pulled it from his coat pocket. “Let me get these cases unlocked so you can start measuring the shelves and see if there’s any space. I think it’ll take an act of God to merge the two collections.”
“You will find a way.”
“Are you always so certain, Miss Dunne?”
Her gaze met his. “No. Not at all, really,” she said, an ironic smile touching her lips.
She joined him, her shape imperfectly reflected in the wavy glass door fronts, standing far enough away that there wasn’t any risk that sleeve would touch sleeve or hands would share warmth.
Reach out and grab her, fool, and let her pull you free.
Of course, he didn’t.
Mrs. Mainprice was in the kitchen, recording the contents of the pantry and storeroom, making note of needed supplies.
“I have finished in the library, and I thought I would take a stroll around the grounds, Mrs. Mainprice.” Rachel fetched her bonnet from the hook where it hung. “If you do not need my help in here, that is.”
“Nay, not a bit of it.” She waved her hand. “You get away with you. ’Tis a lovely day out there and fast fading. Get in a walk, and when you’re back you can help me pull together a bit of dinner.”
“I shall not be long.”
Rachel stepped out into the sunshine and strolled across the weedy kitchen garden and onto the lawn, the brilliant green grass crushing beneath her half boots, releasing its scent. She inhaled the warm bright air, the sweet scent of some yellow-blooming plant, fresh hay thrown to a cow standing in a distant shed. She let the aromas ease through her.
A shepherd doffed his cap as he passed on his way to tend his flock, his black-and-white dog dancing circles around his legs. “Good day to ya, miss.”
His deferential treatment, the sound of his country-rough voice, the happy bark of his dog, made her smile. “I am in search of a walk that can give me a view of Finchingfield’s property. Do you know the best way to go?”
“Yer headed in the right direction, miss.”
After thanking the fellow, she continued on, up a gentle slope. She found the view. And, as fate would have it, Dr. Edmunds as well.
One hip resting on a crumbling stone wall, he was looking over his fields. From somewhere he had unearthed a simple straw hat with a broad brim, and he had stripped down to his shirtsleeves, the thin linen revealing in detail the width of his shoulders, the breadth of his chest.
She dawdled overlong, and he noticed her standing there. Maybe she had intended him to.
Hastily, he stood. “Miss Dunne.”
“I did not mean to intrude on your solitude.”
“You’re hardly intruding.” He opened then closed his mouth and cleared his throat. “I take it you’re finished in the library.”
“I have accomplished what was needed, Dr. Edmunds, and have drawn up a plan for how you might accommodate your collection.”
“Then would you care to see the property?”
With him alone, out in an open meadow, the sun burnishing his hair . . . She could refuse, turn back now, claim she had only sought a breath of fresh air and scamper off to the refuge of the kitchen. Not be accused of wanting more.
Never know what it would feel like to be near him.
The time together might come to nothing, but at the moment, Rachel did not care.
“If it is no trouble, I would love to be shown around,” she answered.
He smiled, the rarest gift he had to offer, the one she always craved. “It’s been so long since I’ve been here, I need a tour myself.”
They started out at a crisp pace, back toward the house. He squired her past the barn and the milk shed, over to an old dovecote and the yard where they had kept chickens when he was young. They moved across the lawn, skirted a pond hidden from the house behind a small knoll. They reached the stream Mrs. Mainprice had mentioned, its waters burbling over rocks. Dr. Edmunds’s private place, a willow licking the surface, the flow moving too quickly to skip a stone across.
Using a rickety bridge constructed of flimsy beams, Dr. Edmunds took her elbow to help her across. Though he withdrew his hand quickly, his touch lingered while they found the path that led to the fields of hops and summer wheat.
“I’m told we had a good rye crop earlier in the year,” he said, pausing at another low wall that separated his property from his neighbor’s.
“Your