Page 38 of His Lordship's True Lady
“I feel a compulsion to warn those rabbits,” Miss Ferguson said. “They are entirely too entranced by their clover.”
She made a pretty picture in a wide-brimmed straw hat and old-fashioned walking dress of faded chocolate. Her millinery was as plain as any goose-girl’s, not a frill, feather, or extra ribbon to be seen, and that only set off the elegance of her profile.
“The breeze warns those rabbits of the peril behind them. Most wild creatures who graze will arrange themselves thus, with their backs to the prevailing wind. Their eyes guard them from what’s downwind, their noses from what’s upwind, and their ears from hazards unseen.”
Rather like Hessian in the ballroom. He kept his back to the wall, potted palms on at least one side, and eyes alert for a hostess seeking to pair him with any women save the wallflowers.
He liked the wallflowers, and hoped they liked him as well.
Miss Ferguson opened her book of fables to a random page. “You notice a great deal, my lord.”
He noticed that Miss Ferguson was in a less approachable mood than when they’d shared an alcove with Apollo.
“I’ve spent many an hour pursuing wild game on my estate. For the most part, I tramp about, making a great racket and taking the air, but I have learned a few things from the beasts of the field. I notice that your ear has healed quite nicely, for example.”
He’d like to nuzzle that ear. Perhaps all that twaddle about fresh spring air and the mating urge had some basis in science.
“My ear?”
“This very ear here.” He touched her earlobe with his thumb and forefinger. “You slipped in the middle of a game of tag and got quite the gash on your ear. Your concern was not for your hearing, not for the consequences of a blow to the head, but for the imperfection your misadventure would leave. For weeks, you wore your hair such that your ear was covered, because there was a scar.”
That ear was perfectly nuzzle-able now, no sign of any childhood mishap.
“Children heal better than adults do, but you should know, my lord, that my propensity for bad spills followed me past my childhood.”
Hessian half-reclined on an elbow, lest he get to caressing her earlobe again—or any other part of her.
“You seem unscathed.” Not quite true. In childhood, Lily Ferguson had borne a sense of entitlement, as if she’d already known she’d become an heiress. The present Lily did not suffer fools, but claimed modesty, humility, and common sense among her possessions.
The childhood Lily, in the opinion of a youthful Hessian, had been a pest.
“I am physically hale,” she said, “but while at finishing school, I suffered a bad fall from an ill-tempered mount and took a blow to the head. I slept for two days and seemed to awaken unharmed, but, in fact, my memory is not whole. I can recall anything that happened after the fall, but not the fall itself and not all of what happened to me prior to it.”
Another fact added itself to her recitation: A blow to the head could change personality, just as an apoplexy could. Winters were long in Cumberland, and Hessian had passed more than one reading through the medical treatises in the Grampion library.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I did not enjoy much of my youth and childhood, but I’d enjoy less if it hopped off into the hedges of my memory and eluded my recall. One likes to know one’s own history.”
Her gaze passed over him as fleetingly as a breeze. “Even if that history is painful?”
Another lady would have offered a quip, a flirtation, a flattery. Lily offered a difficult question—she’d lost both parents, after all—and Hessian liked her for it.
“I hope my painful memories protect me from future harm. By God, that child has hidden depths of patience. Her mother was persistent when fixed on a goal too.”
Daisy had come within a yard of her quarry.
“Hidden depths of stealth. Girls learn early how to not be noticed. Then they are told that being noticed by the right sort of fellow in the right way defines success for them. It’s confusing.” She passed him the book. “Did life as an earl deal you many painful memories, my lord?”
Her question was an effort to turn the conversation to him—another skill most women learned early and well—and yet, Hessian wanted to answer. Kissing was all quite fine, but this conversation was personal, and that met a need kisses could not fulfill.
“My late wife occasioned some pain, for me and for my brother, and in the end for herself. She was from a local family, and I’d known her for years. I thought my brother had taken an interest in her—Worth got all the charm, you see—but she began to confide in me. She claimed that Worth had treated her callously, toyed with her, even trifled with her, and then scorned her.”
Miss Ferguson loosened the ribbons of her straw hat. “Young men can be scoundrels.”
The insult she’d been dealt in Hessian’s club came to mind. Perhaps Worth could be convinced to ruin Islington.
And all of his lordship’s drunken little friends too.
“A young man can also be gullible as hell,” Hessian said, “and competitive with his only brother. Increasingly, the young lady found comfort in my embrace—great, strapping bastion of male thick-headedness that I was. She would cry and fret, which required that even a brute such as I stroke her hair, pat her back, and lend her my handkerchief, all the while battling such thoughts as a gallant knight never admits save to his confessor.”
