“Probably all of that. I also spend a great portion of the year in Brighton. Do you visit the sea?”
“Sometimes. I prefer Bath. Delicious buns.”
He grinned. “I like baths. And shapely buns.”
She threw a grape at him. “You would.”
“Don’t you?” He popped the grape into his mouth.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
He considered her. “I suppose you have a subscription to a lending library in Bath as well as London?”
“I do,” she agreed. “I presume you have one in Brighton?”
“At Margate. There’s a dedicated section for novels as well as for histories. You’d like it.”
“Hm.” She fluttered her lashes at him. “Something tells me I wouldn’t be able to read a single word without a certain rake interrupting.”
“I was reading my own book,” he protested.
“It was upside-down.”
“It was not! Was it?”
She laughed and shook her head. “You’re dreadful at acting.”
“I prefer to say things plainly,” he admitted. “Fewer complications that way.”
This was usually true, and the reason why Reuben’s hummingbird-like inconstancy was the stuff of legend. He saw no reason to hide his nature or to pretend to want something he did not. It was best to attract only like-minded individuals.
Of course, that was before he’d met Gladys. He had no idea what he was doing now, and couldn’t speak plainly about his feelings on the matter if there was a dueling pistol to his head. He didn’t usually have feelings when it came to these things. At least, nothing more profound than the enjoyment one got from a pleasant afternoon at the racetrack, or a good meal at one’s club. A few hours of mindless indulgence and entertainment, nothing more.
But Gladys made him think. She made him try. He was twisted up in all manner of knots without the least notion how to make a straight line between the two of them.
It should be maddening. It was maddening. But somehow… not off-putting. He liked the challenge. He liked her. And it was quickly becoming evident that a few hours of mindless indulgence with her would not be nearly enough.
Especially the mindless part. Much the opposite. His brain would not cease cataloguing every detail about her. The location of her five freckles, the curl of her dark eyelashes, the rise and fall of her shapely bosom as she drew breath. Everything fascinated and bewitched him. He would not have got any more sleep had he remained in bed last night. His thoughts would have been plagued with images of Gladys either way.
“Do you think,” he began, “that later we might—”
But she was already rising to her feet.
“What is it?” he asked, startled. “Has something happened?”
She lifted up the hourglass. “Time has run out.”
It was a bittersweet victory to note that he’d at least managed to keep her attention for the entire hour this time.
“Tomorrow,” he said quickly. “We can meet at the same time and place—”
“No more picnics. We’ve done that.” She scooped up her book and her parasol.
Reuben racked his brain to think of what else he could offer her in this tiny, marriage-minded town.
“The brewer’s field!” he blurted out. “There’s ales to sample, and…”
And this was an activity one engaged in with one’s equally dissolute gentlemen friends, not the Town lady one was trying to impress.
