The old lady’s hand stopped with the coffee pot poised over Alex’s cup. “Do you, my dearie? That’s nice. But you’ve to learn to live a bigger life than this. It’s not fit for the likes of you, now, is it?”
“The likes of me?”
She warmed at Alex’s sudden grin. “She don’t know you very well, Apple, that’s the trouble.” He pointed his half-eaten scone at the nurse. “One of a kind is this chit, Reddy. She won’t fit in any box you care to name.”
A breathless giggle escaped Apple, releasing a little of her despair. “I do try to conform.”
“And make a pretty poor job of it.”
Miss Reddicliffe tutted at him, but Apple, her mouth full of scone, was hard put to it not to spray the lot out again. She swallowed it down and took a gulp of coffee to clear her mouth and throat.
“It’s too bad of you, Alex. I was perfectly well-behaved at your parents’ house.”
“Yes, because you were such a scaredy-cat you couldn’t help it.”
Was he trying to provoke her deliberately? She eyed him, and he caught her looking. A faint smile and a wink came her way. Apple’s heart lifted and she spoke without thinking. “Well, if you want to know, I’m about to be even more unconventional. Eccentric even, some might say.”
His brows rose. “Holding me up with a pistol wasn’t eccentric enough?”
She giggled. “Stop it, Alex. You know I had good reason for that.”
His smile embraced her and her heart turned over. “Go on, then. Shock me.”
Abruptly realising what she was doing, Apple hesitated. She’d avoided telling him what she meant to do because she’d been convinced he’d say it was hen-witted and find a way to stop her. But of course, it no longer mattered. He couldn’t stop her, because of what she was, not just because she was not of his world. Sooner or later, he must step back and let her go her own way. “It won’t shock you because you always supposed I had a crazy scheme afoot.”
His gaze narrowed. “Are you talking about this secret notion you have when Vergette hands over the dibs? Something you need a companion for?”
“Yes, and Reddy knows of just such a one as will suit, so I don’t even need to advertise.” A little of her original enthusiasm was filtering back. If she could not have Alex, at least she could realise her dream. She looked him boldly in the face. “I am going to travel the world.”
No explosion greeted this announcement. Alex simply stared at her.
She waited, noting that Reddy was watching Alex in a puzzled way. At last he spoke, with an effort, as it seemed to Apple. “How much of the world? Just Europe? Or do you mean to venture as far as India?”
A flood of heat enveloped Apple, and she had to stop herself lifting her hands to her burning cheeks. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of India. I just — I just dreamed of the arts, the paintings to be found in Florence and Venice. Paris too, but whether one can venture there in these times I don’t know. And then there is the scenery. I used to pore over Papa’s prints of all the places where his wines came from and wish I might visit Lisbon and Lombardy, or Cirò in Calabria. I wanted adventure…”
Alex was watching her, an expression hard to read in his face, but there was warmth in his eyes and involuntarily she smiled at him.
“It’s all the fault ofRobinson Crusoe, you must know.”
His brows drew together. “Robinson Crusoe?”
“I read it over and over when I was a child. That, and later, I read the adventures of Peregrine Pickle and Roderick Random. Yes, I know I should not have done, so you need not tell me so. I used to wish I was a boy so that I might do as they did.”
“How did all that turn into this notion you might travel the world, as you put it, since you aren’t a boy?”
Apple took a fortifying drink of her coffee. He was taking this too well. At any moment, he might burst into one of his explosive snorts and pour derision all over her dream.
“I read Mrs Hester Piozzi’s book of her travels through France, Italy and Germany. If she could do it, why should I not? If I was properly chaperoned, and if there was money enough in the trust, I could at least see the places and things I’d read about and seen in etchings.”
She stopped, looking across at the old nurse, who was wearing a comfortable smile, just as if she’d not exclaimed with horror when Apple had mentioned the scheme. She’d only done so because she was in such a state of upset at the time she hadn’t thought about what she was saying. But as soon as she’d told the nurse she didn’t mean to go alone, Reddy had changed her tune, suggesting a widow she knew who lived here in Romsey might be the very person.
Alex set down his cup. “Well, I knew it would turn out to be hare-brained. Bound to be, coming from you, young Apple.”
He sounded more resigned than shocked.
“You don’t object to it?”
His brows shot up. “Object to it? I said it’s hare-brained, didn’t I? Feather-headed, that’s what you are. Of all the bird-witted notions you’ve had, that one takes the crown.”
