He thought of the slim hidden notebook in his desk drawer, the lines written on sleepless nights at sea. “Enough to know you might have chosen worse company.”
“Oh,” she said lightly, “I have. Lady Beecham, for instance.”
Against his will, a laugh escaped him, brief and real. She shut the book with a soft thump, keeping one finger between the pages.
“Very well. A test.” Her eyes brightened. “I quote, you name the author. Then you quote, I identify. If you fail, you must dance with me when I return to the ballroom. If I fail, I must endure anentire conversation with Lady Beecham without once making a face.”
He considered. “It is not a fair exchange. Dancing with you is not a punishment.”
Color touched her cheek. “Then consider it an inducement.” She lifted her chin, daring. “Unless you are afraid to lose.”
His pride, as ever, accepted any challenge presented neatly. “Proceed.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, searching memory. When she spoke, her voice altered becoming lighter, carrying the cadence of lines learned not from duty but from fondness.
“‘She walks in beauty, like the night …’” She opened one eye at him. “We shall stop there. Any further and I will exceed propriety.”
“Byron,” he said at once. “Written after seeing his cousin in black with spangles, if the story is true.”
“You know the gossip as well as the line,” she said. “Impressive.”
His turn. He cast about for something that would not betray too much. “‘The world is too much with us; late and soon,’” he quoted. “‘Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.’”
“Wordsworth,” she answered. “And very apt for your mother’s friends.”
He inclined his head, conceding the point.
She smiled and tried another, this time in a softened Scots accent: “‘My love is like a red, red rose …’”
“Burns,” he said, and for a moment saw her as she must have been younger, reciting those lines by another hearth. The room seemed smaller, more intimate.
His turn. He chose a line from Coleridge, careful to keep it short. “‘Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread.’”
She frowned in concentration, eyes narrowing, then brightened. “The Ancient Mariner. I suppose a seaman could not help but like that one, eh?”
They traded lines like that for some time. Short bursts of words, recognition, shared amusement. He felt the distance betweenthem shrinking. At some point he sat beside her. On the floor of all places. He had recovered a couple of volumes that he particularly liked, lay them open on the ground between them. She knew more than he had credited, he knew more than he had ever let most people suspect. The discovery was disarming.
“Your turn,” she said at last. “A good one. Something difficult.”
He hesitated, then surrendered to temptation and to a fondness he rarely indulged aloud. “‘Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art,’” he said softly. “‘Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night …’”
“Keats,” she said without pause. “You chose a love sonnet for your wife. Brave, Your Grace.”
He realized what he had said, what she had heard, at the same instant. Heat climbed his neck. He looked away.
“Another from me,” Isla said, and when she spoke this time, her voice dropped a note, warm at the edges.
“‘Stolen kisses are always sweetest …’” She broke off, mouth quirking. “Can you place it?”
He knew the line, it had floated about in circulating volumes of minor verse but the source escaped him. “Some forgettable anthology,” he said. “Anonymously foolish.”
She laughed, low. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you focus on the wrong word.”
Their eyes met. The air between them felt different now. It had become denser, charged the way a ship’s mast glowed with St Elmo’s fire.
“Kisses,” she said quietly. “That is the word I like.”
He could have stepped back. He could have made a joke. He could have reminded them both of the dance waiting elsewhere in the house. Instead he found himself moving forward, as if drawn by the same force that had pulled him toward her in the chapel.
