Page 36 of Miss Dramatic
“I read in here by the hour,” she said. “Took naps, daydreamed. Phillip never once chided me for trespassing.”
Trevor ducked his head to enter. “Did he ever join you?”
The smell was piney—cedar formed a good portion of the structure’s interior—and the darkness made the moonlight on the water brilliant.
“Not in the sense you mean. In case you haven’t noticed, your brother is shy. He was all but a recluse before you came upon him. Do have a seat.”
The benches were padded, the night peaceful. Amaryllis’s upset was fading—between Lark’s Nest and Twidboro Hall, there really was no problem housing the players—and thus she could think more clearly.
“I never once consulted you about the guest list,” she said.
“Or the menus, though I know all the latest French dishes.”
Oh dear. “Or the entertainments, the sleeping arrangements, the appointments.”
Trevor kissed her fingers. “Theanything. You know every variation on my recipe for ale. You test the batches with me. You helped me choose where to start planting the hops and barley because you know this shire better than I know my own family tree. Your contribution is central to our success. I wanted to help with your success.”
Amaryllis’s husband had wanted to help and also tobe appreciated. His father had had no use for him. Polite society had seen the young Marquess of Tavistock as nothing but a good catch. Trevor’s brother had been a stranger to him, and the village merely wanted bragging rights toourmarquess.
“I need you,” Amaryllis said, resting her head on his shoulder. “I need you not as I need sound sleep and good food. I can manage on bad sleep and poor rations, but I need you if I am to be myself. To be whole. This dependency unnerves me.”
“Ah.” He looped his arm around her shoulders. “Bit of a change of plans?”
“A change of worlds.”
“Would tossing me in the Twid make you feel less unnerved?”
A dip in the Twid would be heavenly, particularly with Trevor as a swimming partner, but the hour was growing late, and the whole business of dressing when damp…
“My nerves settle when you kiss me,” Amaryllis said. “Or when I kiss you.”
“My own nerves have grown a touch unreliable. I’ve bungled with my wife, you see, and her good opinion of me defines the best part of my happiness. I am sorry, Amaryllis. No more surprises, unless they involve boxes wrapped in silk ribbon or perhaps a lovely new mare who’s up to your weight for heart and courage. I’d be most grateful if you’d demonstrate this business of settling the nerves with kisses.”
How she loved him. Loved his humor and patience and affection and…
Amaryllis’s nerves were on the way to being well and truly settled when a sound caught her ear. “Voices,” she whispered.
Trevor’s hands disappeared from her person. “Miss Peasegood,” he whispered back, “and Lady Iris.”
The women were speaking softly, but clearly unaware of Phillip’s hideaway behind the rhododendrons.
“Mrs. Roberts prevaricated,” Miss Peasegood said. “I asked when they’d met, and she at first regaled me with some tale of a Hampshire gathering at the Earl of Nunn’s. I had to ask very directly about when she’d met DeWitt.”
“One doesn’t forget a man like that,” Lady Iris muttered.
“He’s apparently forgotten you.”
“He was never supposed to notice me. Nobody was. That was the point. What did Mrs. Roberts say about him?”
Miss Peasegood sighed, as if preparing to recite her signature verse for dear old Auntie Patricia at Sunday supper. “She said, ‘I was reading, or trying to read, Wordsworth, because one is supposed to read and quote him, though at the time…’ and I commiserated, and then she went on, ‘I was in the music room, where I hoped nobody would have thought to look for me. I’d taken a window seat, the better to enjoy the natural light, when Mr. DeWitt came in. The door was open. There was no reason for him not to spend an hour or so practicing his pianoforte or harp or whatever.’”
“Zinnia, get to the point.”
“Be patient. I asked if he’d invaded her sanctuary. She replied, ‘He waited for me. Stood by the door in silence while I finished the stanza I was trudging through. He knew to wait. To spare me apologies, greetings, any sort of interruption, until I’d completed the poem.’ Then she went into raptures about his smile. She clearly does not suspect him of thievery, or worse.”
“I’m not surewesuspect him. Delphine says his finances are quite in order.”
They moved up the path, and the rest of their words were lost to the night.
