It was a novel experience to be in company with a lady who clearly did not want to be in company with him. Of course, he did not usually find himself in company with lady schoolteachers from Bath. They were, perhaps, a different breed from the women with whom he usually consorted. They were quite possibly made of sterner stuff.
“You were quite right,” he said at last, merely to see how she would respond. “This summer day was notreallymade warmer and brighter by your presence in it. It was a foolish conceit.”
She darted him a look, and in the moment before her bonnet brim hid her face from view again he was dazzled anew by the combination of bright auburn hair and sea green eyes—and by the healthy flush the fresh air had lent her creamy, flawless complexion.
“Yes,” she agreed, doubling her contribution to their conversation since leaving Hareford House.
So she was not going to contradict him, was she? He could not resist continuing.
“It was my heart,” he said, patting it with his right hand, “that was warmed and brightened.”
This time she did not turn her face, but he amused himself with the fancy that the poke of her bonnet stiffened slightly.
“The heart,” she said, “is merely an organ in the bosom.”
Ah, a literalist. He smiled.
“With the function of a pump,” he agreed. “But how unromantic a view of it. You would put generations of poets out of business with such a pronouncement, Miss Osbourne. Not to mention lovers.”
“I am not a romantic,” she said.
“Indeed?” he said. “How sad! There are no such things, then, you believe, as tender sensibilities? There is no part of one’s anatomy or soul that can be warmed or brightened by the sight of beauty?”
He thought she was not going to answer. They came to the fork in the lane where they had met a couple of hours ago and followed Raycroft and Lady Edgecombe onto the branch that led to Barclay Court.
“You make a mockery of tender sensibilities,” Miss Osbourne said so softly that he bent his head toward her in case she had more to say.
She did not.
“Ah,” he said, “you think me incapable of feeling the gentler emotions. Is that what you are saying?”
“I would not so presume,” she said.
“But you would. You already have so presumed,” he said. He was rather enjoying himself, he discovered, with this curiously serious, prim creature who looked so like an angel. “You told me I made a mockery of tender sensibilities.”
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I ought not to have said such a thing.”
“No, you ought not,” he agreed. “You wounded me to the heart—to that chest organ, that mundane pump. How differently we view the world, Miss Osbourne. You listened to me pay you a lavish and foolish compliment and concluded that I know nothing about the finer human emotions. I on the other hand looked at you, serious and disapproving, and felt—ah, as if I had stepped into a moment that was simply magic.”
“And now,” she said, “you make a mockery ofme.”
She had a low, sweet voice even when she sounded indignant. She was small in stature and very slender, though she was curved in all the right places, by Jove. He wondered how well she controlled a class of girls, most of whom undoubtedly wished themselves anywhere else on earth but at school. Did they give her a rough time? Or was there steel in her character, as there appeared to be in her spine?
He would wager there was steel—and not a great deal of tenderness. Poor girls!
“I fear,” he said, “that with a few foolish words I have forever condemned myself in your eyes, Miss Osbourne. Shall we change the subject? What have you been doing with your school holiday up until now?”
“It was not really a holiday,” she said. “Almost half of the girls at the school are charity pupils. They remain there all year long and some of us stay too to care for them and to entertain them.”
“Us?” he asked.
“There are three resident teachers,” she told him. “There used to be four until Frances married the earl two years ago. Now there are Miss Martin, Miss Jewell, and I.”
“And you all give up your holidays for the sake ofcharitygirls?” he asked.
She turned to look at him again—a level, unsmiling look in which there might have been some reproof.
“I was one of them,” she said, “from the age of twelve until Miss Martin made me a junior teacher when I was eighteen.”
