Page 72 of Enticing Odds
Cressida chuckled and plucked the book from his hands. She couldn’t recall Henry ever reading for amusement unless the book was of questionable taste.
“The Rambler?” she asked, opening it to the title page. “By Dr. Johnson, no less.” She snapped it shut and handed it back without attempting to disguise the surprised smile upon her face.
“It’s fine,” Henry shrugged. “I like the way each section is brief. You don’t get tired because nothing’s overlong and there’s always a new topic.”
“What a discerning and mature evaluation, Master Caplin,” she said with a skeptical eyebrow.
“It was Dr. Collier who suggested it, anyway,” Henry said dismissively.
Cressida paused.
A strange ache took hold in her chest. Rather than consider it, she pressed on, forcing a smile and a subject change.
“So when you buy yourself a nice house, do you think you would spend your idle time reading?”
Henry turned about on the branch, sitting up straight, thinking.
“Perhaps,” he admitted. “I think I should prefer to live on the coast. Then I might scour the cliffs for curiosities. Fossils and such.” He paused to look at her with all the earnestness of the child he still was, even if he desperately wished to be a young man. “You’ll come visit me, won’t you, Mama?”
“Of course, darling,” she laughed. “I shall forever be begging an invite; you shall not easily be rid of me.”
He smiled half-heartedly. Cressida could sense his unease.
“What is it, darling?”
“Only, well, it’s just you hate Birchover Abbey so much.”
“Dearest,everyonewould hate Birchover Abbey, if only they had the misfortune to acquaint themselves with it.”
“You always wish to be here, in London,” Henry muttered.
“Do I?” she said, but even as she spoke the words she knew it to be true.
Parties, balls, meetings, plays, operas… the season was an endless parade of empty, performative engagements. Cressida thought of the horrid speaker at the Ladies Union for the Cessation of Social Ills meeting that she and Mrs. Rickard had both endured. There were the dinner parties, very much like the one she’d hosted only a few evenings prior, in which she had taken it upon herself to so publicly eviscerate Mrs. Brenchley that even Arthur had taken issue with her handling of the woman.
“Mama,” Henry said, rolling his eyes. He opened his book once more. “It’s only that… well.” His brow furrowed as he turned back to the page he was on. “I think you might like it.”
“Like what, darling?”
“Living in the country. You like plants, you know.”
“I do,” she admitted.
“It’s just a thought, Mama.”
And then she turned away, leaving him to his reading even as her heart felt rent in two.
What would Matthew have thought, were he in attendance at her last party? The man rarely had a cross word for anyone. Would he still admire her if he saw her in her natural environment—the ballroom—cutting down rivals and forming petty alliances? Needlessly tormenting her brother, outmaneuvering his every attempt at procuring a wife?
Her throat felt thick.
Blast this man. When had she cared a whit for what a man thought of her? Not since she’d been in the first blush of her youth, hopeful and naïve, praying for her betrothed husband every night before bed.
Before he exposed himself as the weak, pathetic cretin that he was.
But Matthew was not Bartholomew. Not in the slightest. Gentle as a lamb, and stronger than any man she could name. For gentleness like that only came from a deep strength. Being cruel was far too easy. Cressida, of all people, knew that well.
She picked up her trowel, her mind as uncertain as her future.
