A reluctant grin lifted the comers of his mouth. “I suppose I was a bit loud.”
“A wounded animal couldn’t be worse,” she flung back, her own sense of the ridiculous sweeping through her.
“Bess, Bess!” St. Ryne said urgently, coming to sit next to her. “Listen to us. We are enjoying each other’s company. Give us a chance!”
She looked at him archly, though her pulse fluttered erratically. “I should hope we could learn to be comfortable with each other,” she said carefully.
St. Ryne’s shoulders slumped and he bit back a scathing retort. “Yes, comfortable. It is more than some have,” he managed to say evenly before returning to his chair. “And where is our treat?”
Elizabeth looked at him quizzically but did not press him. She pulled the top off a silver server. “Right here, and still quite warm.” She handed St. Ryne his plate, laughing at his expression of ecstasy as he took a bite.
“Why is it that this is considered a childhood dessert not suitable once one reaches one’s maturity?”
Elizabeth chuckled as she took a bite. “I don’t know,” she managed to mumble between bites.
“You know, I’d dearly love to see my mother’s face if she were to witness me eating this.”
“Why?”
“My mother is an unusual woman, and that may well be an understatement. She has an arrogant manner one could cut with a knife, and is one of the highest sticklers in theton,yet she is the clumsiest woman, forever knocking over things and breaking them. Father says she adopted her arrogance as a defense for her clumsiness. If she ignores it, it’s like she defies anyone else to notice it. She can be damned infuriating. I don’t know how Father can stand to live with her, but in their own way, they do seem to dote on each other, not that Mother would dare display any such feeling publicly.”
“So why would she react to your eating this?”
“Because she has reached the stage where she has decided I need to become somber, serious, and able to put aside childish things. I must become a paragon of rectitude.”
A trill of uninhibited laughter assailed his ears. “You?” she asked, “a paragon of perfection?”
“So she would have me be.”
“How boring.”
“My thought exactly.”
“At least you have parents who cared. I don’t think my father has ever cared one whit whether I lived or died.”
“Surely you jest!”
“Do I? My father has never forgiven me for killing my mother and refuses, when he can, to recognize my existence.”
“Doing it a little too brown, Bess,” he said severely.
“What do you know of it! You’re much to cocksure of yourself by half. Mama contracted pneumonia after rescuing me from a duck pond. She died a few days later. I was only five at the time; however, Papa blamed me for her death, and it was years before he would even look at me, and he never speaks to me unless he has to. The only person who has ever cared whether I lived or died is Hattie, my old nurse.”
“I care.”
His soft words hung between them. Elizabeth ardently wished she could believe them. A look of open vulnerability appeared in her eyes, pulling at St. Ryne.
“Bess—” he murmured, rising.
A light knock halted him. He turned toward the door, then cast one last glance in Elizabeth’s direction before granting permission to enter.
“Excuse me, my lord, Mr. Tunning's here to see you, sir.”
“Show him in.”
“Do you wish me to leave?” Elizabeth asked, color slowly returning to her face.
“No, that’s not necessary,” he assured her. He turned to confront Tunning when he entered. “Where have you been? I sent for you hours ago.”
