Free The Gentleman's Quest by Deborah Simmons

highlighting the line of her cheek, the curve of her lips. Her skin glowed golden, and Kit wished she would take off that wretched cap, so he could see her hair…
    “What?”
    It wasn’t until she spoke that Kit realized he was staring, and he looked down at his plate. He was tempted to tell her that she need not wear the cap in here, with only the two of them to see, but perhaps that wasn’t such a good idea.
    “Nothing,” Kit muttered. He needed to gain more control over his thoughts, especially since his companion appeared completely unmoved by their nearness,the firelight and the night outside. Yet when she reached for her wine, Kit could have sworn her hand was shaking. Perhaps Miss Ingram was not unmoved, after all.
    “How can you be sure those weren’t our two men?” she asked.
    Kit barked out a low laugh. Now he was assured that Miss Ingram was not as entranced as he by their intimate supper. She was all business, a reminder that he would do well to heed. “Because they wore the livery of the Duke of Montford,” he said.
    “So?”
    “So, I doubt that the duke’s men are out searching for a book on Druid lore,” he said, spearing a forkful of beef.
    “And why not?” she countered. “The Prince Regent himself is a great collector, as is the Duke of Devonshire. The book madness strikes any and all, regardless of station. No less an authority than Reverend Thomas Dibin claims that it lasts year-round and through all of human existence.”
    “Perhaps,” Kit acknowledged, “but I can’t see a nobleman hiring thugs or arranging a kidnapping.”
    “Even to acquire such a rare book?”
    “Even to acquire such a rare book,” Kit said. He suspected that greed did not drive their pursuers, but something darker and twisted.
    “I don’t know. I’ve heard tales that you would not countenance,” Miss Ingram said. “Stories of thievery and forgery, of collectors who have bought back their own books after having sold them or given them away, of despondent souls who killed themselves over lostlibraries. One antiquarian actually bought a property that had been owned by the astrologer John Dee in the hopes that valuable books might be buried there.”
    Kit would have laughed at that example, if it hadn’t hit too close to home—his home. Although the Mallory hadn’t been buried at Oakfield, that hadn’t stopped people from digging up the grounds for it.
    “The most avid formed their own society, the Roxburghe Club, after the Duke of Roxburghe’s collection went up for sale. And you must have heard of Richard Heber, who is filling several homes with books to the very ceilings, purportedly over a hundred thousand and counting.”
    “And I thought my father was devoted to them,” Kit said with a shake of his head.
    Miss Ingram paused to study him anew. “I’m surprised you did not catch his mania,” she said, as though she suspected Kit of hiding his expertise.
    “I never shared my father’s singular fascination with study. I loved him, and I’m very grateful for his tutoring and his gentle wisdom, but he seemed to prefer the inside of his books to the world itself. And that wasn’t for me—or Syd,” he said with a grin.
    “Syd?”
    “My sister Sydony.”
    “An unusual name.”
    “She’s an unusual woman,” Kit said. He slanted her a glance. “Actually, you remind me a lot of her.”
    Miss Ingram ducked her head. “And your mother? Was she fond of books?”
    Kit drew a deep breath. “She died when I was young.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “Perhaps that is why your father sought to escape into his work.”
    The romantic suggestion coming from the pragmatic Miss Ingram made Kit look at her in surprise. But as always, her face, bent over her plate, revealed nothing.
    “Perhaps,” Kit said. He barely remembered his mother, so he could not recall if his father had behaved differently, and yet he’d always felt the loss. It might well be that Miss Ingram was right, and his father,