Page 10 of The Captive
“Helene was my cousin,” the lady said, recapturing Christian’s attention, because nobody had referred to the late duchess by name in his presence. “The family was planning to offer you me, but then Greendale started sniffing around me, and Helene was by far the prettier, so she went for a duchess while I am merely a countess. Shouldn’t the tea be here by now?”
Now he did remember, the way the first few lines of a poem will reveal the entire stanza. He’d met this Lady Greendale. She had a prosaic, solidly English name he could not recall—perhaps she’d just told him what it was, perhaps he’d seen it somewhere—but she’d been an attendant at his wedding, his and Helene’s. Greendale’s gaze had followed his young wife with a kind of porcine possessiveness, and the wife had scurried about like a whipped dog.
Christian had pitied her at the time. He didn’t pity her now.
But then, he didn’t feel much of anything when his day was going well.
“Here’s the thing…” She was mercifully interrupted by the arrival of the tea tray. Except it wasn’t simply a tray, as Christian had ordered. The trolley bore a silver tea service, a plate of cakes, a plate of finger sandwiches, and a bowl of oranges, because his smiling, hopeful, attentive staff was determined to put flesh on him.
His digestion was determined to make it a slow process.
“Shall I pour?” She had her gloves off and was rearranging the tray before Christian could respond. “One wonders what ladies do in countries not obsessed with their tea. Do they make such a ritual out of coffee? And you take yours plain, I believe. Helene told me that.”
What odd conversations women must have, comparing how their husbands took tea. “I no longer drink tea. I drink…nursery tea.”
A man whose every bodily function had been observed for months should not be embarrassed to admit such a thing, and Christian wasn’t. He was, rather, humiliated and enraged out of all proportion to the moment.
“Hence the hot water,” she said, peering at the silver pot that held same. “Do you intend to loom over me up there, or will you come down here beside me for some tea?”
He did not want to move a single inch.
She chattered, and her hands fluttered over the tea service like mating songbirds, making visual noise to go with her blathering. She cut up his peace, such as it was, and he already knew she would put demands on him he didn’t care to meet.
And yet, she hadn’t smiled, hadn’t pretended grown dukes drank nursery tea every night. Whatever else was true about the lady, she had an honesty about her Christian approved of.
He sat on the sofa, several feet away from her.
She made no remark on his choice of seat.
“I suppose you’ve heard about that dreadful business involving Greendale. Had Mr. Stoneleigh not thought to produce the bottle of belladonna drops for the magistrate—the full, unopened bottle, still in its seal—you might have been spared my presence permanently. I can’t help but think old Greendale did it apurpose, gave me the drops just to put poison in my hands. Easterbrook probably sent them from the Continent all unsuspecting. Greendale wanted me buried with him, like some old pharaoh’s wife. Your tea.”
She’d made him a cup of hot water, sugar, and cream—nursery tea, served to small children to spare them tea’s stimulant effects.
“I’ll fix you a plate too, shall I?” A sandwich, then two, as well as two cakes were piled onto a plate by her busy, noisy hands.
“An orange will do.”
She looked at the full plate as if surprised to find all that food there, shrugged, and set it aside. “I’ll peel it for you, then. A lady has fingernails suited for the purpose.”
She set about stripping the peel from the hapless orange as effectively as she was stripping Christian’s nerves, though in truth, she wasn’t gawking, she wasn’t simpering, she wasn’t smiling. The lady had business to transact, and she’d dispatch it as efficiently as she dispatched the peel from the orange.
And those busy hands were graceful. Christian wanted to watch them work, wanted to watch them be feminine, competent, and pretty, because this too—the simple pleasure of a lady’s hands—had been long denied him.
He took a sip of his nursery tea, finding it hot, sweet, soothing, and somehow unsatisfying. “Perhaps you’d be good enough to state the reason for your call, Lady Greendale?”
“We’re not to chat over tea, even? One forgets you’ve spent the last few years among soldiers, Your Grace, but then the officers on leave are usually such gallant fellows.” She focused on the orange, which was half-naked on the plate in her lap. “This is just perfectly ripe, and the scent is divine.”
The scent was good. Not a scent with any negative associations, not overpowering, not French.
“You are welcome to share it with me,” he said, sipping his little-boy tea and envying her the speed with which she’d denuded the orange of its peel.
Peeling an orange was a two-handed undertaking, something he’d had occasion to recall in the past three days. This constant bumping up against his limitations wearied him as Girard’s philosophizing never had. Yes, he was free from Girard’s torture, but everywhere, he was greeted with loss, duress, and decisions.
“Your orange?” She held out three quarters of a peeled orange to him, no smile, no faintly bemused expression to suggest he’d been woolgathering—again.
“You know, it really wasn’t very well done of you, Your Grace.” She popped a section of orange into her mouth and chewed busily before going on. “When one has been traveling, one ought to go home first, don’t you think? But you came straight up to Town, and your staff at Severn was concerned for you.”
Concerned for him. Of what use had this concern been when Girard’s thugs were mutilating his hand? Though to be fair, Girard had been outraged to find his pet prisoner disfigured, and ah, what a pleasure to see Girard dealing with insubordination.
