“I hardly know anything about you.”
“Well, what do you want to know?”
She thought for a moment. “Your favorite thing to eat for breakfast,” she decided.
Arthur couldn’t help laughing. “That’s why you wanted to have breakfast with me? You wanted to find out what my favorite meal was?”
“Among other things. Is there some reason I can’t know that?”
“No, of course you can. I’m just surprised that that’s the question you wanted to ask me.” He thought about it for a moment. “I suppose I like bread and chocolate best of all.”
She smiled. “I do too,” she said. “But I was never allowed it at home—at my father’s house, I mean.”
“Why not?”
“My half-sister, Rosalind, is very vain and concerned about her figure,” Isabella said. “She refuses to touch things like bread and chocolate. She says they’ll make her lose her looks.”
Arthur laughed. “Of course, they wouldn’t. You eat them every day, and you’re the most beautiful lady I’ve ever seen.”
Isabella blushed and smiled. “Well, she gave orders that any food she didn’t want to eat be banned from the table, and my father supported her because he gives Rosalind anything she wants.”
“I see. What did you have at breakfast?”
“Tea. Sometimes an egg.”
“Well, that isn’t very much.”
“No,” Isabella said. “By comparison, the breakfasts you serve here are wonderful. It’s been one of my favorite things about coming to Windhill—the meals.”
“I’m glad to hear it hasn’t all been terrible.”
She laughed. “I never said that any of it had beenterrible,” she told him. “I’m sorry you thought I felt that way. I’ve been lonely, that’s all. And you can understand the reasons why, I think.”
“I can,” he agreed. “I’m sorry you’ve felt that way.”
“What’s your favorite color?” she asked him.
He set down his fork. “My favorite color?”
“I’d like to know.”
“What could you possibly need to know that for?”
“If I’m going to continue making changes around the manor, it would be appropriate for me to know what colors you like.”
“Is that really why you’re asking me this? Because you don’t trust in your ability to select curtains that will make me happy?”
“Partially,” she said. “And partially because you’ve limited what I’m allowed to ask you. I don’t think you’ll welcome any questions about your work.”
He said nothing. She had judged that correctly.
“But I do want to get to know you better,” she continued, “so I’m asking questions I think will be safe. Your favorite food. Your favorite color.”
“Green,” he said.
“Green? Like grass? Or more like emeralds?”
“Like grass, I suppose,” he said though in truth he had been thinking of neither. It was her eyes that came into his mind when he thought of the color green—bright, beautiful, and piercing. He could get lost in those eyes, and he frequently did just that.
