“Miss Leah Penn-Leith, at your service, Mr. Carnegie.”
He winced. “Of course, you have the manners to remember my name.”
“As your Christian name is Fox, it does have a tendency tae stick.”
He smiled at that, teeth flashing and sending a zing of pleasure chasing her spine. The sensation was akin to winning first place in the jam-making contest at the Fettermill Summer Fair. (Which she had done. Twice.)
More to the point, his grin rendered him boyish and young, too young to be in a soldier’s uniform. Was Mr. Carnegie even older than herself?
“I must apologize for Lord Dennis.” He nodded toward his friend, sleeping beside him. “I fear he mistook your room for . . . another’s.”
“Another lady?” The thought was rather shocking. That Lord Dennis would have entered a woman’s room, crawled into bed with her, and the lady would have . . . welcomed it?
Lascivious, indeed.
“I shall say nothing more upon the matter, as it involves some delicacy, as you might imagine.”
Well, Leahhadn’tbeen imagining it, but now . . .
Her eyes dropped to the long fingers dangling over his knees. What if it had been Mr. Carnegie’s gentle hands reaching for her? Would she have pulled away so quickly?
She looked away, a blush scalding her skin.
“Regardless,” he continued quietly, thankfully oblivious to her wayward thoughts, “I noticed when we parted that Lord Dennis had gone down the wrong corridor, so I followed hi—”
Wham!
Another door banged down the hallway, causing them both to jump.
Someone giggled.
Mr. Carnegie frowned and sent a speaking glance toward the door. “I fear it might be a while before we can make an escape unseen, Miss Penn-Leith.” He nudged Lord Dennis’s prone body with his foot.
Leah nodded.
They sat in silence for a moment. It was a companionable sort of thing, as if they were comrades in arms, waiting to complete an important tactical mission.
Having been raised by a stoically silent father, Leah understood that silence was often a conversation unto itself.
Sometimes it could be as soothing as an embrace, as understanding as a longblether.
Other times, silence was a noisy thing—loud and shouty and demanding attention.
Not everyone was fluent in the language of silence, but Mr. Carnegie appeared to have mastered it. Quiet felt peaceful in his presence.
Leah liked him all the more for it.
The scent of shaving soap and sandalwood drifted over her. It was a remarkably masculine smell, the sort that rendered a young woman weak-kneed and pliable, willing to make all sorts of poor decisions.
Keep your wits about ye, Leah!
“So . . .” she began, floundering for a topic, “uhmmm,Fox. . . that is an unusual given name.”
“I suppose,” he snorted. “My father was quite fond of Mr. Charles Fox’s politics. I was named in his honor.”
Leah was unsure how to respond. The nameCharles Foxwas vaguely familiar. Hadn’t Mr. Jamieson, the town glazier, once said something rather crude about Mr. Fox when he thought no women were present?
“He was always a bit of a radical, Mr. Fox,” Mr. Carnegie continued as if he, too, were eager to have a topic to discuss. “He championed revolution, hated imperialistic warmongering, and detested our current Hanoverian kings. My father was rather passionate about Mr. Fox’s pacifistic views and democratic principles.”
