Free Jacquie D'Alessandro by Who Will Take This Man Page A

cheekbones. His nose was the same—bold and blade-straight. And his mouth…
    Her gaze riveted on his lips. His mouth was lovely in a way that she had not noticed in the painting. It was full. And firm—yet somehow appeared fascinatingly soft at the same time. Just the sort of mouth that, if she were a different sort of woman, might entice her to want to taste.
    Fortunately, she was not at all the sort of woman to be enticed.
    “Are you all right, Miss Chilton-Grizedale? You look a bit flushed.”
    Damnation! She snapped her gaze up to his and arranged her features into her most prim expression. “I’m fine, thank you. It is merely warm in the carriage.” She resisted the urge to lift her hand to fan herself. Just as well,as, with her luck, she’d lift her hand and swing her stone-laden reticule around and cosh herself on the head with it. Instead she nodded toward the journal resting on his lap.
    “What are you reading?” she asked, refraining from pointing out his lack of manners in ignoring her. Clearly she would need to pick her battles with this man, and her inner voice cautioned that having him ignore her might be in her best interests.
    “I’m searching through a volume of my notes from my travels. I’m hopeful that I may have made a notation or sketch at some point that might provide a clue.”
    “Have you had any success?”
    “No. My notes fill over one hundred volumes, and although I examined them during my return voyage to England to no avail, I was hoping that perhaps I might find something I’d missed.” He closed the book, then tied a length of worn leather around it.
    “What do your notes contain?”
    “Sketches of artifacts and hieroglyphs, descriptions, folklore and stories told to me, personal observations. Things of that nature.”
    “You learned enough to fill more than one hundred volumes?” An incredulous laugh escaped her. “Heavens, I find it a chore to compose a single-page letter.”
    “In truth, I experienced more than I could ever have time to record in writing.” An expression that seemed to combine longing and passion entered his eyes. “Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Morocco…they are impossible to adequately describe, yet they’re so vivid in my memory, if I close my eyes, I feel as if I am still there.”
    “You loved those places.”
    “Yes.”
    “You did not want to leave.”
    He studied her before replying. “You are correct. England is the place of my birth, yet it no longer feels like…home.” One corner of his mouth quirked upward.“I wouldn’t expect you to understand what I mean. Indeed, I barely do myself.”
    “’Tis true that I do not know what places such as Egypt and Greece look like, but I know about the importance, the necessity, of being in a place that feels like home. And how out of sorts one can feel when they are not there.”
    He nodded slowly, his gaze never leaving hers. “Yes, that is exactly how I feel. Out of sorts.”
    Something in his tone, in the way he was looking at her, with all that focused attention, stalled her breath. And rendered her most definitely out of sorts. In a way that irritated and confused her. What on earth was it about this man that robbed her of her usual aplomb?
    In an effort to break the spell between them, she averted her gaze and said, “A friend of mine offered to help us sort through the artifacts, should we require his services.” Actually, both Albert and Charlotte had wanted to accompany her today, but Meredith had convinced them to wait a day. She wanted to first ascertain what sort of conditions they would be working under, and she was glad she’d insisted. The fact that they would be near the docks…Charlotte hated the docks.
    “ His services? Is your friend an antiquarian?”
    “No. Actually, Albert is my butler, and one of my dearest friends.”
    If he was surprised by her referring to her butler as a dear friend, he did not show it. Instead, he nodded. “Excellent. My American colleague