A minute later Miss Pythian-Adams had the cloth wound around Mary's legs… and a second after that it fell off. She frowned and tried again.
Gabe watched in the flickering light of the fire. She was an alarmingly beautiful woman who either didn't realize how lovely she was, or didn't care. She had a straight nose and such thick eyelashes that he couldn't see her eyes as she struggled with Mary's nappy. He should have been helping her, but instead he just drank her in.
She was the quintessential English gentlewoman. She was everything that he could never have, given his illegitimacy: delicate, refined, bred through generations of gentlefolk into a perfect bundle of femininity.
"Bloody hell," muttered the delicate bundle of femininity. "How on earth does anyone get these things fastened?"
A laugh wrenched its way out of Gabe's chest.
She looked up at him, blinking through those eyelashes, one hand protectively keeping Mary from rolling off the table. "I'm sorry if my language offended you. I know you're a man of the church—"
"No," he said quickly. "I am a professor, but never a priest."
"Well," she said, and he watched the emotions dance over her face. "Mr. Not-a-priest, do you think that you could give that bell a good tug? Because we don't seem to be able to clothe little Mary. Not that she minds much."
Mary was pinwheeling her legs joyfully.
"She wears so many clothes normally," Gabe said.
"The curse of womanhood," Miss Pythian-Adams replied.
"Why so?" Gabe asked.
"Haven't you ever noticed how difficult it is for a woman to be properly dressed?" And, when he shook his head, she continued, "As a man, you wear simple yet comfortable attire at all times, occasionally changing in the evening. Ladies must change their dress for every period of the day: morning gowns, riding costumes, evening gowns, opera gowns, ball gowns—even the greatest folly of all, presentation gowns sewn with pearls and other fripperies, and worn with hoops!"
"I thought women liked changing clothes," Gabe said. His mother certainly had.
Miss Pythian-Adams sighed. "Some indubitably do. And there are times when I quite relish it. But it's a sad way to spend one's life."
Gabe was quite aware that he would be happy to spend his life and time taking Miss Pythian-Adams's clothes off. That was a ridiculous thought. He had sworn off women forever after the debacle with Loretta.
And Miss Pythian-Adams was a lady. His face started to burn a little with embarrassment. Should she be here with him, in the middle of the night? What if someone came and her reputation was damaged? What if—
The door swung sharply open. "Oh, so there's my lovey," said a blowsy, sleepy-looking woman.
"We have had some trouble fixing her nappy," Gabe said. "She was wet through when I arrived here and had been crying for some time."
There was a touch of steely cold in his voice that sent the woman jittering with apologies: she was downstairs, it was that warm by the fire, she had fallen off for a moment. The ribbons on her cap danced as she hurriedly tied the strings on Mary's garments.
A second later Mary had been wrapped into a snug, warm bundle. Gabe ushered Miss Pythian-Adams out the door before him, and they stood for a moment in the hallway. He knew he was acting like a great lummox, staring down at her without saying a word.
The color rising in her cheeks made him ache for things he could never have: the clean, sweet smell of a good woman. The kind of woman who would never be called a chipper, who would never be overtaken by female hunger. You could see that in Miss Pythian-Adams's face. She would never be led astray by her emotions, the way his mother had been.
It was perverse, the way her very coolness, her lack of interest in him as a man, was kindling his body like dry timber. Quite rightly, she had put him in a category marked "illegitimate" and never thought twice about him.
Even now her eyes were thoughtful, meeting his, obviously wondering what on earth was the matter with him. "We must say good night," he said, his voice rough.
"Yes," she said. "Do you know, I think Mary's maid might have spent a great part of the evening in the kitchen?"
She apparently didn't feel the tension in the air, even though he was standing before her vibrating like a tree in a high gale.
"Mary needs a nanny, but I haven't found a replacement yet."
Her lips had perfect definition: the mouth of a woman who would never succumb to animal passions. He was bowing when yet another door opened in the hallway. He snapped up, cursing himself, wondering whether a woman could be compromised simply by being seen in the corridor with a man.
Imogen Maitland peered around the door, her eyes curious. "What on earth is going on?" she said, walking into the corridor. To Gabe's relief, she was wearing a dressing gown, and her bosom seemed to be covered.
"Mr. Spenser's child has been crying," Miss Pythian-Adams said. "Good night, Imogen." And then without even a look at him, she vanished through the door into her bedchamber.
Lady Maitland turned to him. If there was no recognition of him as a man in Miss Pythian-Adams's eyes, there was abundant appreciation in Lady Maitland's. She drifted toward him, and her intentions were unmistakable. In the moonlight coming through the high windows at the end of the corridor, her features looked slightly exotic. Her hair was loosely braided and curled around her face as if she were some sort of night witch, come to bewitch men from their senses. And yet… and yet to Gabe, Lady Maitland's crimson lips and secret smile didn't move him at all.
Well, perhaps a little.
She was one who would know precisely what she wanted: him, on a limited lease. Illegitimacy worked in the proper way, for her. It would make him the perfect parti, not likely to infringe on her fashionable life.
Yet there was something slightly uncertain in her eyes that belied the bold way she was standing before him, asking in a husky voice whether he would accompany her to the library to find a book.
Of course she was the sort of woman he could have. Exquisite and yet available. Approaching him, rather than the other way around. It was oddly mortifying. Her eyes were dark and interested, even with that bit of uncertainty in the back of them. She was no whore. Perhaps this was her very first seduction of an appropriate man.
The thought was sour in his stomach.
"I—" he cleared his throat. "I'm rather tired."
Her face fell and then instantaneously smoothed to a sophisticated smile. And his heart lurched. What was he doing? Who was he to make her feel less than entrancing? Shouldn't he be kissing her hand for even looking his direction?
"I quite understand," she said. "In fact, this is not the first time—that is, I should go to bed at once as well. I have much to do tomorrow and—"
Gabe felt a surge of protective anger against whoever it was who had dared to refuse such a beautiful young woman in the past. And a strong inclination to inform her that her lack of parents need not transform to a lack of morality. Obviously, he couldn't refuse her.
"Would you possibly like to—to—" he searched his memory. Where did illicit relationships happen when people were at a house party? One had to suppose they just tiptoed from room to room. The last thing he wished to do was ask her to his room. He took Mary there sometimes. "Would you like to accompany me to Silchester tomorrow evening?" he asked.