to the aloof strangers we’ve been to each other over the years. There’d come time enough for panic and fear at the implications of that truth, but she’d not have that intrude on their exchange now.
When he reached her side, Merry motioned to the other stool, and held a hand out for his completed work.
“Have we reached a truce, then, Merry?” he asked as she looked over his notes.
“It depends on how helpful you remain and whether you interfere with my work here,” she said and softened that with a wink. Merry opened her mouth to deliver some other flippant reply, but her gaze locked on his face, and all coherent thought fled.
She’d known Luke nearly all her life. So how had she failed to note the cleft in a deeply squared jaw? Or the perfect slash of his noble nose, better suited to the stone renderings of David in homes she’d worked in over the years? And more… how had she ever failed to note the beauty of his features? Feeling his questioning stare, she swiftly directed her attention to his completed notes.
And found herself knocked off-balance not by the realization of his masculine beauty, but by the work he’d done.
She flared her eyebrows. His record-keeping was nothing short of meticulous. Knowing the impeccable student he’d been, that, however, was not the reason for her shock.
In an hour’s time, he’d not only identified the flowers and greenery she intended to use for the holiday décor, but he’d also created a keyed map so that she might locate each item in question.
“I trust it meets with your approval?”
From another man, those words would have come as smug. “Very much so.” And yet, looking up from his work, there was something so very endearing about him and that question he posed, as if he were still the exceptional student of his younger days around whom she’d never known how to be. Only this… there was a vulnerability to him that made him very much human and not the icy, aloof figure she’d taken him for.
“And what have you been seeing to while I was otherwise distracted?”
“It wasn’t solely meant to dis—” Merry stopped at the playful glimmer in his eyes. That twinkle did the strangest thing to her heart’s natural cadence. “Oh. You’re teasing.”
“A bit, I was,” he whispered and favored her with a wink.
That sweep of long, midnight lashes from this man had no right to send her heart knocking another frantic beat. Why must he be teasing? It was altogether impossible to keep her wits about her when he behaved thusly. Her cheeks fired several more degrees. What madness was this? A thirty-year-old woman, and here she was blushing like a schoolgirl—because of her employer, at that.
Luke availed himself of her notes, that presumptuous commandeering of her materials a necessary reminder that she sat beside the future head of this and every household held by the Earl of Maldavers.
Only, seated before him now, Merry didn’t feel like a servant. Rather, she felt as though she sat beside someone who saw her as an equal.
It is merely because you knew each other as children.
When he didn’t say anything, and the silence stretched on to the length where awkwardness rose up, Merry sought to fill the void. “I’d only a short while to decide how to organize the household before your family’s guests arrive,” she explained, evoking that reminder of his rank for the part of herself that enjoyed his company and knew the dangers in that closeness.
“In the hour I found twenty-three flowers and plants, you coordinated seating arrangements for a dinner party, assigned the servants responsible for decorating which rooms, and assembled a list for the Yuletide feast?” He glanced up from her notes, and at the admiration in his gaze, she shifted in her seat. “Is there nothing you cannot or do not do?”
“I’ve simply seen to my responsibilities.”
“Your responsibilities?”
And with the genuine confusion underscoring that question, it occurred to her. “You do know why I’ve returned to England?” she ventured.
“I… no.” Several lines creased his brow. “I don’t.”
For a moment she hesitated, because when he found out her ultimate role here… in his household, surely this beautiful exchange would come to an end. And with it, an end would come to the teasing and being treated not as one there to serve, but as one to speak to as an equal. Her heart ached because she’d not realized how very much she’d missed simply being a person