Page 19 of An Unwilling Earl
Suddenly her vision blurred.
“Are you crying? Did I say something wrong?”
She shook her head as a tear dripped down her cheek. Hastily, she swept it away and sniffed. A white handkerchief appeared in front of her, and she took it to mop up her eyes, then crushed it in her fist.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked.
He sat back and contemplated her. He had a lean frame. His fingers were long and thin with square fingernails. But his eyes arrested her attention: warm and caring. They were her undoing, those compassionate eyes.
“Because I want to help you.”
“I don’t think you can help me.”
“If you thought that you wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Maybe I wanted finger sandwiches and hot tea.”
“Then you can have all the finger sandwiches and hot tea that you want.”
“You’re a strange man, Mr. Baker.”
He grinned. “You’re not the first one to call me strange.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I can’t help people I don’t know? I guess all those charities out there should close their doors then.”
She didn’t know how to act around him or how to react to him. He wasn’t at all what she’d expected. He was irreverent, kind, quick-witted.
“Mrs. Smith referred to you as your lordship,” she said.
“Yes, well, that’s a recent development.”
She raised a brow. “I’m not following.”
His grin was self-deprecating. “Trust me, neither am I.” He took a deep breath, and it seemed he mentally straightened his shoulders. “I have recently come into an earldom. Quite unexpected.”
“Unexpected and, I gather by your hesitation, unwanted?”
He appeared surprised at her astuteness. “Let’s just say it’s taken me a bit of time to warm to the idea.”
“Interesting.”
“Interesting how?” he asked.
She shrugged. “You don’t seem to want your life to change, and I desperately need mine to change.”
Chapter Seven
Jacob’s mind was whirling with a thousand questions, but instinctively, he knew that he had to go slow with Charlotte. Her body language screamed that she wanted to run. She was perched on the edge of the chair, turned away from him, her arms crossed protectively over her stomach. When she wasn’t eating, that is.
She’d consumed her plate of food faster than he’d seen anyone eat, and she kept glancing longingly at the remaining sandwiches. He told her to eat more, and he could tell she wanted to, but she refrained.
She was so thin. Far too thin. Her cheeks were sunken, making her cheekbones more pronounced and her eyes larger, rounder. Even through the layers of clothes he could see her bony shoulders.
But despite her appearance, her mind was sharp and focused. She’d immediately drawn a parallel to their lives, and her wise observation that he did not want his life to change and that she desperately needed her life to change had startled him. She was absolutely correct, and he wondered why he had not drawn that conclusion sooner.
“Do you think that’s what it is?” he asked. “That I want my life to stay the same?”
