Ainsley finally let out a long sigh and nodded. “Very well, let us search. It’s too blasted cold out here anyway.” She turned without another word and headed for the house, his coat billowing behind her.
Chapter 7
Cameron followed Ainsley Douglas’s swaying gray bustle up the steps to the dark end of the terrace. His coat half slid from her shoulders, her slippers were muddy, and one curl straggled down her back.
Why Cameron should come so alive watching a woman who had no intention whatsoever of sleeping with him, he didn’t know. He only knew he was grateful for it. The only thing he could compare it to was waking on the opening day of an important race meet, knowing that the day would be filled with excitement, hurry, and elation. He’d spend the day with Daniel and his horses, and even the disappointments would be colored by the overall joy of the time.
Cameron held open a door on the end of the terrace, and Ainsley moved confidently inside and across the dark room without waiting for him.
“You know your way around,” Cameron said when he caught up to her.
“I know Balmoral and Buckingham Palace like the back of my hand,” Ainsley said. She stepped from the room into the empty hall beyond. “This house is easy to navigate in comparison. We can get from here up to your wing unseen.”
Ainsley opened another door, this one leading to a slanting back stair, which she started to ascend without hesitation.
“How do you know the servants won’t see you?” Cameron asked as he followed. “Or did you tie them up and lock them in the kitchen?”
Ainsley answered breathlessly, skirts swishing as she climbed. “The only servant who uses these stairs is your man, and he’s currently in the stables.”
That was true enough. Angelo liked looking after Jasmine. “You’d make a bloody good jewel thief, knowing the back ways through other people’s houses like this,” Cameron said. “You could work house parties all over the country.”
Ainsley looked back down at him over the banisters. “Don’t be silly. I do have some morals, Lord Cameron.”
Pity. Cameron followed her out through a narrow door to the landing to his floor. His rooms were two doors down, and he moved past her to unlock his bedchamber with his key.
“Saves you the time of picking it,” he said.
Without comment Ainsley slid off Cameron’s coat, handed it to him, and walked inside. She went straight to his wardrobe, opened it, and started to rummage. Cameron tossed the coat to a chair and watched the fine perspective of her backside moving as she lifted his shirts and collar boxes, peeked under lids and felt through fabric.
He stripped off his gloves and his too-binding formal waistcoat before moving to pour himself a cut crystal glass of whiskey. Taking up the whiskey, he leaned against a bedpost to continue watching her work.
Ainsley closed the wardrobe and turned to the glass- fronted bookcase. “You’re an odd sort of man, Lord Cameron. You drink whiskey and smoke cheroots in front of a lady without asking leave, not to mention smacking away her ball in croquet instead of allowing her to win. In my world, that is simply not done. You’d be looked upon with horror.”
“Lucky that I don’t live in your world then. Besides, I know you’re not a lady.”
She shot him a startled look as she opened the bookcase. “What?”
Cameron gestured with his glass. “You pick locks and sneak into my bedroom, you know the back ways through my ancestral home, you’re blatantly searching my bedchamber, and last night you wrestled with me on my bed.” He took a deliberate sip of whiskey. “I’d say that makes you not a lady.”
“Circumstances sometimes require odd behavior, my lord.”
“Circumstances be damned. You haven’t checked under the mattress.”
“That is next.” Ainsley plucked a book from the shelf and started leafing through it. She realized what kind of book it was and turned bright red.
Cameron suppressed his laughter as Ainsley stared at a page of blatantly naked Courbet figures, twined in an interesting position. He made a wager with himself whether she’d throw down the book in disgust and storm out, or whether his Mrs. Douglas would soldier on.
He won the bet when she drew a deep, determined breath and continued to fan through the pages.
Finding nothing, Ainsley placed the book back on the shelf and gingerly opened the next one, which was much the same. “You—read—this?”
“Of course I do. I collect it.”
“It’s in French.”
“Don’t you read books in French? Isabella told me you went with her to her fine ladies’ academy.”
“I learned it, yes, but I doubt any of these words were in our primer.”
Cameron stopped trying to contain his laughter and let it burst out. It felt good.
“I would finish much more quickly if you helped me,” she said.
Cameron leaned on the bedpost again. “But it’s much more entertaining to watch you.”
Ainsley made an exasperated noise, shoved the book back into the bookcase, and untied and opened a folio. She studied the first drawing. “I know I’m unworldly, Lord Cameron, but I’m not certain that what they’re doing is quite possible.”
Cameron leaned over her shoulder to look at the sensual sketch by Romano, drawn three centuries before. Admittedly the people depicted were in an awkward pose. “I buy it for the beauty of it, not for instruction.”
“Well, that’s a mercy, or you’d never have had a son.”