Page 28 of The Butler and the Bluestocking
Chapter Twelve
Once settled in thecarriage, she ignored Mal and their chaperone to stare unseeing at the nighttime city passing by outside the window.
“You’re being very pensive, Lady Elizabeth.”
She turned to look at Mal, his face all planes and shadows in the lamplight. She’d let this man kiss her. Shared her dreams and hopes with him–when I thought him a butler.Is that a problem? she argued with herself.Is he a different man simply because he has a different profession from what I originally thought?He lied to me. Did I ever ask him why? Perhaps he had a good reason.
“Why did you claim to be Cousin Rose’s butler?”
He looked a moment at the chaperone who returned the look with a slight nod. Then he studied Bess for a long time. “Would you believe I was afraid for my life? You did hold me at gunpoint.”
“And you disarmed me quite handily. No, I would not believe you were afraid, or not so afraid that you could not keep your own identity straight.”
His smile gleamed in the lamplight. “I did not think you would believe that bouncer.”
“Then why ask me?”
“Because the truth is more difficult to believe. I didn’t believe it myself, even as I told you I was a butler.”
“What could possibly be so hard to believe?”
“Love at first sight.”
“Preposterous.”It is, isn’t it? No logical person would believe in such nonsense, and I pride myself on my logic.
“See. I told you it was incredible.”
“Well, of course, it’s incredible, because it doesn’t exist.”
“Bess.” He leaned forward and took her hand. “May I call you Bess once more, please?”
She rolled her eyes and attempted to take back her hand.
His grasp was gentle, but he refused to let go. “You and I are both scholars. We theorize all the time, but we don’t believe without hard evidence and sound logic.”
“So, if you believe you are in love with me, what evidence can you give to prove your theory?”
“I was so stunned by you–not your beauty, which you have in abundance–but by you. A woman who dared to challenge a strange man on her own, with no doubt she could maintain the upper hand.”
She’d had plenty of doubts, but not in the moment. Those doubts only occurred to her after the fact when she realized how great a risk she’d taken.
“I was so stunned by you,” Malcolm repeated, “that I literally lost my wits. I knew only one thing, I had to find a way to stay with you. Going away at that moment, leaving that house without you was as impossible as the sky falling. I had to find a way to stay close enough to get to know you, a woman like no other in my experience. So, I blurted the first thing that came to mind when you asked who I was.”
His thumb traced across her gloved knuckles. Shocks coursed up her arms and through her body as if she’d been completely naked. “I am truly sorry that I ever lied to you, and I beg your forgiveness.”
“Let go of me,” she whispered.
He released her hand instantly. “May I call on you tomorrow?”
