Chapter 10: The Suitor's Call
The roses were too red. Selina observed them from her perch on the emerald settee, their vulgar perfume cutting through the gentle lavender of the drawing room. They were a stage prop, perfect and unnerving, just like the man who presented them.
“You shouldn’t have,” she said, her voice a model of polite reception.
“Nonsense,” Burke replied, his smile effortless as he handed the bouquet to a maid. “They reminded me of you. Vibrant. And apparently armed with thorns.” He turned that smile on her mother, Lady Carrow, who simpered from her wingback chair. “Your home is a sanctuary, my lady. I feel I’ve stepped into a verdant grotto. It’s quite transporting.”
“You are too kind, Mr. Burke!” her mother trilled, fluttering a hand. “We are so pleased you could call. Selina has spoken of little else since your… introduction.”
Selina nearly choked on her own breath. She had, in fact, spoken exactly four words on the subject: “A Mr. Burke is calling.” Her mother’s hopeful embellishment hung in the air, thick as the rose scent.
Burke accepted a cup of tea, his large hands somehow graceful against the delicate china. He wore society like a well-tailored coat, the hard edges of the man in the stable study sanded down into charming contours. He discussed the weather with alarming sincerity, complimented a hideous pastoral painting, and elicited a genuine laugh from her mother with a story about his horse’s alleged fondness for peppermints.
It was a masterclass. Selina watched, fascinated and unnerved. This was his infiltration.
“And you, Lady Selina,” he said, shifting the full force of his attention to her. The room seemed to shrink. “I understand the Lennox ball is the event of the season. May I hope to claim your first waltz?”
“If you can secure it before Lord Farnsworth,” her mother interjected with a conspiratorial whisper. “He’s quite determined this year.”
“Then I shall have to be more determined,” Burke said, his eyes never leaving Selina’s. They held a private joke, a shimmer of the shared map in their depths. “I am, by nature, a tenacious man.”
A shiver traced her spine. “The first waltz is yours, Mr. Burke,” she managed.
“Excellent.” He took a slow sip of tea. “It will give us a chance to… discuss literature. I’ve been yearning for a robust debate on the modern novel.”
The mention of literature was their pre-arranged cue. Selina set her cup down with a precise click. “Mama, Mr. Burke expressed an interest in Papa’s collection of Gothic texts. Would you excuse us for a moment to the library? I’m sure Mrs. Dewbury is awaiting your opinion on the menus for next week.”
Lady Carrow’s face lit up at the mention of both literature and menus, two of her great passions. “Of course, of course! Don’t let me keep you from the wonders of Mr. Radcliffe! I shall be thoroughly enslaved by the question of vol-au-vents versus canapés.” She swept out, leaving a silence that was instantly filled with a different, charged energy.
Burke’s pleasant expression didn’t change, but the air around him did. The performance was over. The partner remained.
He stood and offered his hand. She took it, feeling the latent strength there, the calluses that didn’t belong to a gentleman of leisure. He didn’t release it immediately as he drew her up, his thumb pressing once against her inner wrist where her pulse hammered.
“Well played,” he murmured, his voice low.
“You are terrifyingly good at this,” she whispered back, withdrawing her hand.
“It’s just another set of clues to read. The mother seeks validation and domestic authority. I provided it.” He followed her out of the drawing room and across the hall to the library, a darker, oak-paneled room. “You, however, are a more complex text.”
She closed the library door. The click of the latch was deafening. Sunlight streamed through leaded windows, illuminating dancing dust motes. “The manuscript is on the desk.”
He didn’t go to it immediately. He prowled the perimeter of the room, glancing at titles, his fingers brushing the spines. He stopped behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him through the back of her morning gown. “Are you nervous?”
“I feel as though I’ve handed you a dagger and bared my throat.”
He let out a soft breath, almost a laugh. “It’s just a story, Selina.”
“It’s not.” The words were out before she could stop them. She turned to face him, finding him closer than she’d thought. “It’s the part of me that isn’t performing. The part that isn’t a daughter or a debutante or a… collaborator. It’s raw. And you will dissect it.”
His gaze softened, but it was no less intense. “I won’t dissect it. I’ll read it. To understand how you think. The pattern of your imagination is the key. You built a fictional crime from the scraps of gossip and news. I need to see the blueprint.”
He moved past her then, finally approaching the heavy walnut desk. The manuscript lay there, a stack of handwritten pages weighted by a smooth river stone. He picked it up, not with reverence, but with a focused curiosity. He flipped to a page near the middle, his eyes scanning. He read in silence for a full minute, his face unreadable.
Selina’s nails dug into her palms. The scene he’d landed on—she knew it was the one where the thief, a disguised magistrate, first touches the heroine’s arm in a shadowed gallery. Her description of the sensation—a current of recognition, a dangerous warmth that had nothing to do with the room’s chill—felt like a live wire now.
Burke looked up, his eyes finding hers. “Your thief is a man of respectability. A pillar.”
“The best disguise there is.”
“And his attraction to the heroine… it’s a complication. A vulnerability he didn’t anticipate.” He closed the manuscript, holding it lightly. “Is it?”
“Is it what?”
“A complication for you? This… collaboration?”
The question hung in the sunlit air. The casual dialogue from the drawing room was a universe away. Here, there was only the truth, ugly and interesting, as he’d said.
“It is a transaction,” she said, her voice barely steady. “We have a common goal.”
“Goals and desires are rarely the same thing.” He stepped closer, the manuscript pressed between them. “I will read this. And I will understand you better for it. That was the bargain.” He reached out with his free hand and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. His fingers brushed the sensitive skin there, and she flinched. “The waltz tomorrow night. It’s not just for show. We’ll need to speak freely. The Lennox household has four possible points of entry for extra staff based on their last event. I’ve drawn a sketch.”
Business. He’d snapped them back to business with the efficiency of a surgeon. The intimate charge in the air cooled, solidified into plan and purpose. She was grateful, and furiously disappointed.
“I’ll study it,” she said, stepping back, creating space she desperately needed.
“Good.” He tapped the manuscript. “And I’ll study this.” He walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. “The roses really were too much, weren’t they?”
“They were perfectly vulgar. Everyone will believe you’re besotted.”
A genuine grin flashed across his face, quick and startling. “Then my work here is done. Until tomorrow night, Lady Selina. Wear something with pockets. For the sketch.”
He was gone, leaving her alone with the scent of roses, the weight of her exposed words in his possession, and a new, unsettling understanding. The complication wasn't just the attraction. It was the fact that, in handing him her fiction, she might have given him the master key to every real secret she possessed. And the dance had only just begun.