Page 25 of The Viscount's Second Chance
“Where and when did you learn to boil water and prepare tea?” Thomas asked. His tone was torn between awe and confusion as he watched her move about the kitchen.
“There were nights when Beth couldn’t sleep. I asked the cook to teach me how to warm milk and prepare tea so I wouldn’t have to wake someone to do it for us.”
“That is what they are hired for.” His word was more a statement of fact than an insult. “I don’t like the thought of you accidentally injuring yourself in the process.”
“I have two capable hands and I enjoy learning new things, no matter how trivial.” Nora set the kettle on to boil above the flames and sat beside Thomas at the spotless wooden table in the center of the room.
“You took such good care of Beth,” Thomas said, his voice barely above a gruff whisper.
Nora’s breath hitched when she replied, “She did the same for me.”
Thomas’s smile was sad before he slid the package from Thorpe & Son toward her. “The package was left for you; you should be the one to open it.”
Exhaling a bracing breath, Nora tugged at the end of the ribbon and began unwrapping the parcel. Four books were inside. The top was the complete collection of Mary Shelley’sFrankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, then Lord Byron’sDon JuanCantos I through XI, followed by Stendhal’sDe l’amour, and Walter Scott’sThe Pirate. That was it. Each was new with unbroken spines and spotless pages, and smelled comfortingly of parchment, ink, and dyed leather. Nora flipped through the pages and examined the inside covers, but there were no markings, no notes, no bits of ribbon to mark specific passages. They were just books.
“I don’t understand,” she muttered with a frown.
“Were these stories you desired to own?” Thomas asked, picking up Byron’s work and examining it.
“I already own Mrs. Shelley’s piece. Beth would have known that.” Tears of frustration stung the backs of her eyes and she dropped her head into her hands. “I don’t know where to go from here, Thomas. I don’t understand.”
“Nora,” he murmured soothingly as he dropped to his knees before her and took her hands in his. “We will sort this out. Together.”
She gave him a watery smile. “Beth did say you would be helpful in my search, though I’ve no idea why she placed so much faith in your skills.”
“Harpy,” Thomas said with infinite affection and pressed her palms to his lips one after another…and something shifted between them.
The kettle had reached the proper temperature, so Nora removed her hands from his and began preparing the tea to let it steep an appropriate amount of time. She turned back to discover that Thomas had laid out the books before in him in the order they’d been packaged. The furrow between his dark brows was unerringly charming.
“What do these titles have in common?” he pondered aloud in a soft enough tone that she wasn’t certain whether he spoke to her or not. She pulled her chair closer to his and sat beside him. His thigh relaxed and pressed against hers, sending jolts of lightning through her nerves.
At the contact, her mind naturally returned to its earlier tangent. Not a single word had been said about their passionate interlude from the previous evening, and she was uncertain whether it was a relief or an annoyance. She knew he’d missed her, still desired her, but that did not mean he still wanted a future with her. For that matter, what did she want from him? She’d cut him deeply when she’d walked away from him all those years ago. Thomas was a good man, but even he must have limits to his forgiveness.
Nora gave herself a mental shake and refocused upon the task at hand.
“They are works by Brits, save the one by Stendhal,” she said thoughtfully.
“What do we know of the plots?” Thomas asked next before touching Shelley’s novel. “A commentary and personificationof one’s own demons, and social analysis of mores and constraints.” He gestured to Byron’s work second.
“Stendhal’s title translates to ‘On Love’, though I’ve not read it.”
“And Scott’s story is about a pirate who travels to the Scottish Isles to start a new life.”
Nora shook her head. “To consider anything overlapping with all of them would be a grand stretch.”
Thomas’s elegant fingers drummed the table. “What about the titles, themselves? Do they mean anything?”
Nora nibbled on her lip for several minutes before replying. “Beth was reading Mrs. Wollstonecraft the first time I met her and she was the mother of Mrs. Shelley.” A smile tugged at Thomas’s lips and his entrancing blue eyes became unfocused, as if recalling just how he’d had that work re-bound and given to Beth. “She also gifted me with a lovely embossed copy of it shortly after it was released in its entirety. We stayed up all night as I read it to her.”
“Don Juanis one of my favorite pieces of literature,” he said softly.
“Is it really?” Nora’s head whipped toward him. “I did not know that.”
Thomas nodded. “Beth gifted me a copy of each of the Cantos as they were released.”
Nora barely managed to swallow past the lump in her throat. “What about Stendhal?”
“I think it is less about the story and more about the title.” His fathomless eyes met hers. “Love.”
