Page 30 of The New Earl’s Convenient Wife

Showing in her drawings how charming was the smile on the face of a Herdwick lamb. How mischievous the expression of a red squirrel, how majestic the dive of a peregrine falcon.

She seemed to go through life as if she were picking a bouquet of wildflowers. Unlike the large blooms cultivated in a garden, each flower was often small and delicate. But massed together, they created a mosaic of stunning beauty.

And she offered them to him, almost every day, some new, perfect collage of unexpected insight or ordinary but extraordinary beauty.

He’d thought he was rescuing her when he proposed this marriage of convenience, that they would have an amicable union based on friendship and shared history. He was beginning to think that she, if not rescuing him, was certainly changing him, broadening and deepening his understanding as she dazzled him with sensuality and gradually opened his eyes to a surrounding world that he’d never fully appreciated.

Like Turner, whose unique paintings revealed the wild natural beauty within the objects and events he painted, while other artists merely captured the outward image of them.

His chest expanded with a depth of emotion—until abruptly, with a little pang of alarm, he caught himself. Yes, the unexpected complexity he’d discovered in Juliana…intrigued him, but he mustn’t let his feelings get too carried away. They’d established this marriage on a bedrock of friendship. An…expanding of his affection was harmless enough, he supposed, but friendship only is what their relationship must remain.

‘You’re quiet,’ Juliana observed. ‘Not falling asleep, are you?’

‘No. Just…reflecting. I thought we might take a tour of the library tomorrow,’ he said, steering himself back to safe and prosaic ground.

Excitement lit her face. ‘Tour the library? That would be wonderful. Are you certain you’ll have time?’

‘I’ll make sure of it. What do you want to learn from there?’

‘Oh, everything!’

Rafe laughed, charmed by a display of enthusiasm other females would probably reserve for the prospect of buying gowns or attending balls. Certainly her sister, Aggie, would never have seen exploring a library as a treat.

‘There’s a bit of everything in there. Papa was a great collector, as was his father before him, so you’ll find a good selection—literature, translations, natural history, botanical texts. If I’m recalling aright, there’s an edition of Bewick’s A History of British Birds. Wonderful illustrations, which I think you will find inspiring.’

‘I shall work all the harder tonight and tomorrow morning to finish my tasks, so I have time to study any books you allow me to take away. I should particularly like to read any that will instruct me to better assist you in managing Thornthwaite.’

‘Learning is valuable for its own sake, whether the knowledge you acquire is practical or not. Particularly if what you learn about gives you pleasure.’ He paused, feeling the truth of it. ‘As it delights me to offer what gives you pleasure.’

She looked up, a wisp of a smile on her lips. ‘As you well know, it delights me to do the same.’

‘Then how can we not get on well together?’

‘Indeed we shall,’ she confirmed, urging her mare to pick up the pace as they reached the carriageway leading to Thorne Hall, set like a jewel on the verdant crest of the hill beyond them.

He would indeed be delighted to open her to the possibility of formal study she’d apparently always craved to have. A fitting response to the insight she was giving him into the natural world that was her domain.

They were partners, just as he’d hoped. Partners, lovers and warmly intimate friends.