Page 31 of The Reckless Love of an Heir
‘She told us you suggested we go to London. Mama intends to host a ball for us.’ Susan sounded as pleased by the idea as Alethea.
‘I never imagined you as a woman who would like a season in London, with all its fuss, the parties and balls.’
‘Why not? Because I love to paint and enjoy studying your father’s books? I can like dancing, art and books.’
He laughed, because obviously it had been a bizarre assumption.
She made a scolding face at him.
Yet, she was right, why should either thing mean she would not enjoy dancing? He had called her rebellious, he had sensed a trapped energy within her, dancing would quite obviously be a way for her to express that. ‘I apologise for my misguided conclusions.’
‘I suppose it is no different from believing you deserved your injuries and refusing to feel sorry for you. I apologise too.’
He smiled broadly at her.Touché. She was so sharp. ‘Yet you knew when I gave up using my sling and Alethea did not, and so I know you care. So you have nothing to apologise for.’
Her eyebrows, which were plucked into pretty narrow lines, lifted above the brass frames of her spectacles. ‘Alethea did not know?’
He shook his head slightly. ‘She commented tonight on the lack of my sling.’
‘Oh. She was probably simply still too vexed with you. You pushed away her sympathy when you asked her to wait a year.’
He laughed again. If Susan had talked this openly and honestly with the Captain, he could understand the man’s enjoyment of Susan’s company, a soldier would appreciate a woman without airs.
‘Your eyes are very unusual. Has anyone told you that?’ It suddenly struck him. They were very bright when they looked at him so directly, full of joy. The grey was extremely pale, and in the light from the hundred or more candles burning in the chandeliers above them, her eyes had the quality of quick-silver.
Colour filled her cheeks. ‘Unusual… No… No one has said so. In what way?’ Her voice expressed doubt, as though she expected him to say something awful in answer.
He smiled. He did not know why he had said it; it was just the way she had looked at him for a moment and her deep blue dress made the pale grey such a contrast, and against her dark eyelashes… He had never looked into her eyes so closely before, that was all. ‘They are a very light grey. It was a compliment.’
‘To call my eyes grey is not a compliment.’
He had never known a woman challenge a compliment before. ‘Your eyes are pretty, Susan.’
She seemed to have no answer then, but coloured up once more and looked beyond his shoulder.
His gaze fell to the little flicker of her pulse in her neck. He had embarrassed her again.
‘When do you return to town?’ she asked as they continued turning. Typical Susan, not sulking and waiting for him to resolve the discomfort he had created, but storming in to smash the ice away herself.
‘Tomorrow.’
She looked back at him. ‘Alethea will miss you.’
‘It is only a few weeks until the season, then she will come to London. She has chosen to avoid me for the last few days in any case.’
‘Not because she has not wished to see you. She is still a fully signed-up member of the Henry Marlow Appreciation Society.’
He stumbled in the turn and his arm lowered a little as the pain in his shoulder jarred. ‘The what?’
‘The Henry Marlow Appreciation Society,’ she said, with a teasing smile. ‘The group of people who are so thoroughly charmed by you they let you get away with anything you wish.’
‘We are back to the charge of me being self-centred then.’
Her smile agreed and continued to mock him.
‘Well, I have promised your sister I shall court her in London so you may watch me laying on the charm to her in spades and breaking every notion you have created about me. I shall establish a new society, the Alethea Forth Appreciation Society and prove to you I can be selfless when I wish.’
She laughed, in a carefree way he’d never heard before. Dancing changed her. It broke her out of her shell, and what he had known was within her shone out. When they had been in each other’s company as children she rarely laughed. She had more often disappeared or squatted down to study some insect crawling through the grass.
