“Oh,” he said, irritation forgotten as he smiled. “Is she still drawing? She always did have a sketchbook. Do you remember?”
“Drawing?” huffed Nell. “I wish that’s all she was doing. No, nothing will do for Lucy than to beg that one of my attic rooms be turned over to a full artist’s studio. You should’ve seen the luggage she arrived with! Now the whole top floor smells of oil paints and turpentine. Why she can’t stick to watercolours or something vaguely respectable, I don’t know. But now the laundry maids are already up in arms about having to scrub oil paint from her clothes.”
“Doesn’t she have an apron?”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Jack! Can we talk about more important things? Likeyour sister’s debut at Almack’s!Shh, here they come. Pleasedosay something nice about Nora’s dress. Her looks are quite ruined if she cries.”
But it was Min’s looks he found himself studying as the two ladies walked back towards them. Her eyes were turned towards the floor, but there was no hiding the freckles. Not even the mass of unruly dark curls framing her face could do that. Had she no maid to do her hair? Had Nell not lent her own? The curls looked hardly tamed at all, even if there was a ribbon—also brown—tied almost invisibly round her head, camouflaged by the dark chestnut hair and half buried in the tangle. But…even with the best care in the world, she’d never make a fashionable beauty. Not little Min.
Too short. Too messy. No matter what she was dressed in. Too…um…his eyes ran over her again…too much like somecreature you’d find in a storybook wood, sweet and round as an apple.
So he bit his tongue rather than taking Nell to task once more for Min’s neglect and said some placatory and outrageously flattering untruths to Nora. She brightened immediately, hardly needing his efforts to restore her own good opinion of herself. It was as irrepressible as Min’s curls.
Then he turned to the silent Min, ready to do the same. But she anticipated him, saying with the briefest lift of her silver eyes, “You can hardly believe thatIcare, my lord.”
“Lord?” he repeated, indignation swamping his apologetic intentions. “What’s all this lord nonsense, Min? Calling meLord Ortonlike I haven’t known you all my life, like I can’t remember the day you were born!”
“Canyou?” she asked in her familiar serious manner.
“Well—no. I was three, devil take it. No one can remember anything from when they were three.”
“I can,” she said, very quietly. “Or at least from when I was five.”
“That’s hardly the point! The point is that you should call me Jack.”
“But should I? I’m not your sister.”
“You were never my sister. What the devil does that matter?”
Another quick flash of silver, and then she took to looking past him, as though she was counting every fluted line in the column by the wall. “Well…” She frowned. “We are not children anymore.”
“But you’re still Min, aren’t you?”
“I suppose I am,” she said quietly, fidgeting with her glove. “To you.”
“Well of course you are,” he exclaimed, glad to have got this exasperating point cleared up. It was very, very important thatshe was still Min. And that she never give him one of those stiff little curtsies again. “Who else would you be?”
She made no answer, not in the second that passed before he found himself saying, “Come on, Min, say you’re glad to see me.”
Her lips moved, but into what sound he’d never know.
“Enough of this farrago.” Nell’s voice was an urgent hiss. She had stopped fussing with a wayward ostrich plume in her hair—they had a tendency to collapse under their own weight—waving away Nora’s unskilled assistance and turning back to Jack. “If we don’t go in soon, Nora will have no time to fill her card before the dancing begins.”
The girl gasped at this dire prophecy, turning pale.
“Give her your arm, Jack. And walk in with your heads up, smiling. No, naturally, Nora! Don’t go grinning like an idiot! We must make a good entrance. Come here, dear.” And she beckoned a dark shape from the corner, which turned out to be Lord Ashburton.
“Good Lord,” exclaimed Jack, blinking in surprise. “Ashburton. Didn’t see you there, old chap. Took you for a coat stand.”
“Good evening, Orton,” the man replied, entirely unperturbed. “Do you know…the very interesting thing is…that it’s not the first time someone has made that same error?”
“No?” breathed Jack. “You don’t say?”
“I just did say,” corrected Ashburton, confused, but amiable.
“So you did!”
“Oh, for the love of…” muttered Nell, taking her husband’s arm. “You go in front with Jack, Nora. And you go behind me, Lucy.”
