Now, though, with Dev gone, she turned her gaze his way and watched him. He still stood, looking perfectly at ease and showing no inclination to sit. Which suited him, somehow. He wasn’t all that tall—at least three inches shorter than both of the Hughes brothers—but his limbs seemed to have a fluidity to them, like a wild animal perfectly content to stand and watch…until it pounced.
A panther, maybe. Or a wolf, rangy and alone. One with eyes so deep a brown they were nearly black, much like his hair. He wore a goatee, neatly trimmed, and a fine suit of clothes in charcoal. The look in his eyes said he thought he understood everything perfectly.
Unlikely.
He motioned toward the bookshelves lining the westward wall. “May I?”
“Certainly.” She toyed with one of the curls Cora had arranged over her shoulder as he slid toward the books. “I confess you didn’t strike me as the studious type, Mr. Osborne.”
“Guess it depends on with whom I’m being compared.” He turned to peruse the shelves.
An odd man to send to infiltrate the KGC. One who harbored a secret that could get him killed, yet whose cover was, in fact, that he was one of Pinkerton’s agents. Foolish or brilliant. She would reserve judgment as to which.
He pulled a book from the shelf and paged through it. Rather than replace it again, he stood there and read.
Marietta frowned. “Well, I am surprised. Sermons?”
He turned toward her, the book still in his hand and a question lining his forehead. “My father is a minister. And you must have fine eyesight to have seen the title from there.”
“Must I?” A smile bade for leave to touch her lips, and she allowed it. She couldn’t make out so much as a word of the title, but he had pulled down the twelfth book, the one with the blue spine. The sermons of John Wesley.
He ran a finger down the edge of the book, more thoughtfully than he would from simple reminiscence—more like a man who valued the words inside. Then he snapped it shut and lifted his chin. Studied her.
A wolf, without doubt.
“I was sorry to hear about your husband.” Yet no apology softened the gaze that dropped from her face to the lavender silk. “Though I know my condolences are belated. How long has it been?”
Four hundred fifty-eight days and—she glanced at the mantel clock—twenty-two hours and sixteen minutes.
But that was surely not the answer he was looking for. No, he sought no answer at all. No question burned in his gaze. But censure gleamed where it ought to have been. She let the hair wind around her finger. None of her friends at the Ladies’ Aid meeting had been anything but supportive—to her face, anyway. But this stranger would stand in her house and judge her? She pulled the curl tight before dropping her hand and letting it bounce free. He couldn’t know how fully she deserved the condemnation.
Still, she kept her smile in place. “Not long enough to be out of second mourning. Mother Hughes requested the change, though, and her health has been so fragile. If something so simple can help buoy her, who am I to refuse?”
Perfectly honest, yet he studied her as if trying to unravel truth from lie. “Kind of you. To care so for her when most would leave her to her other son.”
Marietta reached for the basket of bandages waiting to be rolled. Something useful ought to come of this conversation. “I could hardly ask her to leave the only home she has known since her marriage.”
“Of course not,” he said. Yet when she glanced up, his eyes said that was the answer he had sought.
She found the end of one strip and began to roll. Why had he wanted to know who in the family owned the house? It could be of no…
She granted herself only a moment’s pause as the realization struck. The castle. It was on her land. Lucien’s father had willed it to him, and he had willed it to her. If she sold the house…if she chose to marry someone other than Dev…
The ache expanded until it took over her heart too. Yet another question to pile on the day.
For now, she fastened on her most charming smile. It might be a bit rusty after these months at home in mourning, but it would suffice to parry Mr. Osborne’s unfelt compliment about caring for her mother-in-law. “Well, sir, I am only striving for Christian perfection.”
She was guessing, of course, as to which sermon he had landed on when he flipped the book open. But if his father had educated him in Wesley’s works, then he would be familiar with it.
He glanced down at the tome and then looked at her again, those wolf eyes smirking. “Now I am the one surprised. You have read Wesley?”
Had his shock not been well deserved, it might have offended her. As it was, she chuckled. “My parents hoped to fill my mind with all things high and good.”
Amusement twitched his lips. “Did it work?”
She straightened the length of cloth before winding it more and then sent him a laughing gaze. “What do you think?”
“That you gave your parents many a headache.”