“How are you?” The question wasn’t a casual one. The sincerity of his concern wrapped around her like a cloak. He’d had the same effect on her in the garden. And later in the orangery.
“I’m sorry for sending you away this past week. It’s just that I—”
“No need to explain.” His voice rumbled low from beside her. “Change is always difficult. Even when that change is for the better.”
She’d not viewed her broken engagement as change. She’d considered Westerley’s betrayal a great loss.
“Have you ever been in love, Manningham?”
Détente
Had he ever been in love?
Mantis didn’t answer right away. But he was happy, at least, in that she was finally talking with him, so he contemplated an acceptable answer.
“Once, but,” he finally said, “love is a convoluted emotion. There was one girl in the village near my home. At the time, I believed she had captured my heart. But my affections were fleeting at that age.”
“How old were you?”
“Five and ten.” He smiled fondly, remembering the kisses he’d managed to steal behind her father’s store.
“And after that?”
After that, he’d had a few flirtations. However, lust had motivated him more than love.
But he couldn’t tell her that. Or… could he?
“I chased skirts, as they say.”
“Oh…”
He didn’t need to explain. Westerley’s rakish ways before his father’s tragic death hadn’t been kept much of a secret.
And still, she had waited for him.
“I may have fancied myself in love a time or two. But—” He stopped himself from adding that he had never felt strongly enough to consider marriage to any of them.
“But…?”
“My emotions weren’t all-consuming.” He did not return the question because she’d already answered it. She’d answered it both before and after he’d plowed her on the chaise in the orangery.
“Are you enjoying your time at Westerley Crossings?” It seemed she, too, had no desire to persist in that conversational direction.
“I am.” But aside from preparing his father’s London townhouse for his family’s arrival, he had other responsibilities.
“What do you gentlemen do when you are not riding, wagering, drinking, and hunting?” Her voice sounded sweetly beside him. This woman was perhaps the most refined lady of his acquaintance.
Except for when she lay beneath him.
He tamped down the thought immediately so as not to embarrass himself. Because truth be told, he’d relived the experience more than once in the nine days that had passed.
“I enjoy exercise. I spar with Blackheart whenever possible.” What would she think if she knew he practiced an eastern form of fighting and meditation? “I fence with Greystone, and exchange blows with Spencer.”
“Boxing?”
“Yes.”
“What else? Do you like to read?”
