“Andyou kissed me.”
“To make a point.”
Ariana met his eyes.
“Very well,” he said. “I am attracted to you. Nothing will come of it.”
Ariana couldn’t help a smile, and a rather pathetic “Truly?” escaped. “Attracted to me?”
“Zeus, surely you know you’re beautiful!”
“I’m too tall to be beautiful.”
“Have you been locked away in a tower for the past eight years?”
“As good as, perhaps. But here in Town men haven’t been falling at my feet. Except for Inching, I suppose.”
“Have they not? You have been so focused on your list that you’ve ignored the rest. Shorter than you on the whole, but not intolerably so. You’re the toast of the clubs.”
“I can’t be. You’re confecting this to try to soothe my hurt feelings.”
“I wouldn’t insult you that way. Churston was probably driven to extremes because he found your unsuitability intolerable. He wanted to capture the latest prize. Wentforth has written a poem about you. He does tritely make you Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, but it’s a paean of praise. I had Count Lubinoff here today, trying to call me out for dragging your name through the mud.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Ariana said, but she was fighting delight. “I never imagined.”
“Where did you get the idea that you were an antidote?”
She could have told him, but she knew it would hurt. It had been a bit of youthful thoughtlessness and he’d not imagine any of the ladies would have heard of it.
“I wasn’t a great success when I last came to Town,” she said.
“What were you, sixteen?”
“Seventeen.”
“Some girls are enchanting at that age, but few boys are. I remember being gangly with big feet.”
Still she twitched at that, but he was speaking honestly.
“At that age I tried at times to dress like a beau,” he continued, “but I was advised to wait, and to enjoy being a youth. He was right. Have I offended you by comparing you to a boy, Ariana? It’s perhaps a matter of growing into one’s height.”
“I’m not offended, no,” she said. In fact she was drawing in this quiet, intimate conversation like a precious feast, to be savored in later days. “My grandmother pushed my parents into bringing me to Town early for fear I’d grow even taller.”
“The perils of good intentions.”
“I’ve never thought of her as having good intentions. Heavens above, perhaps I’m like her! She always pushed for action. She wanted my mother to starve me in the hope it would stunt my growth.”
“Let that be a lesson to you, then.”
She met his eyes. “I’m not to try to bully you into sense?”
“It would be painful for both of us.”
“It will be hard.” She could say that she’d marry no other, but that would be to put a burden on him. She probably should marry someone else to ease him, but she wasn’t sure she was capable of that.
“Time heals,” she said briskly, standing up. “And it also flies. How do we arrange for the new cartoon? And how do I get back into my house for my clothes?”
In the end, Kynaston left to find Norris and remove the mob from the Brook Street house so Ariana’s mother could emerge later without harassment. Ethel went back to the house to collect everything Ariana would need, and returned in her female form. Ariana was left with nothing to do but wait and go over her time with the man she loved.
