Page 14 of Defying the Earl
“Well, then, what shall we talk about?” she asked with gentle emphasis on thewe, as though he were slightly daft.
“You have never really struck me as the sort who needed help or instruction in that regard, Beatrice,” Braxton remarked.
“You really ought to remember that I have not given you leave to address me so informally,” she returned tartly.
“You certainly did,” he countered, causing Bea to be thrown back into the past when she had done just that.
She could almost hear the echo of their voices, especially his, as he uttered her name in his delicious, deep voice, close to her ear as they strolled or danced or however they spent time together at that fateful house party in the past.
“Those were different times, my lord,” she finally managed to answer stiffly. “You were an entirely different person, and perhaps so was I.”
“Very well, my lady,” Braxton began with a twist of sardonic humour. “What have you been doing with yourself these past two years?”
Bea couldn’t object, he was using the polite form of address and he was turning the subject. But how was she to answer the question? She kept her gaze fixed between the ears of the horse directly in front of her, not even noticing the passing scenery or the stares of the other riders as they entered the park and Braxton slowed his pair of horses to a sedate trot.
“The Ladies enjoy spending time in Bath,” she finally answered somewhat indirectly.
“And do you enjoy Bath?” he asked, making Bea wish she had thought to mention something else.
“Not as much as life in the village near the dower house,” she finally said after a slight pause.
Bea quickly shook off her doldrums to ward off another heavy silence. She had agreed to go driving with him. It would be churlish to make him work at every single conversational gambit.
“Never mind about my activities, I am certain they will pale into insignificance in comparison to yours. How were thecolonies? Did you enjoy exploring? Was the crossing dreadful? Are you disappointed to be back on the Kingdom’s soil?”
Braxton’s chuckle made her stomach curl. “One could argue that the colonies are the Kingdom’s soil too, but I know what you mean. I would have preferred to continue in what I was doing in Upper Canada than to return to take over what I always considered my brother’s domain.” He heaved a sigh that Bea thought sounded almost disconsolate. “Of course, too, I would rather neither he nor my father had died. Father wasn’t even that old. I hadn’t thought my brother was due to inherit let alone me taking the title.”
“No, of course not,” Bea agreed, sympathy softening some of her antipathy toward him. “That must have been quite a shock to be sure.”
Braxton cleared his throat as though embarrassed to have admitted to such feelings and carried on in answering the questions she had raised. “The crossing wasn’t nearly as dreadful for me as I had often heard, in either direction. I must have gotten lucky with the timing.”
“From what I understand, though, it also takes a strong constitution.”
“Another fortunate circumstance for me, then,” the earl agreed with a grin. “The only trouble with crossing the Atlantic, even in good weather, is that it is a rather dull period. Even if you make the fastest time, it is still weeks at sea with nothing to look at except the increasingly haggard faces of your fellow passengers. And when I reached shore, I swore I’d never eat fish again,” he added with a laugh. “That vow didn’t last long, though, when fish was my only option at times as I journeyed to my assignment in York.”
Beatrice knew her face was filled with wonder as she stared at the fashionable man at her side. “I find it difficult to even imagine you in such primitive surroundings, to be honest.”
Braxton laughed and waved his hand in a gesture that encompassed all their surroundings. “With all of this glamour, I know it’s difficult to picture, but most people are amazingly adaptable. As long as we have food and shelter, we can manage just about anything.”
Bea nodded because she knew that about herself, but she still had trouble imagining the elegant Earl of Braxton in rough conditions.
“The vastness of the colonies was the biggest surprise for me. You would find it difficult to fathom how large that land is. Yes, it is primitive. But there is a certain beauty in the starkness. And there is something so fulfilling about surviving the privations. And then you get to a fort or village, seemingly sprouting from nowhere, and you can almost think you had imagined the voyage there. Especially York. It is barely more than a decade old and yet it’s aspirations toward grandeur know no bounds. I think you’d like it.”
Beatrice laughed. “Do I strike you as someone with aspirations to grandeur?”
Braxton laughed with her. “That was not the part I meant, my lady,” he returned drily. “I think you would enjoy helping it reach its potential.”
Bea nodded as though she understood but tried to imagine moving somewhere so very removed from everything she knew and starting completely fresh. It wasn’t as though she had family or many friends here so it might actually be something she ought to consider. But a woman on her own would be unsafe, surely.
“Are there many women there?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered immediately. “Women are highly sought after in the colonies as there is a marked shortage in comparison to the male population, but there are women, especially in the forts and villages.”
“Did you ever feel unsafe?” she asked, trying not to sound breathless over the thought.
Braxton chuckled. “Frequently. Of course, most of the time, I wasn’t truly unsafe, I was merely uncertain as it was an entirely new experience for me. Aside from my grand tour, I had never been far from home. And really, the Tour isn’t so very unfamiliar since everyone has done it.”
“I haven’t,” Beatrice retorted.
