“Well, we cannot.”
“Please, Beatrice,” he found himself saying.As he did so, he realized that he had never called her by her Christian name before.
She started.
“Will you breakfast with me?”
Beatrice gave him a thorough, searching look.Those dark eyes, which only two days ago he had considered shrewd, were locked on him.He sensed that she was making a series of infinite calculations, calculations that he wouldn’t understand the half of.
“Fine,” she said finally.“But I am not agreeing to stay.”
Sally bobbed and scurried away to Beatrice’s room.
“Don’t go far,” Beatrice called out to her.
“Thank you,” he said, when she was gone.
She gave him a withering look and headed for the breakfast room.
He followed.
The servants had laid out the usual assortments of coffee, tea, toast, butter, and currant jam.They even had brought a bunch of spring cherries in a bowl.And the chocolate was steaming in a pot.
She sat down and poured the chocolate, immediately taking a sip.
“Ah, I was right,” he said.“You seemed like the type who would like chocolate.”
“Yes, indeed,” she said, bringing the chocolate down from the table, clearly not liking having played into his hands.She began spreading jam on a piece of toast.
He sat down across from her and kept his eyes on her, willing her to look up.
He wanted to speak to her, to make it better between them, but he wasn’t sure how.
Finally, she did.When she saw him looking at her, she sighed.
“Please just answer me one question.Why did you agree to this arrangement when you knew your own proclivities?”
“I did not think I was so abnormal as you seem to think I am.”
“Lord Leith—”
“Please,” he said, suddenly seized by a feeling that he did not recognize.“Call me Thomas.”
Only his mother called him that.He had never particularly liked the name.But for some reason, suddenly, he couldn’t stand the sound of her using his title.
Which was very odd, since he usually enjoyed the sound of his title in the mouths of others.
“You want me to call youThomas?”
“That’s my name.My real name.”
She looked uncertain.“Well, I will try.”
“And I will call you Beatrice.I think we are past formalities.”
She leveled him with a look.She dropped her toast.
“I suppose you’re right.”She looked pensive.“Do you really think that is how aristocratic gentlemen bed their mistresses?”
