“Meeting people isn’t the same as having them for friends. I’ve met several people since my arrival to Texas, but I do not know enough about them to call them my friends. Therefore they are only acquaintances.”
He got the feeling she was leading up to something. Whatever it was, he probably wouldn’t like it.
He resolved to throw her off track. “I don’t know a lot about you, either. Reckon that makes you only an acquaintance.”
She flicked the green stem of her strawberry into the moonlit field. “You wound me, sir. You know more about me than anyone else in Texas.”
He ate more chicken and thought about what she had said. “I don’t know hardly anything about you.”
“Truly?” She tilted her head toward her shoulder. “Well, I reallyhaven’ttold you much, have I? It wasn’t my intention to keep anything from you, though. I can only assume that I’ve been so profoundly interested in knowing more about you, that it slipped my mind to talk about myself. Later this evening, I promise to answer any question you might ask. But for now I must return to the hotel.”
She began gathering the food back into the napkins.
“Where were you born?” he blurted, determined to ask her a couple hundred questions before allowing her to go back to the room.
“New York.”
Roman grabbed more chicken from the napkin she held and tore into it as if he hadn’t eaten in days. “I’m not done eating yet, Theodosia.”
“Oh, very well.” She laid the napkins back down. “But please hurry.”
He chewed so slowly that the chicken turned to mush in his mouth. “What’s your favorite color?”
“I am fond of several colors. I like green, blue, and pink. Are you finished now?”
“No.” He ate some corn on the cob next, trying his best to get a lot stuck between his teeth so he could spend time getting it out again. “Did you have any dolls when you were a little girl?”
“A collection of over three hundred.”
At least she’d had some dolls, he mused. That wasonething normal about her. “Did you play with them every day?”
“Oh, I didn’t play with them at all. They were antiques and much too valuable to handle.”
So much for the one normal thing about her, Roman thought. “Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever met?”
She leaned back against the rocks again and took a deep breath of the cool, flower-scented air. “I met Ebenezer Butterick once.”
“Who the hell is Ebenezer Butterick?”
“He developed the first paper dress patterns. I have also met William Crooks, who discovered thallium, and Joseph Bertrand, who wrote a treatise concerning differential and integral calculus.”
Roman had never heard of any of the men she claimed were so famous. Of course, he didn’t travel through the same social circles she did, either. “I met Darling Delight a few years ago. Got her autograph too. She wrote it right on my…uh—she has good handwriting. Best handwriting I ever saw.”
“Darling Delight? Who is she?”
“Only the most famous showgirl in the world.” He slid a hunk of apple cake into his mouth and licked vanilla icing off his bottom lip. “You know what Darling Delight does?”
“No, and I am not altogether certain I desire to know.”
“She takes off her clothes.”
Theodosia retrieved the napkins again. “I have heard enough. We shall we return to the hotel—”
“She pastes yellow, orange, and red streamers onto her breasts, then moves up and down so the streamers start twirling. When I first saw them spin, I thought she’d caught on fire.”
Theodosia stared at him. “Miss Darling Delight is to be highly commended for her worthy contribution to mankind.” She rose from the ground and brushed bits of grass off her skirts.
“I’m still eating, Theodosia.”
