Page 46 of The Lady’s Guide to Deception and Desire
Rosamund came over to see.
“It’s nothing really.” He closed his fingers over what lay in his palm, looking sheepish, then seemed to think better of it and opened his hand to show her.
The hair was the same sandy shade as his own, tightly braided and secured with a piece of ribbon.
“It’s my mother’s.” He tucked it into his pocket. “I thought I’d lost it but I must have left it inside the book last time I took it down.”
“Oh!” Rosamund didn’t want to intrude but she couldn’t help wondering how long ago he’d lost his parents.
“They were on the beach. A landslide; you remember I warned you about how they can happen. They weren’t climbing, but it didn’t matter. There had been a storm a few days before and the weight of water above brought down a section of the cliffs.”
Rosamund's breath lodged in her throat. “I’m so sorry. How awful for them; for you, I mean. All of you!”
“They were unlucky.” He gave a small sigh. “No one else was about, or they’d have been dug out more quickly. They might have been alright…if someone had been there to help.”
“You’re thinking of yourself?”
“I was in my first Michaelmas term at Oxford. I took the train as soon as I heard and was able to see them before they were….” He looked away, towards the window.
“You cared for them greatly.” She laid a hand upon his arm.
He nodded. “They were very loving of each other, and of me. I’m glad of that. Nothing lasts as long as we want it to, does it?” His eyes searched her face.
“No. I suppose not.” Rosamund felt her heart quicken.
She’d a feeling he wasn’t talking of his parents any longer but of something else. They’d become friends, of sorts, hadn’t they—even if he did exasperate her at times.
It wouldn’t be the same, after she was married. She’d be his aunt, as well as another man’s wife. As if thinking the same thing, he moved round to the other side of the desk.
“It’s silly, I know, to be bothered about a thing like keeping a lock of her hair; the memories are more important, and I’ve plenty of those. But, we all seem to cling to physical reminders, imbuing them with more significance than they deserve.”
He gestured toward the painting of the late duchess in her riding habit: the portrait that had struck Rosamund the first day of her arrival. “They’re in almost every room—and each has a lock of her hair tucked inside the bottom corner of the frame.”
The fact didn’t surprise her so much as hearing Mr. Studborne mention it. There was little need to remind her that she would never be first in the heart of the man she’d told him she was marrying.
“Do you know, relics of the body were once used in all manner of ways to treat ailments? Poorly children were often brought to the gallows for the benefit of being rubbed with a dead man’s hand.”
“The gallows?” She shook her head. Was there any subject he couldn’t blather on about? He’d a particular speciality for the ghastly.
“Those who’d died a violent death were thought to be more potent, making executed criminals popular.”
She’d no idea how, or why, or what it said about her—but he never failed to make her smile.
Of course, he was also changing the subject, in that way he had—leaving behind the intimacy of the personal to discuss something set apart.
She sidled round to stand beside him, looking up as he pushed his spectacles up his nose and blinked back at her. His hair was rumpled and he hadn’t done a particularly good job of shaving, but there was something about him that made her want to grab hold of him and pull him closer.
Resting her hand upon his waistcoat, she tipped back her head. “What about lips, Mr. Studborne? Any magical properties there?”
It was wrong of her to want him.
She was deceitful and devilish and full of dreadful lies.
She was going to marry a man she didn’t love—for his money and his title and for the security all that would bring. But it was Mr. Benedict Studborne she wanted to kiss.
“Miss Burnell.” He bent towards her, placing his hand upon her hip.
Rosamund was dimly aware of voices on the other side of the door at their end of the library. A door that led into Lord Studborne’s study.
