She wasn't really his fiancée, and after tonight, she would no longer even be an acquaintance. He would divide his time between London and the ducal residence in Sussex. His heart clenched.
"Besides, archaeology interests me. You interest me." Heat pricked the back of his neck, as if he weren't able to cope with the presence of his robe and her presence at the same time. He'd said too much, but he refused to withdraw the words.
The slow smile that spread over her face halted, and her jaw tightened. She placed her hands on her waist. "You should stop that."
"Excuse me?"
She strode near him, not seeming to care that the bottom of her robe trailed in the snow. "You must do a better job of displaying your faults. Because right now you seem perfect, and Lord, I'm going to miss you."
"Fiona-"
It wasn't the first time he'd used her given name in his thoughts, but it was the first time he'd said it to her. Her eyes widened, and she whirled around and returned to her bedroom.
He followed her, dragging his wooden leg on the unevenly packed snow, before she might close the door.
He might be losing all sense-very likely he was-but the thought of never having another moment alone with her seemed horrific.
Much more horrific than it should have been.
His heart hammered, and he poked his head through the door. He scanned the room, taking in her still unmade bed and the long, dark canopies that hung from the bed posts. Not that there was anything drab about the bed-the place seemed filled with significance.
He forced his mind from dwelling on the fact that even the smallest pillow was likely imbued with Fiona's scent, and he definitely refused to ponder what sort of uses a bed might fulfil. He was still in a robe himself, and the long nightshirt underneath scarcely made him decent. Not if his mind was going to ponder-that.
He didn't need to think about a womanly body pressed against soft sheets. He gritted his teeth. "May I enter?"
Fiona paused. "Yes."
He wavered, teetering on the threshold of duty and desire, responsibility and bliss, all that was honorable and all that was Fiona and delightful.
It was almost as if . . . He shook his head.
Love was something confined to fairy tales for little girls. Love was something that grew slowly, if at all, after a lifetime of attending the same balls and sitting across from one another at the same dining room table. Love was something he might experience with Lady Cordelia in a few years if he were lucky, but most likely not. And that wasn't supposed to matter. That's why everyone kept separate bedrooms, that's why brothels thrived.
But it was clear: he adored Fiona Amberly. He was in love with her, blast it. And it didn't seem to matter in the slightest that the fact was bloody inconvenient.
He'd been happy when the dowager suggested he marry Lady Cordelia and that his future would be settled. Perhaps he'd been more sensitive about his leg than he'd let on. The prospect of courting women, seeing which ones didn't mind he couldn't dance with them, and seeing which ones didn't use his interest to catapult proposals for better, two-legged men, failed to appeal.
At one time he'd loved London, embraced the order of its grand buildings and the chaotic frenzy near St. Paul's and Covent Garden. He'd always considered the countryside dull and grumbled at the prospect of spending any time there. Its advantages had seemed limited to the possibilities of pall mall and lawn chess, both games he had little interest in, and its disadvantages had seemed endless.
And yet now-now nothing seemed duller than the prospect of another season, with trained debutantes sneaking glances at him, assessing whether his vast estates and tolerable good looks were worth his present state of less than wholeness.
No, he hadn't wanted to go through that before he'd met Fiona. That's why he'd rushed into assenting to the dowager's pleas.
But now he'd met Fiona, and life was more vivid. She'd cared so much for her grandmother that she'd gone to enormous extents to reassure her. She cherished history and the past. She wasn't the only person he'd met interested in the Romans, but she was the very first who expressed such passion.
Love-sick sonnets suddenly made sense. He had a wild urge to throw her on the bed and to ask her to be his wife. It seemed ridiculous he would declare himself her fiancé in public and not in private.
The world had changed these past few days. Fiona had dragged him from his steadfast life, and he couldn't be more thankful. It was all he could do now to not recite the poetry his tutors had forced him to memorize. It was all he could do to not fall at her feet. His heart thrummed in his chest.
Fiona flashed him a wobbly smile. "Unless perhaps you've reconsidered. That would be fine. Most people find archaeology tiresome."
He squared his shoulders and stepped into the room. "I haven't reconsidered."
Something flickered in her eyes, but she soon swerved around and headed toward a small door in the room.
"This way," she chirped, and he smiled.
Her hands trembled somewhat, and he fought the desire to wrap them in his and reassure her. He brushed some of the snow and ice off and followed her.
She picked up a torch, sucked in a breath of air and flung the door open.
Dim light from her torch flickered over the small room. She lit another lantern, engulfing the room in a warm, cozy light.
He blinked. Pottery sat on thick shelves beside coins and helmets. A mosaic of a woman lay on a large desk beside thick tomes of Roman history in Britain. Gold letters glimmered from the large leather books.
She followed his gaze. "They're my vice."
He smiled. "I'm sure they don't count as one."
Other ladies of the ton were prone to drinking, smearing slabs of lead paste on their faces so their skin would not betray their enthusiasm for gin. If Fiona's guilty pleasure lay in reading, he could only praise her.
He scanned the room and gazed at the rows of impeccably cleaned and labeled finds. "This is-amazing."
"You think?" Fiona's cheeks pinkened, and he nodded.
"You really found these on the estate?"
"Yes, near the apple orchard. I suppose the castle has been around for centuries, and even if the current building stems from the middle ages, the site was inhabited well before then."
"And I suppose the estate always belonged to people of importance, so it is understandable why the finds would be here."
She stared at him. "Exactly. Though I would say that every person is of importance; but yes, families with wealth have always lived here."
"Fascinating."
"Please-sit." She pointed at a chair and settled onto a more uncomfortable looking bench.
He sat. His gaze flickered to Fiona, and he imagined her working here, consumed by her dedication to her finds. Her brow would be furrowed and her nose would crinkle in that adorable way.
"I've only excavated a portion of the apple orchard. I didn't want to dig up the trees. One of the older servants told me about some Roman coins someone had discovered there once, and it made me curious whether there was more underneath." Fiona shrugged, as if her actions were the most natural thing in the world, even though he'd never met another person who'd done anything similar.
"What made you want to discover the finds?"
"I was curious." She shrugged. "Perhaps it's reassuring in a way to know that millions of people have come before me, and that others have been living in this area for generations. And there's-there's something magical about touching these objects that no one else has handled for centuries. I like imagining the people they belonged to. And I don't want their lives to be forgotten. They created this rich, vibrant, beautiful world."
He nodded and flicked his gaze back to the art and pottery on the shelves. He pondered whether their lives would be considered interesting by the people who would come centuries after them, or whether any items they had would remain in the ground, with no one spurred to examine them more closely.
"There were multiple military defenses in the area. The Romans were in York, and they also had fortresses on Hadrian's Wall. Everyone said any people there were just soldiers, but they had their families, with their dreams." Her eyes shone as she spoke, sparkling as if they were visiting another land, inhabited by people in togas who looked different, but perhaps weren't really all that dissimilar.
His mind wandered to the ton, and to the men and women eager to assert their favorable characteristics by contrasting them with others. They spoke negatively of the people who grabbed the wrong fork at dinner or tilted their soup bowls in the improper direction, but there was more to life than conforming to a pre-established ideal.