The Scoundrel and I - Katharine Ashe Page 0,33

today. One of ’em, Your Highness, is right here in London at a shabby little printing shop, sad to say. I imagine they don’t even know what they’ve got.”

“Mm,” she murmured, struggling not to guffaw, her nerves flying.

“Let her highness get a good close look at it, boy.”

That the bishop called this grown man “boy”—this victorious commander of a naval vessel whose hands she was imagining wrapped around her rather than around the chase—made a giggle well up in Elle’s throat. That he was inviting her to stand beside that so-called boy, arms touching and heads bent, so that she could smell his cologne and pick out every detail of the tiny scar on his chin and hear his breathing, made her want to shout thanks to the bishop and tell him to leave the room at once.

Then he actually did.

“I’ll go tell my man to bring up the Mesopotamian steele,” he said, shuffling toward the doorway. “I keep that one in storage, of course. Ever since that thieving footman stole my enameled Egyptian box a few years ago, I’ve kept the most valuable foreign pieces under lock and key. Like that German printing press there. No, no, you go ahead, Princess! Enjoy it,” he said, waving a knobby hand. “Ain’t very often it comes out of the case.”

“Isn’t,” the captain murmured and slanted her a wide smile. A lock of hair dangled over one eye and he looked indeed boyish and as giddy as she felt.

“Set it down,” she whispered, “so that we can both pick out the pieces. It will go more swiftly.”

“Better pick them all out yourself. Ensure it’s done right.”

“Oh no! I didn’t think—Did you bring a container?”

“S’why a man has pockets in his waistcoat, Your Highness.”

She reached into the frame. “So he can steal printer’s type?”

“And whatever other items appeal, of course. Quickly now.”

Pulling out two slips of metal, she let her hand hover near his coat.

“Now don’t get missish on me,” he said. “We’ve got a task to accomplish here.”

Brushing the front of his coat aside, she found the waistcoat pocket. When her fingers met the silky fabric and the hard body beneath, she nearly fumbled the type. Cheeks burning, she managed to deposit them in the pocket. She repeated the action several more times before he spoke.

“Have you got the missing pieces memorized?” His voice was unusually rough.

“I thought it best, given our need for haste.” She slipped another two into the pocket, allowing her fingertips to linger on him. “But I think I had already memorized them out of sheer guilt and dread anyway.”

“You are extraordinary,” he said so close she felt the words stir her hair.

“Twelve, thirteen,” she counted as she dropped two more into his pocket. “Because I am guilty and filled with dread, or because I can memorize fifty-three pieces when it is my task every day to read hundreds and hundreds of them?”

“Yes,” he said as though the word came from his chest. Elle had never felt quite so hot in her life, except perhaps in the library when he had been kissing her.

She glanced up at his face.

So close.

Such intensely blue eyes.

And his mouth. His mouth…

“Clement’s bringing up that tablet now.” The bishop’s creaky voice sounded in the foyer.

Elle pushed the type together to fill the tiny holes in the frame and backed away from the captain.

“Shouldn’t need more than a few minutes to find it.” Bishop Baldwin shuffled back into the room. “Had enough of the Warburg, have you, Your Highness? But it’s true, females ain’t got the head for machinery, even royal females. Put that in the case, nephew, and I’ll lock it up.”

The captain did as bidden. Elle’s stomach twined with panic as Bishop Baldwin tucked the key into his pocket. Beckoning her toward the stone tablet that his butler carried into the room, he launched into a dissertation on its inscriptions.

The captain extracted them from the house, then, with fantastic efficiency.

“Well, that is that,” she said as he snapped the reins.

His face was set in stern lines.

“Daresay,” he said firmly.

Her stomach was in knots of equal parts panic over the remaining forty missing pieces of type and distress over the finale of their quest. He had done what he could to help her. Now his part in the ruin she had made of her life was over. He would drop her at Brittle & Sons, turn the stolen type over to her, and drive away to be charming and handsome and delicious with