Page 6 of A Delicate Deception
“Then have some cake.” Out of seemingly thin air, she produced a square of what looked like plum cake.
“Do you always carry cake around and offer it to injured or weary travelers?”
“That sounds very high-minded of me. No, I carry it in case I get hungry. Now, are you going to take it?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t eat sweets.”
“What?” she asked, as if he had confessed to cannibalism. “Why ever not?”
Not wanting to get into the issue of sugar boycotts and Quakerism and his parents, he waved his hand dismissively and she tucked the cake away into a tea towel. He shoved his hands in his pockets and continued to loom over her. Now was when he ought to take his leave, to retreat to the forest like some kind of feral creature.
“You can sit and rest for a moment before outrunning your demons again,” she said, and patted the ground beside her.
He sat down, letting his head knock again the tree trunk behind him. She smelled like lemons, and he didn’t know if it was from the cake or her soap, or if it was something else that rich ladies used and he had never heard of. It didn’t matter. He breathed the scent in and let his head fill with it.
“What are you reading?” he asked, because her book remained closed in her lap.
“Oh, haunted castles and imprisoned heirs, the usual.”
Of course she was reading a novel. What had he expected? A treatise on steam engines?
“You probably think it’s very frivolous,” she said. And before he could figure out how to respond, because the truth was that he indeed thought novels were terribly frivolous, but also that it was none of his business what she read nor her business what his opinion was—she continued. “And it is,” she said gleefully. “It’s appalling. It came in the morning post and I absconded with it so Georgiana couldn’t get it first.”
“Very cunning,” he said, not entirely sure whether he meant it as condemnation, praise, or—a jest? Was he joking? He distantly remembered doing such a thing ages ago, in another lifetime, when his heart had been stupidly unguarded.
She leaned forward and turned towards him, glancing at him from around the trunk of the tree. “You can borrow it afterwards.”
“I, er, don’t think Georgiana would thank you for that.” Whoever Georgiana was.
“I meant after Georgiana, of course. I’m not a monster. And you look like you could use a diverting book to read, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”
“That’s just what my eyebrows do,” he said.
She rose onto her knees and peered at him, and he blushed under her scrutiny. “No, it has nothing to do with your eyebrows. It’s the way you carry yourself. As if you’re dragging a great weight.” With that, she resumed her position against the trunk, just out of his sight. On the grass beside him, he could see the folds of her faded muslin gown, and out of the corner of his eye he could make out a glint of red hair.
“It’s not actual demons,” he said, before he could think too much about it.
She let out a puff of air that might have been the beginning of a laugh. “I didn’t think you were actually being chased by demons onto my property. I would not have offered you cake. I’m not certain what I would have done, but cake would not have been my first recourse.”
He could hear the smile in her voice, but he couldn’t see her face, didn’t even know her name, and maybe that was why he continued to speak. “It’s my brother. He died.”
“Oh, I’m so—”
“It was two years ago. Condolences are unnecessary at this point.”
She fell silent for long enough that he wondered if she had resumed reading. Then she cleared her throat. “Naturally, I’m not going to force unwanted sympathies on you. But I have two sisters, and if I lost either of them I might well grieve to some extent for the rest of my life. My mother wore mourning for my father for years after his death.” She paused, and he could see one bare hand smooth the fabric of her skirts. “Then again, it really did suit her. The grays and blacks, I mean.”
And then—oh no, he laughed. It was so inappropriate, and that knowledge only made him laugh harder. He dug his fingers into his thighs and bit the inside of his cheek in a futile attempt at composure. She was talking about the death of one parent and the grief of another, and was appallingly unserious enough to jest about it, and helaughed.“I beg your pardon,” he choked out. “I didn’t mean to—” Didn’t mean to what?
“It’s quite all right. You were meant to laugh.”
He regained some control over himself, tried to summon up some dignified disapproval of her levity. But before he could quite manage it, she went on.
“The truth is that she was devastated by my father’s death. It was very sudden and of course nobody was sending her funeral wreaths or condolence letters, given the circumstances.” Before he could ask what that could possibly mean, she continued. “I had never seen her cry before. It occurred to me that I ought to have died instead of him. Which is a very useless thought, because it’s not like one can choose, and there’s probably something sinful about questioning God’s plan, I suppose.” There it was again, that levity where it didn’t belong, and he should not be so charmed by it. “But at the time I knew I was the least valuable member of the household—my younger sisters are prettier and more biddable and in general more marriageable, and it would have been eminently convenient if I were simply out of the way.” A pause. “I was sixteen, and very dramatic.”
Now, that was simply too much. He rose to his knees and turned so he could see her. “First of all, that is—you are wrong on all counts. Entirely wrong. Even assuming your sisters are unparalleled beauties of sterling character, you can’t measure worth in such a way. I daresay your mother would have been horrified if she knew you had harbored such thoughts.”
She blinked at him, wide gray eyes unflustered by his harangue. “Oh, she was. It made her cry even more, which made us both feel worse.”
