It wasn’t a matter of silk breeches; it was the way he wore them.
“Do your parents live in India still?” she asked, curling her fingers around his arm. It was strong and muscled.
Easily as muscled as Lord Alaric’s, she thought with a touch of rebellion. This absurd … affinity that she felt for the adventurer had to be stamped out. Ruthlessly eradicated.
“No,” Mr. Sterling said. “They both died of a fever when I was a boy. I have no memory of either of them.”
“I am very sorry. I, too, was orphaned. My parents died when I was nine,” Willa said sympathetically.
“I sometimes think it’s not the tragedy it might seem to others, to grow up without parents,” Mr. Sterling said. “It left me free to construct my own ideas about life. Although you knew your parents, which changes the situation entirely.”
“I do miss them,” she admitted. “Still, it forced me to be far more observant than I might have been. To fashion my own ideas, as you said.”
They reached the small table Lady Knowe had pointed out. Lord Peters assisted Lavinia, and Mr. Sterling pulled out a chair for Willa. “Having been given no further instructions, I shall claim the seat beside you, Miss Ffynche, unless you wish to reserve it for someone.”
There was an odd inflection to his voice, as if the implied question had more consequence than a cup of tea on a summer afternoon. “I would be very happy for you to join me,” she replied, smiling up at him. And then, when he was seated: “Since you are not in society, Mr. Sterling, may I assume that you are occupied with more than morning calls?”
A footman placed a tea tray before them, with silver spoons shaped like peacock feathers and a bowl of sugar.
“I have a number of interests,” he replied. “The tea before you traveled from China in one of my ships.”
Lavinia promptly leaned over the nearest cup and sniffed. “Pekoe!” she exclaimed, straightening and smiling.
Mr. Sterling appeared unmoved by her dimples. “You are correct, Miss Gray.”
“Do you import silks as well as tea?” Willa asked. “Porcelain? You must have excellent relations with the Hong merchants.”
A corner of Mr. Sterling’s mouth curled up.
“Don’t ruin things by being patronizing,” Willa exclaimed. The Hongs were the only Chinese merchants licensed to trade with foreigners; it was hardly a state secret. “The newspapers talk of the Hongs whenever China is mentioned.”
“I do beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to seem patronizing.”
“Men rarely do,” she said, a bit crossly. “They simply can’t help it, if a woman shows the slightest knowledge of something other than fans and slippers.”
“In that case, I apologize for my sex,” Mr. Sterling said. “We’re an absurd lot of fools, and as you likely know, Miss Ffynche, we become even more inarticulate in the presence of a beautiful young lady.”
It was a deft compliment, so she smiled at him. “Have you made the trip to China yourself?”
Mr. Sterling laughed as he glanced over her head. “I seem to be seated beside one of the few English ladies who knows nothing of your books, Alaric.”
Willa turned and saw, somewhat to her dismay, that Lord Alaric had joined their group and was taking the seat on her other side. Even worse, he edged his chair so close to hers that she could smell a spicy male scent, a wildly expensive eau de cologne.
No, Lord Alaric would never wear scent.
The scent was just him. Or him and soap.
“I haven’t yet read Lord Alaric’s books, but I fully intend to,” she said, as the footman put a cup of tea before him. She took a sip of hers, hoping for a clear head. It was unusual to feel out of her depth … but she felt it.
She and Lavinia had ruled the ton during the Season by acting precisely as they had discerned gentlemen wished them to: as young ladies with spirit but docility, spice yet innocence.
They had shaped this plan around the desires of boys. Lord Alaric and Mr. Sterling were men.
She looked past Mr. Sterling and saw the same awareness in Lavinia’s eyes. But whereas Willa felt like retreating upstairs and making up some new rules, Lavinia waggled her eyebrows with madcap bravado.
“Our voyage was the subject of Alaric’s first book,” Mr. Sterling was saying now.
“I understand it takes a year to reach China,” Lord Peters said, with languid disapproval. “Seems like a rotten loss of time, if you’ll forgive the impertinence. Though I suppose some might feel the profit was worth it.”
Lavinia gave him a narrow-eyed look that turned his cheeks faintly pink. She had strong feelings about impoliteness.
“It did take nearly a year to reach China,” Mr. Sterling said indifferently. He couldn’t have made it more clear that he considered Lord Peters an impudent puppy.
“Oh, hello!” Miss Eliza Kennet, who had debuted with them, dashed up to their table and began bobbing curtsies. “I’m so happy to see you, Lord Alaric! And Lavinia and Willa!” Her hair was so thickly powdered that white dust lay on her shoulders like snow on two fence posts.
“Good afternoon, Miss Kennet,” Lord Alaric said. “May I introduce Mr. Sterling?”
The girl’s eyes paused on Mr. Sterling’s face, just long enough to register that she didn’t know him, and went straight back to Lord Alaric. “I’ve seen Wilde in Love twice! You are my favorite author,” Eliza gushed. “You and Shakespeare. You are both geniuses! But you are more intriguing.”
Lord Alaric gave her a brief smile. “I didn’t write the play in question, so Shakespeare has nothing to worry about from my side.”
“Given the choice of a dead author or a live one,” Lavinia said, her husky voice taking on a laughing undertone, “I must say that I agree with Miss Kennet.”
“My dear,” Lady Knowe said, appearing behind Miss Kennet, “you mustn’t rearrange my tea party; I shall be quite cross if you do.” Without further ado, she took her elbow and towed the young lady away.
Willa turned to Mr. Sterling. “Did you dock in Canton?”
At his startled look, Lavinia burst into laughter. “You remind me of one of the teachers at our seminary, when Willa would confound him by knowing more about cotton plants or coal mines than he did.”
“I merely read the newspaper,” Willa said firmly. “There is nothing extraordinary in that.”
“Yes, but you remember what you read,” Lavinia retorted.
Willa could feel Lord Alaric’s gaze on her. It gave her a thrill, one that she didn’t trust. There was something heady about his attention, and not only because so many ladies longed for it.
He wasn’t a sedate man, she told herself. Furthermore, he didn’t have a widow’s peak, which had been one of her girlhood requirements for a husband.
Now that seemed like a remarkably frivolous consideration.
“Do tell us what happened when you reached Canton, Mr. Sterling,” she said hastily.
“We showed ourselves to be the two young fools we were,” he answered.
“I’m sure you weren’t fools,” Lavinia protested.
“We were cork-brained, but in our defense, we were not yet nineteen,” Mr. Sterling said.
“We fully expected to be invited to meet the emperor,” Lord Alaric said, sitting back in his chair as a footman offered a plate of cucumber sandwiches. “Imagine our surprise when it was made clear to us that, from the point of view of His Imperial Majesty, the son of an English duke is no better and no worse than a dock boy.”
“We finally bribed a local governor to invite us to his house,” Mr. Sterling put in. “We were given a cup of tea and told to go back home.”
“That tea,” Lord Alaric said meditatively, “was pekoe.” He raised his teacup to Willa. “Precisely what you have in front of you, Miss Ffynche.”
“We made up our mind to travel to the mountains where pekoe was cultivated, but because we stood a head taller than the local men,” Mr. Sterling said, picking up the tale, “we couldn’t disguise ourselves.”
Lavinia laughed. “I remember this part of the book.”
“The only thing to do was to become people whom everyone avoided.”
“Beggars afflicted by leprosy?” Willa suggested.
“Good guess. No, night-soil men,” Mr. Sterling said. “Worst job in the world, but perfect for interlopers like ourselves.”
“You become foul-smelling Trojan horses,” Willa said, laughing.
Mr. Sterling’s face was naturally stern in repose, which made his smile unexpectedly endearing.
“Trolling around with a wagon so people could throw excrement out their windows meant that no one gave us a second glance,” Lord Alaric said, giving his friend a sharp glance. “All the work is done at night. And we had an excellent excuse to keep scarves wound around our faces.”
Willa smiled again at that image—and then realized that Lord Alaric’s eyes had moved to her mouth. She abruptly straightened her lips.
He made a sound deep in his throat, so low that only she could hear it. Willa drew in an unsteady breath. She felt as if he had caressed her, given her a lingering kiss—and all he’d done was gaze at her lips.
That sizzling heat she felt low in her belly? It was merely because he was unreasonably handsome, she told herself. Any woman would feel it.