She rushed into the room, her hands clasped together in delight. “You’re doing it!”
“Of course I’m doing it,” he growled. “It was your idea and is therefore your fault.”
“This is marvelous,” she told him. “Youare marvelous.”
“You’remarvelous,” he countered, and immediately pulled a face. “Lad, are you still here?”
The boy dashed from the room.
“My valet,” Theodore said. “I can’t tell if he wants to be my protégé or my mother.”
She came closer. “How long have you been using the crutches?”
“About an hour.” He gave a crooked smile. “There’s a partridge expecting me in the outbuilding. I thought I’d take my afternoon constitutional on foot today.”
“Take it slow,” she warned him. “It might be best if your first steps on crutches don’t involve uneven terrain and patches of ice.”
His jaw tightened. “I don’t want to take it slow. I want to bebetter.”
“Every day I’ve visited, you’ve been better than the last,” she pointed out. “You’ll be yourself again in no time.”
It was bittersweet. Theodore improved every single day. And the moment he was well enough to leave her… Hewould.
“I’m proud of you,” she said, despite the lump in her throat. “This isn’t just one of the steps in the process to recovery. It’s one of the last big obstacles.”
He brightened. “Did you bring ice cream to celebrate?”
“I didn’t know I’d find you on your feet.” She hesitated, then opened her reticule. “I brought you this instead.”
He accepted the slim volume from her. “A book?”
Her heart sank. “Is it a stupid gift?”
“I love books.” Theodore flipped the volume over to inspect it. “And I have never read…The Naturalist’s Miscellany or Coloured Figures of Natural Objects; Drawn and Described Immediately From Nature.”
“It’s from the castle library,” she admitted. “You’ll have to return it before you go.”
He clutched it to his chest. “When the time comes, I shall summon the personal fortitude required to part with it.”
She nodded. “Although sketched illustrations are a feeble representation of the wonders of life, sometimes pen and ink is more than enough to transport us from our own life into another.”
He tilted his head. “Are you always so poetic?”
“Poetic?” she stammered in confusion.
Oddwas how most people described her. Eccentric. Random. Awkward. Peculiar.
“I like how you see the world,” he said. “I want to think in clever metaphors, but the talent eludes me. You have a gift.”
Talent.
He thought hergifted.
Virginia swayed, so foreign were the compliments he was firing her way. No one had ever taken her strangeness as an advantage before, least of all Virginia.
“I…” The idea that anyone could consider any of her traits to be an enviable talent had completely robbed the breath from her lungs.
Theodore wasn’t embarrassed by her. He didn’t want her to change the way her mind worked. He thought she was just… Virginia. And liked her that way.
