Page 11 of Alone with a Scarred Earl
“You have a discerning understanding,” he said.
She looked down. The compliment had caught her off guard in its plain sincerity.
“I merely paid attention,” she said, blushing.
Gabriel shook his head in a way that suggested he would not so easily explain away the effort.
“No,” he said quietly. “You understood. That is far more important.”
The carriage rattled again over the uneven road, and neither spoke. Yet something had shifted between them, like a quiet acknowledgment of accord. She no longer felt adrift in the space they occupied. The discussion of estate matters had cleared a path through the silence, but it was her mention of illustration that altered the mood more thoroughly.
They had fallen quiet again, and she had not minded. The silence no longer felt suffocating. It had ceased to be the silence of strangers without words and become that of two persons who need not fill every space with sound. Still, when she spoke again, her tone softened. He had not immediately shunned her when she spoke of the ledgers. How would he feel if he knew she studied the subject intentionally?
“My studies were not confined to farming ledgers,” she said. “I took particular interest in the structure of plants. Drawing them, mostly. Though not in the fashionable style, with posies draped beside Grecian urns. That manner of art offered me little. I was focused on accuracy.”
Gabriel turned toward her.
“You drew them from nature?” he asked, looking as surprised as she was beginning to feel.
She allowed her smile to widen as she nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “With attention to detail. Each stem, each vein, each variation of petal or calyx. One often finds more difference between two species of the same family than expected.”
Gabriel nodded, clearly taking his turn to study her as she spoke.
“You classified them by their form?” he asked.
She nodded, feeling excited despite her previous apprehension.
“And by their arrangement,” she said. “The margin of a leaf, the pattern in which they grow, such as opposite, alternate, or in whorls. I trained myself to distinguish genera that others assumed were identical. I kept a journal and compared each specimen with the Linnaean system.” She paused, then her voice dropped lower. “My father encouraged me. Even when others claimed such pursuits were unsuitable for a young lady. He said the world was filled with order, waiting to be seen, and that no law of nature had ever decreed that a man must be the first to see it.”
Gabriel remained still, his expression open and interested. He is listening to me, she thought with surprise. When she paused, he nodded, giving her a small, encouraging smile.
“He was an unusual man,” she said as she continued. “But he was not unkind. My mother passed when I was very young, and he believed it was his duty to educate me as best he could. There were no governesses with embroidery hoops in our household. He taught me Latin before I learned French and preferred that I climbed trees rather than curtsy at assemblies.”
She held her breath. She had not meant to reveal so much, particularly to the man with whom she was bound for the rest of her life. Yet his eyes held no judgment, and she found that talking to him, came naturally to him.
“You speak of him with affection,” he said.
Genevieve nodded slowly.
“I do,” she said. “Even when I disagreed with him, I adored him deeply.”
A faint smile touched her lips. She had not spoken of her father in years at such length. Too often, the recollection had stirred more pain than comfort. But now, within the close walls of the carriage, the motion of the road seemed to draw the ache away before it could settle in her chest.
There was a long pause before either of them spoke again.
““I must confess, I had not anticipated that your approach would be so precise,” he said at last.
Genevieve shrugged.
“I had not expected you to know the names of every child in your village,” she said with light, genuine warmth.
The corners of his mouth lifted into a ghost of a smile.
“I should like to see your drawings,” he said after another pause. “If you have kept them, that is.”
Genevieve nodded, her cheeks beginning to burn.
