“Miss Osbourne,” he said, “what a pleasant day it has been. I looked up several times during the course of it, but not once did I observe a single cloud in the sky. And the evening is almost as balmy as the day, or was when I left Hareford House.”
She looked at him again, her green eyes grave. He smiled at her. He had promised to make nothing but bland conversation about the weather when they were forced into company with each other. He saw a sudden gleam of understanding in her eyes. She came very close to smiling.
“I believe,” she said, “I saw one fluffy cloud at noon, my lord, when I was returning from a drive with Frances. But it was a very little one, and I daresay it soon floated out of sight.”
He was utterly charmed as his eyes laughed back into hers. Shewascapable of humor, even wit, after all. But she colored suddenly and looked back at Miss Honeydew.
“I will walk over to your cottage and read to you again one day, ma’am, if you wish,” she said. “I will enjoy it.”
“I should like it of all things,” Miss Honeydew cried, nodding her head more forcefully than usual. “But you cannot walk all that way, child. It must be all of three miles from Barclay Court.”
“Then I shall ask—” Miss Osbourne began.
But Peter, totally forgetting his resolve to stay away from her and talk only about the weather when theydidcome face-to-face, yielded to a more impulsive instinct.
“For your pleasure, ma’am,” he said to Miss Honeydew, “I would be prepared to go to considerable lengths. It is your pleasure to have Miss Osbourne come to your cottage to read to you, and you will not be disappointed. You will allow me, if you please, to bring her there myself in my curricle.”
As if it were Miss Honeydew’s permission that was needed.
“Oh—” Miss Osbourne said, perhaps indignantly.
“Oh,” Miss Honeydew said, enraptured, her thin, arthritic hands clasped to her bosom. “How exceedingly kind you are to an old lady, my lord.”
“Old lady?” He looked about the room in some surprise. “Isthere an old lady present? Point her out to me, if you would be so good, ma’am, and I shall go and be kind to her.”
She laughed heartily at his sorry joke, drawing several glances their way. Peter guessed that she did not often laugh with genuine amusement.
“How you tease!” she said. “You are a rogue, my lord, I do declare. But it is exceedingly kind of you to offer to bring Miss Osbourne to me. You will both stay to tea when you come? I shall have my housekeeper make some of her special cakes.”
“Your company and a cup of tea will be quite sufficient to reward me, ma’am,” he said. “Ah, and Miss Osbourne’s company too.”
As if that were an afterthought.
Miss Honeydew beamed happily at him.
“It is settled, then.” He looked at the younger woman. “Which afternoon shall we decide upon, Miss Osbourne?”
She was looking back at him, the color high in her cheeks, an expression in her eyes he could not interpret—or perhaps he simply did not want to. And her eyes were not actually looking directly into his own, he noticed, but somewhere on a level with his chin.
It struck him then that, even apart from the fact that she did not like him, she might also be a little intimidated by him—or at least by his title. Perhaps the way he had greeted her when they were introduced was so far beyond her experience that he had made her uncomfortable. Worse, perhaps he had humiliated her. What was it she had said before they parted—I would ask you not to speak to me with such levity, my lord. I do not know how to respond.
It was a disturbing thought that perhaps he had been less than the gentleman with her.
“Willyou allow me to drive you to Miss Honeydew’s in my curricle?” he asked. “It will give me great pleasure.”
“Thank you, then,” she said.
“Tomorrow?” Miss Honeydew asked eagerly.
Miss Osbourne looked at her, and her expression softened. She even smiled.
“If that will suit Lord Whitleaf, ma’am,” she said.
“It will,” he said. “Ah, I see that Miss Moss must have found the music she was looking for earlier. She is beckoning me to come and turn the pages for her. You will excuse me?”
Miss Honeydew assured him that she would. Miss Osbourne said nothing.
“You looked,” Miss Moss said, giggling with a group of other young ladies as he came up to the pianoforte, “as if you needed rescuing.”
