Читать книгу An Experiment in Love - Louise Allen - Страница 5

Chapter Two

‘…marry me.’ What on earth have I done? Chloe thought. Kit Fellingham was staring at her as if she had escaped from Bedlam.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded with less than gentlemanly finesse. At least he was not running. Yet.

‘Chloe Albright. Don’t you remember me?’

‘The bluestocking?’

Chloe hated that word. If a woman had a glimmering of intelligence and opinions of her own she was labelled a bluestocking. Which came with the subtext, eccentric, unfeminine and likely to run off to Wales to live with another woman in a man-hating household.

‘No,’ she said coldly, getting down from her unladylike position kneeling on the chair seat. ‘I am a scientist. A geologist to be exact.’

‘Plutonist or Neptunist?’ he demanded, startling Chloe. Not even her own family remembered that much information.

‘Plutonist. Which are you?’

‘I don’t know enough about it to form an opinion.’

A sensible answer. Chloe added intellectual humility to the other good points Kit possessed, which included being the nicest man she knew after her own brother. She hoped he hadn’t changed, it would be dreadful to propose to a man she could not like, even if it was all a ruse.

‘I have James Hutton’s work on the subject if you wish to borrow it,’ she offered. ‘I’m reading the final volume.’

Kit drew in a deep breath through his admirably straight nose which caused his equally admirable chest to expand while he narrowed his penetrating blue eyes at her and swept the dark blond hair from his forehead with one long-fingered hand. Aah…Chloe told herself that it was a perfectly rational female response to feel shaken, and stirred, by the display of so much masculinity.

‘Lady Chloe. We have moved from a proposal of marriage to the formation of the earth. Might we return to the former topic? Unless I misheard you?’

‘No, I did say it.’ Now was the time to blush prettily, but she had never mastered the art. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing. You’re in a fix. You’ve known me for ever, so we might have formed an attachment.’

‘I can recall you as a child. You used to help James get around.’ Her brother had poor eyesight from an early age, but he’d never let it hold him back. ‘But since then? You are out, aren’t you?’

‘I am two and twenty,’ Chloe said. ‘I have had three Seasons and danced with you during all three.’ And you did a very good job of convincing me you were having a delightful time. ‘I did not take. I am much happier as a scientist.’

From Kit’s face she could see he was not at all surprised she had not taken. Had his charm when they had danced been simply good manners? He had been amusing, interested and…special when they had talked. Handsome, of course, but that was not why she had felt as she had. As I do. It was inexplicable, irrational, and somehow that had convinced her as nothing else would have done that she truly had lost her heart. An impossible daydream, of course, but at least she could help him out of this situation.

As Kit’s expression shifted from baffled to mildly pitying she tore her gaze from his face. ‘Where have I put those quills?’

‘The two in your hair?’

Oh Lord… Her spectacles slipped and Chloe looped them into the chain around her neck with one hand while she plucked out the quills with the other. Most of her hair came down.

‘Tell me, Lady Chloe…’ She found Kit standing right beside her. ‘…Why should you want to marry me?’ He lifted his hand and cupped her chin. His thumb brushed across the point, sending shivers down her spine and Chloe wondered what he would say if she told him the truth.

Because being yours is my dearest fantasy and now I can pretend, if only for a very little while?