and tied with red ribbon. He brought them to his desk.
“The Dundrennan Folio is a collection of family documents and writings, stored in these two volumes,” he explained, loosening one set of ribbons. “The pages range from a few loose early parchments to some of my father’s papers, outside his poetry.”
“Uncle Walter spoke of these boxes. He came to Dundrennan years ago to translate some medieval pages for Sir Hugh. I was always curious to see the originals.”
“Reverend Carriston probably saw the old poems kept here.” The velvet-lined sides of the box flattened out to reveal packets wrapped in brown paper and pale silk.
“Sir Edgar came to Dundrennan another time, hoping to acquire these.”
