“Pardon?” He couldn’t have heard her correctly.
“And,” she continued, firm, definite, “if me being an innocent is the only way we can be friends, then it’s been nice knowing you, Mr. Kendall.”
Well, that was certainly him put in his place. Except… Oh, how could he put this… “You don’t seem like the sort of woman who goes around, erm, not being innocent.”
Again, she laughed, which was a bit of a relief. “It has been a while since I’ve beennotinnocent. Years, in fact,” she added.
Lucas would have discreetly left the subject there, but for one thing. The note of sadness that threaded through the words and hovered about her. “Did a man”—he didn’t want to speak the next words, but he must—“harm you?” He couldn’t tolerate the idea, but he needed to know.
She eased away from him, as if she needed distance for what she was about to say. Lucas braced himself.
“Like too many girls, I once thought I was in love.”
The words were spoken lightly, as mere anecdote. Except they held an ineffable heft that was neither light nor mere.
They were words that had shaped this woman’s life.
“But that’s not really the beginning,” she said. “Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted a family, one of my own.”
“That’s not too unusual, I would think.”
“Except I was the fifth of seven children. You would think I’d had enough of big families. But Mum was a washerwoman, and had ideas about the way her house should be run after Papa died. Tighter than the military, it was.”
“How old were you when he died?” Lucas’s own father had perished before he could form a memory of the man.
“Four years.” Her face transformed with a faraway smile. “I remember his beard. It was soft, and he let me braid it.” The affection she still held for her father was clear. “In Mum’s house, we were all expected to contribute to the coffers once we were old enough to come by work.”
“That seems…” Lucas wasn’t sure he could finish the sentence without insulting her.
“Harsh?” she said, intuiting his unspoken word.
He nodded.
She smiled. “You would think that.”
“What do you mean?”
Now it was she weighing words, afraid of offending him.
“You can say anything to me,” he said.
“You would think that,” she said, “because you’re not versed in the realities of the world.”
“Are you saying I’m soft?” Perhaps he was a bit offended.
“Oh, I know of one thing that’s hard about you,” she said on a laugh.
Lucas thought he might blush. He wasn’t accustomed to this side of Miss Tait. Her saucy side.
“But there is a softness in your heart, Mr. Kendall,” she clarified. “I like that about you.”
She liked something about him.
It was a start.
“When I was fifteen,” she continued, “my sister got me work as a scullery in a tea shop.” She drew a deep breath. “And that’s where I met Tommy Trumble. He was… older.”
Lucas could already tell that he wanted to punch this Tommy Trumble directly in the nose.
