A Matchmaking Mismatch (Romance Retold #3)

Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

“ Y ou spat lemon tart on her?” Ruth covered her amusement with a hand. For some reason, she felt particularly feminine when she laughed. But Oxley didn’t seem to notice.

“I did.” Oxley narrowed his eyes, but she thought she saw the hint of a smile through her glasses. “What, do you think Miss Devenish disliked it? I thought you might congratulate me for setting myself apart from all of her other suitors.”

“Well, it is not the recommendation I would have given, I admit….”

He smiled. “You are beginning to regret accepting a mere twenty pounds now, aren’t you? Little did you know how I would challenge you.”

She laughed. Oxley’s sense of humor—his ability to laugh at himself—was, quite frankly, charming. He was not the haughty man she had met upon her arrival. If only Miss Devenish could see this side of him, surely Ruth’s work would be easy.

“The truth is,” Oxley said, “I transform into a blubbering, clumsy fool near Miss Devenish—around any woman I desire to impress, really.”

Ruth was unable to stifle a smile. “I admit, I should dearly wish to witness this for myself. I find it hard to imagine.” She didn’t really know what the man looked like, but his voice alone boomed with confidence. It was not the voice of a man with two left feet.

He gave a wry chuckle. “I like to meet expectations. I am generally quite good at it. But I haven’t any idea what women expect from me, and apparently in such a situation, I am overtaken by an irrepressible impulse to underwhelm. It is why I have generally avoided such situations in the past.”

“Unless lemon tart is involved,” Ruth said.

He smiled. “Best to set the standard low, is it not?”

She tapped her mouth with a finger. “You might be onto something with that. Now it will be all the easier to ensure that you leap over that standard with ease.” She cocked a brow at him. “I hereby forbid you from eating lemon tart in Miss Devenish’s company.”

Oxley’s mouth stretched wide in a smile. “Fair enough. I don’t particularly like lemon tart, truth be told.”

Ruth itched to take her glasses off for a clear view of him. She hadn’t anticipated how maddening it would be to have such a vague idea of what he looked like. It was strange to know someone’s voice before their face—to get a glimpse of a personality before ever meeting eyes. Perhaps he was not as attractive as he sounded, though he had mentioned his appearance as part of the infamous triad.

“What do I do, then, Master Swan? How do I leap over the low standard I have set? I can see no rhyme or reason to any of it. What pleases one woman displeases another.”

“Certainly there is both rhyme and reason to it.”

One of his thick, dark brows went up. “By all means, enlighten me.”

She stared at him thoughtfully, resisting the impulse she felt to rub at her eyes to better see him. It was like awaking bleary-eyed from sleep, with eyes that never adjusted to the world. Her head was beginning to ache from the effort to make sense of the indistinct shapes which surrounded her. She missed her vision terribly, and it was hard to breathe in the tight wrap around her chest.

“I should clarify,” she said. “You are right to an extent. Love is more than logic. That doesn’t mean that logic and reason play no part in it but rather that they fail to account for every part of it. But, if I were to show you the closest, most simple representation of what I have come to believe about love…” She glanced at the stack of paper near Oxley. “May I?”

“By all means.” He handed her a piece of foolscap and slid the ink well toward her.

It wasn’t until she had the paper and quill in hand that she realized how difficult it would be to write when she could barely see. She cleared her throat and nudged her glasses farther down her nose, tipping her head so that she could see the paper over the top of the silver rims.

The clear lines before her—the texture of the paper, the sheen of the wet ink at the edge of the quill she held—were like a breath of fresh air to her exhausted eyes.

She wrote the word love on one side of the paper, followed by an equal sign. “While love looks a bit different—sometimes significantly so—from one couple to another, there are certain elements that I believe must be present in order for it to flourish. Much like a plant needs proper soil, sunlight, and water. Remove any one of those, and it will shrivel rather than grow.”

On the other side of the equation, she wrote time + sacrifice x connection.

Oxley was watching her quill scratches carefully, but he rose from his chair and came around the desk to stand beside her, putting his hand on the back of her chair.

“Hm,” he said. “It is nice to see it laid out so rationally, but the ideas within the equation are still nebulous to me, I admit. Connection, especially.”

Ruth nodded. “Thankfully, I have an equation for that , too.”

“An equation within an equation. We soon reach the limits of my mathematical capabilities.”

She chuckled and wrote love=time + sacrifice x (honesty + listening + humor + vulnerability). “As I said, this is greatly simplified, and certainly there is an element in the romantic love described in poetry that no amount of skill in logic or math can generate. But without this equation, I don’t believe that romantic love can survive long.” She tapped the quill on the paper gently. “This is the type of love that endures.”

“That is quite the equation,” he said. “You have clearly given this much thought. But what do you mean by vulnerability ?”

She sent him a sympathetic grimace. “It means exactly what you think it means: being willing to be hurt.”

She thought she saw his throat bob. Of course, no one liked to be hurt, but she couldn’t help wishing she had a bit more time to discover what it was that caused Oxley to stand there silently, staring at the word like it might jump off the page and bite him. What caused such a sturdy man to fear something most people sought after so doggedly?

“Like many things in life, love cannot be won or given without risk. It cannot be taken forcefully.” She thought for a moment. “You mentioned that you transform in the presence of Miss Devenish and forget how to conduct yourself. At the risk of causing offense, may I suggest that it is perhaps because you are too focused on yourself.”

He laughed, but she pressed on. “Perhaps you are too concerned about what Miss Devenish is thinking about you, when you should be concerned with how she is feeling, what sort of a day she has had, what amuses her—things like that. If you are too preoccupied with your own image, you have no time to forge real connection.”

He was quiet, still hovering over her shoulder, and she hoped that it was a good sign—that she had made him think. She felt the hairs on her neck stand on end as he leaned down further to run a finger along the equation. He smelled faintly of amber. She swallowed and forced herself to focus, embarrassed by the way his proximity was affecting her—this man whose face she hadn’t even seen.

She glanced over her glasses at the clock on the shelf opposite them, behind the desk. Their hour was almost up. How in the world was that possible? She doubted she had even helped him at all. She had certainly not earned twenty pounds.

Oxley followed her gaze and grimaced.

“I can stay a few extra minutes,” she reassured him. And she found she didn’t mind the prospect.

“You are certain? I just have two or three more questions, I think. This equation is very helpful.” His gaze returned to it, and she took the opportunity to glance up at him over the rim of her glasses.

She stilled. Clear as day—blessedly clear—she could see the truth of one part of the triad: Oxley did have a pleasing appearance. His forehead was furrowed in concentration just now, and she could see the line of his jaw, the way it ran rigid and straight before suddenly angling upward toward a head of rich brown hair. She could see his lashes, the rim of dark brown around his iris, and his full brows—no wonder she had been able to see them even through the spectacles.

“The listening piece of this—can you expound upon that?”

She pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose, reluctantly ending the clarity of her vision and its object, and smiled. “Never listened to a woman, have you?”

He gave a soft snort.

“I am only teasing,” she said. “Listening might be seen as the counterpart to vulnerability, I suppose. If you wish to continue with our theme of mathematics, I would advise that listening consume around eighty percent of your time with Miss Devenish and talking a mere twenty percent.” She scribbled the number eighty above listening . “You ask questions—her likes, dislikes, preferences—and you listen carefully ”—she shot him a significant look—“to her answers. As acquaintance turns to friendship and friendship to love, the percentage will even out a bit. But it should never, ever reverse. As you progress, you begin to shift what you ask and share toward things of a more personal nature. If you insist upon diving in too early, or, conversely, if your conversation never penetrates the surface, you risk putting a woman off entirely.”

He stood up straight, taking in a deep breath and putting a thoughtful fist against his mouth. She itched to remove her glasses and regain the crisp view she’d had.

He said nothing, brows still wrinkled in a deep frown.

“I no doubt sound like a madman,” Ruth said. “I am used to having time to compose my words for the advice column. I am afraid I am not so practiced in explaining it verbally.”

He shook his head. “No, it isn’t that. In fact, it makes perfect sense. I have never seen anything regarding love portrayed so rationally or so clearly. It is just…I am beginning to realize how very far I have to go; how very much I have to learn.” He directed his gaze at her but said nothing for a moment. “What if I hired you? To continue your services, I mean.”

She stared, throat constricting, heart accelerating. She opened her mouth to demur, but Oxley continued.

“I would pay you more, of course. A handsome sum if you engaged to help me—to explain things in more detail”—he nodded to indicate her equations—“and to be here for my continuing questions. I could put into practice what you teach me, and you could correct me—teach me how to be less insufferable.”

She could only imagine how the blurry half-smile he wore might look without her spectacles on. Perhaps it was for the best that she couldn’t see it clearly. “But…” How could she phrase her refusal? For there was no doubt in her mind that she should refuse. The alternative didn’t bear considering.

“I am leaving tomorrow,” he said. “But I shall return Saturday, and we might resume then. You could stay for a couple of weeks—two or three. I think you’ll agree that I need every moment possible if I am to avoid making an utter fool of myself.”

“ That I cannot deny,” she said with a smile. How could she agree to more of this, though? Her head was aching doubly, both from the way the glasses gripped her head and from the way her eyes struggled to make sense of the world around her.

He had said he would pay a handsome sum. What exactly did he consider a handsome sum? Surely it couldn’t be enough to justify the expense of two rooms at The Three Crowns for another three weeks.

She sighed and shook her head. “I am afraid I cannot agree to it.”

“Two hundred pounds.”

Ruth sucked in a breath of surprise, and her cheeks grew warm. Two hundred pounds?

He watched her, and she was certain he saw her resolution waver.

How could it not? She had come to London for twenty pounds. Would she leave two hundred on the table? She took in a fortifying breath. “I could never accept such a sum, particularly not when my advice holds no guarantees. You might well be paying me for nothing.”

“Of course I understand that. Even if your advice was perfect, my execution of it might be lacking—in fact, it is bound to be. But your time and wisdom is valuable to me, all the same. Shall we say two hundred for your time and three hundred if I find success?” He smiled. “A little incentive for you not to hold anything back.”

She swallowed, staring at him as refusals and acceptances warred on her tongue. She couldn’t accept such an offer. But how could she refuse it?

“I wouldn’t consign you to staying at The Three Crowns, either,” Oxley said. “I know the place, and it isn’t fit for more than a night or two. You could easily stay here.”

Oh, heavens. That was the last thing they needed—for Ruth to stay at a bachelor’s establishment.

It was outrageous. And so very needed. She thought of Joanna and her pleas for a doll like Sophia’s. With two hundred pounds, they could easily afford a little doll, to say nothing of the more important things they had been going without recently. “That is generous, indeed, sir. But I cannot stay here .”

“Why not? There is plenty of room, I assure you.”

She hesitated then smiled slightly. “You value your privacy, sir. Well, so do I.” It would be nigh on impossible to maintain her disguise if she was living under the same roof as Oxley, aside from the unfathomable impropriety of it.

She thought of Topher, and her stomach clenched. Was he safe? None of this would matter if something awful had happened to him. Though, if something awful hadn’t happened to him and he had forced her into this situation for no good reason, she would be tempted to do something awful to him. “I am traveling with my colleague, as well, and we couldn’t impose upon you in such a way.”

Oxley frowned. “It is not an imposition. I am offering it freely. But if you prefer not to stay here, you might just as easily stay at my uncle’s. He lives in Upper Brook Street, just through Grosvenor Square.”

Ruth said nothing, wringing her hands in her lap. How was she to explain why it was impossible? Staying with Oxley’s uncle was only marginally better than staying with him—not when she would be obliged to keep up such a disguise. It was simply too much.

Oxley was watching her carefully. “He won’t be returning to Town for another six weeks, but he always keeps staff on hand. He is the kindest of fellows, and I can assure you he would be happy to have someone in his townhouse while he is away. Particularly if you intended to keep his horses exercised.”

There was that half-smile again.

She was stuck. If she refused, she would forgo two—perhaps three—hundred pounds and give offense to Oxley. And for reasons she had no desire to inspect more closely, she was reluctant to offend him.

If she accepted, though, she would be forced to continue in her disguise for heaven only knew how long.

An idea occurred to her. A third option.

“What if it was my colleague—Mr. Franks—who stayed in Town to assist you?” She could teach Topher what he needed to know, couldn’t she? In all truth, she wasn’t sure. It was one thing for him to manage an hour-long meeting with someone—and clearly, he hadn’t even been able to manage that . It was another matter entirely for him to spend weeks teaching material that came from Ruth’s head and experience.

Oxley shook his head and sat on the edge of the desk beside her, folding his arms. Another hint of amber wafted toward her. “No, Ruth. I am afraid that this offer extends only to you and your personal services. I admit that I had grave doubts about your abilities when you first walked into this room—I hadn’t thought I would be taking advice from an infant”—he smiled provokingly, or at least that is what Ruth imagined—“but you have managed to make me feel not only comfortable but hopeful. I don’t wish to start over with someone new, and I certainly don’t desire to humiliate myself in front of yet another person. Your colleague is welcome to stay with you at my uncle’s, but I want you , not him.”

Ruth swallowed. He wanted her . Or at least who he thought she was. Could she do it? Or, perhaps more to the point, could she not do it? How in the world could she return home, knowing she had left such a sum behind?

She needed time. And space, too. It was too difficult to think clearly with Oxley so near and her head pounding.

“Allow me the day to think on it,” she said. “I cannot in good conscience accept the offer before conferring with my colleague.” Ruth thought Topher was more likely to throttle her neck if she rejected the offer without conferring with him.

Oxley nodded once. “Very well. Send me word by this evening. I leave tomorrow, and I shall need to send a message to my uncle and his staff if”—he smiled—“ when you decide to accept my offer.”

Ruth had the feeling that, if she had taken off her glasses right then and seen the full power of Oxley’s smile, she would have been powerless to say anything but yes.