Page 39 of Miss Dignified
“I have only the one sibling, and he didn’t come along until I was in the schoolroom. My parents doted on him—the only boy—and he wasn’t as robust as some young fellows. He liked his history books, liked to elude his tutors to ramble about the park, liked chess and old Latin philosophers. He beat me at chess for three straight years, and because I am his older sister, I felt it my duty to let him win at first. Then I got serious about the game, and he stopped playing with me.”
“He was faint-hearted, then. Could not stand to be beaten by a mere sister. My sisters regularly best me at any number of undertakings.” Making small talk at the top of the list.
Dylan had meant for this shared meal to be pleasant, a lighthearted counterpoint to the day’s earlier discussion of severance and propriety. Matters, as was so often the case, were not going as he’d planned.
“Would you enjoy an occasional game of chess?” he asked, moving the epergne closer to Lydia’s plate.
“I would.” Her smile was shy, not like any of her previous smiles. “I have not played in years.” She reached for one sandwich, then apparently decided to take a different one.
“Where is your brother now?”
She set the sandwich on her plate. “Traveling. Mama misses him terribly.”
And a family that could afford to send its only son off on travel was a family with some means, as was a family with the leisure to play chess or hire tutors for the only son.
“Doyoumiss this odious brother?”
“Do you miss your sisters?”
“I do, until they threaten to descend, then I am unaccountably willing for them to continue biding in Wales.”
“Don’t you miss Wales, Captain? I’m told it’s beautiful.”
“Wales is so far beyond beautiful that words fail. You’ve never been?” Shropshire bordered Wales, and many an older denizen of Shropshire’s western villages still claimed Welsh as their native tongue.
“I haven’t. Are you truly waiting to see William Brook settled before you allow yourself to leave London?”
“If my cousins asked, I would say I had a few more men to look after. Until recently, I was in truth more concerned for Goddard and MacKay, who both have found solid footing with their respective ladies. Brook’s disappearance is troubling, though, and now I’ve created a post for Bowen that won’t survive my eventual remove to Wales.”
“Would he travel to Wales with you?”
“Not without his brother. Where has your brother decided to wander? Is he larking about the Continent with the fashionable crowd?”
Lydia picked up her sandwich. “Every time I mention Wales, you change the subject, Captain. Why is that?”
“Guilt, I suppose.” The words were out, unplanned and damnably honest.
“Can you explain?”
Dylan had never tried to before, but for her, he made the effort. “I come from Dissenting stock. The irony of that status is that those who grasped the wisdom of rebelling against Rome, and who then rebelled against Canterbury, are often the least tolerant of rebellion in their children.”
“You were a naughty boy?”
Dylan was glad they were eating out of doors, where nobody could overhear, glad for the relatively fresh air this close to the parks and for a chance to think this topic through before the sisters arrived.
“I was an only boy, like your brother, and expectations were heaped on me like pots on a tinker’s cart. I was to be well educated but humble, hardworking but joyous, sober but good-humored… nothing in excess, nothing spontaneous. I grew impatient with my father’s endless sermons and exhortations, impatient with my sisters expecting me to constantly charm their acquaintances. I had never aspired to be a paragon, and all of my friends and both of my cousins had already bought their colors.”
“You ran away from home.”
“In a word, yes. I scraped together every groat I could get my hands on and begged my father to come up with the rest of what I’d need to buy a commission. The nation was at war, and Papa expected me to spend my days as his unpaid bailiff. Running off to Spain was the furthest thing from the great lark I expected, but one cannot resign a commission simply because one ends up serving in hell under a commander who by comparison made the enemy look like…”
Dylan fell silent, having once again made a hash of what should have been a pleasant, informal meal. Goddard had the whole family’s complement of social self-possession, and MacKay had got all the charm. That left… honesty, perhaps, for Dylan.
Not exactly a gift, if it gave the lady a distaste for him.
Lydia offered him the epergne again, but he shook his head. “No sweets, thank you.”
“No sweets and no sweetness?” she replied, putting a lemon-iced tea cake on his plate. “You have banished yourself from your home because you were among thousands of foolish, patriotic boys looking for adventure in uniform?”
