The words still puzzled him and made him strangely uneasy.
It would be a novel challenge to try again to make a friend of a young woman—one who did not particularly like him and one who claimed that they were closer to being universes apart than worlds.
Well, challenges were meant to brighten the dull routine of life.
Not that routine was always dull. Sometimes he longed for it. It was what he had grown up with and expected of the rest of his life—a quiet routine, a fulfillment of duty that was self-imposed rather than enforced from above as it had been all through his boyhood. He had expected very little of his life really—only a sort of heaven of home and hearth and domestic contentment. Most of his current friends would cringe if they knew that of him. Even Raycroft, his closest friend, would be astonished.
“Tell me what you like so much about teaching,” he said.
He felt rather than saw her smile.
“It is something I am capable of doing well,” she said, “and something I can constantly work upon to improve. It is something useful and worthwhile.”
“Educating girls is worthwhile?” he asked only because he guessed the question would provoke her into saying more.
“Girls have minds just as boys do,” she said firmly, “and are just as hungry for knowledge and just as capable of learning and understanding. It is true that most of them grow up to lives in which they do not need to know very much at all, but then I suspect that holds true of most men too.”
“Like me?” he asked.
“I believe there is a saying,” she said tartly, “that if the shoe fits one ought to wear it.”
He chuckled softly.
“But most men would argue,” he said, “that educating girls gives them brain fever at worst and makes them unattractive at best. Or perhaps I have got the worst and the best mixed up.”
“I daresay,” she said, “those men are insecure in their masculinity and fear that women may outshine them. How mortifying it would be if they had to ask a woman for the square root of eighty-one.”
She was a delight. He had already seen several different facets of her character, but he could always rely upon the prim schoolteacher to keep making an appearance. The square root of eighty-one, indeed!
“Ouch!” he said, wincing noticeably. “But would there ever be such an occasion? I cannot for the life of me think of one. Whatisthe square root of eighty-one anyway?”
“Nine,” they said in unison.
He laughed, and after a brief moment so did she.
He wondered if she realized what a dazzling combination laughter was with her looks. He wondered too how often she laughed. Perhaps it was more often than he had suspected the day before yesterday. Perhaps she brought light and joy to that school in Bath.
“But that isnotyour cue,” he said, deliberately sobering, “to fire all sorts of obscure and tricky questions at me. My masculinity is a fragile enough commodity without being put to that sort of test.”
“I doubt that,” she said fervently, and then laughed again when he looked at her sidelong and pulled an abject face.
He chuckled once more before turning into the lane from the village that would eventually bring them to the fork into Barclay Court. “And in case you are neglecting to ask for fear of the answer, Miss Osbourne, I detect no signs of brain fever in you, and you are certainly not unattractive. Quite the contrary, in fact.”
“I would rather,” she said after a brief silence, “that you not try to flatter and flirt with me. You must speak sensibly with me if we are to be friends.”
“Weareto be friends, then?” he asked her. “Very well. Let me be honest. You are quite devoid of any discernible attraction. A small, slender stature combined with shining auburn curls and sea green eyes and regular features is all quite unappealing, as I am sure you must be aware.”
When he turned his head to snatch a look at her, she was smiling broadly and looking straight ahead.
“Friends need not be unaware of each other’s attractions,” he said. “Tell me how you occupy your time when you are not teaching.”
“You do not know much about the world of employment, do you, Lord Whitleaf?” she asked. “There is not much time that isnottaken up with work. When I am not in the classroom I am supervising games in the meadow beyond the school or organizing dramatic presentations or watching over the girls during study sessions or marking papers or examinations or…Well, there is almost always something to do. But when thereissome leisure time, usually late in the evening, I spend it with my friends, the other resident teachers. We usually gather in Claudia Martin’s sitting room. Or sometimes if it is daytime and there is the rare luxury of a spare hour I go out walking. Bath is a lovely city. There is much to see there.”
Ah, yes, they were from different universes. But he admired her sense of purpose.
“Now it is your turn,” she said. “You must tell me something of yourself.”
“Are you sure you really wish to know about my idle, empty life?” he asked her, his eyes twinkling.
