A vision flashed from the previous afternoon, Olivia resplendent in her wedding gown, glowing with the excitement of prenuptial bliss, Pippa’s reflection in the mirror behind, smaller and dimmer in the wake of her younger, more luminous sister.
The Wedding would be remarkable. One for the ages. Or, at least the gossips.
It would be just what the Marchioness of Needham and Dolby had always dreamed—an enormous, formal ceremony designed to showcase the pomp and circumstance befitting the Marbury daughters’ birth. It would erase the memory of the two previous weddings of the generation: Victoria and Valerie’s double wedding to uninspiring mates, performed hastily in the wake of Penelope’s scandalous, broken engagement, and, more recently, Penelope’s wedding, performed by special license in the village chapel near the Needham country estate the day after Bourne had returned from wherever it was he’d gone for a decade.
Of course, they all knew where Bourne had gone.
He’d gone to The Fallen Angel.
With Mr. Cross.
Fascinating, unnerving Mr. Cross, who was beginning to unsettle her even when she was not near him. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, assessing the change that came over her when she was in proximity—either mental or physical—to the tall, ginger-haired man who had begrudgingly agreed to assist her in her quest.
Her heart seemed to race, her breath coming more shallowly. More quickly.
Her muscles tensed and her nerves seemed to hover at attention.
She grew warm . . . or was that cold?
Either way, they were all signs of heightened awareness. Symptoms of excitement. Or nervousness. Or fear.
She was being overly dramatic. There was nothing to fear from this man—he was a man of science. In utter control at all times.
The perfect research associate.
Nothing more.
It did not matter that the research in question was somewhat unorthodox. It was research nonetheless.
She took another breath and withdrew the watch from her reticule, holding it up to read its face in the dim light seeping through the windows of the ground-floor sitting room.
“It’s nine o’clock.” The words were soft, rising out of the darkness, and Trotula leapt to her feet to greet the newcomer, giving Pippa a chance to address the thundering of her heart. Later, she would wonder at the fact that she was breathless, but not startled, instead something different. Something more.
In the moment, however, there was only one thing she could think.
He had come.
She smiled, watching him crouch to greet her hound. “You are very punctual.”
His task completed, he rose and sat next to her, close enough to unsettle, far enough away to avoid contact. Out of the corner of her eye, she realized how long his thighs were—nearly half again the length of her own, pulling the wool of his trousers tight along lean muscle and bone. She should not be considering his thighs.
Femurs.
“And yet, you are waiting for me.”
She turned to him to find him watching the sky, face shadowed in the darkness, leaning back on the bench as though they had been sitting there all night, as though they might sit there still, all night. She followed his gaze. “I’ve been here for more than an hour.”
“In the cold?”
“It’s the best time for stargazing, don’t you think? Cold nights are always so much clearer.”
“There’s a reason for that.”
She turned to face him. “Is there?”
He did not look to her. “There are fewer stars in the winter sky. How is your toe?”
“Right as rain. You are an astronomer as well as a mathematician?”
He turned to face her, finally, half his face cast into shadowy light from the manor beyond. “You are a horticulturalist as well as an anatomist?”
She smiled. “We are surprising, aren’t we?”
His lips twitched. “We are.”
A long moment stretched out between them before he turned away again, returning his attention to the sky. “What were you looking at?”
She pointed to a bright star. “Polaris.”
He shook his head, and pointed to another part of the sky. “That’s Polaris. You were looking at Vega.”
She chuckled. “Ah. No wonder I was finding it unimpressive.”
He leaned back and stretched his long legs out. “It’s the fifth brightest star in the sky.”
She laughed. “You forget I am one of five sisters. In my world, fifth brightest is last. She looked up. “With apologies to the star in question, of course.”
“And are you often last?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes. It is not a pleasant ranking.”
“I assure you, Pippa. You are rarely last.”
He had not moved except to turn his head and look at her, the angles of his face hard and unforgiving in the darkness, sending a shiver of something unfamiliar through her. “Be careful what you say. I shall have to tell Penny that you find her lacking.”
He turned a surprised look on her. “I didn’t say that.”
“She’s the only one of my sisters whom you’ve met. If I am not last, then in your mind, she must trail behind.”
One side of his mouth kicked up. “In that case, let’s not recount this conversation to anyone else.”
“I can agree to that.” She returned her attention to the sky. “Tell me about this magnificent, fifth-best star.”
When he spoke, she could hear the laughter in his deep voice, and she resisted the urge to look at him. “Vega belongs to the constellation Lyra, so named because Ptolemy believed it looked like Orpheus’s lyre.”