She glanced around the kitchen. 'To be honest, I'd rather stay here. It seems dreadfully intrusive to invade someone's home, even if it isn't regularly occupied."
"But this hasn't been anyone's home for many years." He lit a branch of candles, then smiled and beckoned with his hand. "Come see. We won't cause any harm."
She followed him from the kitchen, knowing that when he smiled like that, she would follow him to hell itself.
The flickering light showed a house that was handsome and appealing, with a human scale that Chanleigh lacked. Though most of the furniture was under holland covers, the shapes revealed timeless elegance. The satinwood tables needed only the brush of a hand to bring the waxed surfaces alive. Tall, shuttered windows waited to admit light, and rich oriental carpets muted the sound of their footsteps.
In the music room, she lifted the cover on the harpsichord to play a scale. The notes sang bright and true under her questing fingers. "Sad to think there is no one to appreciate all this."
"A manor house has a life span of centuries," he said pensively. "A decade or two of emptiness is a minor aberration. Ruxton has been a home in the past, and it will be again."
She hoped he was right They went upstairs. At the top of the steps was a small, unshuttered round window, and she paused to admire the rolling hills. The landscape was less dramatic than Durhamshire's wild moors, but lovely and very welcoming.
Her mouth tightened. How could the owners not want to live here? Had they no impoverished relations who needed a home? Shaking her head, she went after her companion.
He opened a door and glanced in. It was large, with a wide fourposter bed and a rosehued carpet underfoot. "Will this suit you for the night? I think it's the mistress's chamber. The master's room would be through that door."
She looked at him, remembering the Drover Inn. "In other words, a bed is more dangerous to share than a hedgerow or a haystack or a cargo of carpets?"
His blue eyes met hers, serious for once. "So it proved before. I think it best that I sleep in the next room."
Of course he was right. Damn him.
For the twentieth time, Maxie pushed up the flowing sleeves of her luxurious robe. It wouldn't do for the red velvet to trail in her dinner. Her mood had improved considerably in the last three hours. While Robin had bathed, she had stewed the ham and vegetables they had been carrying. Her principles about drinking alcohol didn't extend to cooking with wine, and a liberal addition of claret, along with dried herbs from the stillroom, had done wonders for the rather plebian ingredients.
During her turn in the tub-her rapturous, lavender scented turn in the tub-Robin had pillaged the house's treasures to create a splendid setting for their meal. The formal dining room was too large for intimacy, so he had set the table in the breakfast room. Crystal goblets, silver utensils, and fine china gleamed in the candlelight, and delicate porcelain bowls held relishes and candied fruits from the stillroom.
With a blithe unconcern for property rights, he had also found two velvet robes for them to wear while their own clothing dried. Donning the sumptuous garment after her bath had made her feel like a princess.
She swallowed the last of her stew and leaned back with a contented sigh, pushing up her sleeves again. The robe was far too large and its hem dragged on the floor, but it was perfect for this lunatic occasion, when her freshly washed hair was loose as a child's and wool stockings warmed her feet.
She had decided to relax and enjoy the eccentric luxury. She had the odd feeling that the house welcomed them. Perhaps it was glad to have inhabitants, even transitory, illicit ones.
Surreptitiously she studied her companion. His robe fit him well and was a shade of blue that matched his eyes. The color set off his gilt hair and made him unreasonably, dangerously, attractive.
As he reached for his wineglass, the garment fell open at the throat. She was interested to note that there was a faint, reddish tint in the light matting of chest hair revealed. She supposed that went with a beard that grew out red.
As she poured herself more water from a silver ewer, she remarked, 'Times like this, it would be nice to loll back in the chair with a glass of brandy in my hand."
"You can anyhow. Nothing in that picture says you actually have to drink the brandy." He raised his goblet, which contained the last of the claret he had appropriated to season the stew. "Shall we drink a toast to the future?"
She laughed and raised her cup. "Is a toast drunk in tea binding?"
"With symbolism, intent is everything, the details unimportant," he assured her.
She hesitated a moment, feeling a strange, deep longing. It was getting harder and harder to imagine parting from Robin, with his careless charm and quixotic humor and tranquil acceptance of her mongrel background. But a future with him came under the heading of dreams rather than of possible outcomes. Trying to hold him would be like trying to capture the wind in her hands.
Smiling wistfully, she raised her cup and emptied it in one quick swallow. She was an American, which meant that she should not accept that anything was impossible.
After pouring more tea, she selected a piece of candied ginger from a Chinese bowl. "Sometime in your checkered past you must have been a butler." She indicated the elegant table. "You do this so well."
"As a matter of fact, you're right. I have had a stint or two as a butler, as well as being a footman and groom on occasion."
She was taken aback, not having meant the comment seriously. "Is that true, or are you teasing again?"
"Quite true." He grinned. "Is it so hard to imagine me holding a real job?"
"It's not easy." She rested an elbow on the table, propping her chin on her palm as she studied his cool patrician countenance. She really shouldn't be surprised. Even wandering gentlemen with a rooted distaste for honest employment must sometimes have to work to keep food in their bellies.
"I'm sure you were a successful servant. You have the chameleon's ability to blend into any setting." She tried to define the impressions she had gathered in their travels. "Yet, though you talk easily with anyone of any station, you always seem apart, with the group but not of it."
His hand stilled around his wine goblet. "That, Maxima, is entirely too perceptive a comment." Before she could pursue the subject, he continued, "We'll be in London soon. Where do you plan to begin investigating your father's death?"
"The inn where he died. Surely there are servants who can tell me something. I also have the names of old friends he intended to visit."
"After you have learned what you can, and acted on it, what then?" His blue gaze was intense.
She shook her head and toyed with the silver tongs, trying unsuccessfully to decipher the intricate engraved initial. "Go back to America and find work in a bookshop, I suppose. I haven't really thought about it. The future seems too far away."
She used the tongs to drop a chunk of sugar into her tea. "No, that isn't quite right. Usually I have a vague idea of what the future holds. Nothing so grand as prophecy, just a sense that actions will be completed. For example, when my father and I traveled, I always knew when we would reach our destination, and when we would not. When we sailed for England, I didn't doubt that we would arrive safely, and I knew that I would meet my father's family. For that matter, when I left my uncle's house I was confident that I would reach London."
Intrigued, he asked, "Did you sense that you would have so many adventures along the way?"
"No, and I could never have imagined meeting someone like you." She gave him a fleeting smile. "But now when I look ahead, I can't project what will happen. It's like one summer when we planned to pass through Albany. There was no reason to suppose that it wouldn't happen, yet I couldn't see us there. As it turned out, my father fell ill. We spent several weeks in a village in Vermont and ended up missing Albany that year. It's rather like that now."