It was a perfect day, with a blue sky and a light breeze, and Eloise didn’t have a single thing in the world to think about.
She had never been so bored in her life.
It wasn’t in her nature to sit still and watch the clouds float by. She would much rather be outdoingsomething—taking a walk, inspecting a hedgerow, anything other than just sitting like a lump on the chaise, staring aimlessly at the horizon.
Or if shehadto sit here, at least she could have done so in the company of another person. She supposed the clouds might have been more interesting if she weren’t quite so alone, if someone were here to whom she might say,Goodness, but that one looks rather like a rabbit, don’t you think?
But no, she’d been left quite on her own. Sir Phillip was off in his greenhouse—she could see it from here, even see him moving about from time to time—and while she really wanted to get up and join him, if for no other reason than the fact that his plants had to be more interesting than the blasted clouds, she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of seeking him out.
Not after he’d rejected her so abruptly this afternoon. Good heavens, the man had practically fled from her company. It had been the oddest thing. She’d thought they were dealing with each other rather well, and then he’d grown quite abrupt, making up some sort of excuse about how he needed to work and fleeing the room as if she were plagued.
Odious man.
She picked up the book she’d selected from the library and held it resolutely in front of her face. She was going to read the blasted thing this time if it killed her.
Of course, that was what she’d told herself the last four times she’d picked it up. She never managed to get past a single sentence—a paragraph if she was really disciplined—before her mind wandered and the text on the page grew unfocused and, it went without saying, unread.
Served her right, she supposed, for being so irritated with Sir Phillip that she hadn’t paid any attention in the library and she’d snatched up the first book she’d seen.
The Botany of Ferns?What had she been thinking?
Even worse, if he saw her with it, he’d surely think she’d chosen it because she wanted to learn more about his interests.
Eloise blinked with surprise when she realized that she had reached the end of her page. She didn’t recall a single sentence, and in fact wondered if perhaps her eyes had only slid along the words without actually reading the letters.
This was ridiculous. She thrust the book aside and stood up, taking a few steps to test out the tenderness of her hip. Allowing herself a satisfied smile when she realized that the pain wasn’t bad at all, and in fact couldn’t even be called anything beyond mild discomfort, she walked all the way to the riotous mass of rosebushes off to the north, leaning forward to sniff the buds. They were still tightly closed—it was early in the season, after all—but maybe they’d have a scent, and—
“What the devil are you doing?”
Eloise just managed to avoid falling into the rosebush as she turned around. “Sir Phillip,” she said, as if that weren’t completely obvious.
He looked irate. “You’re supposed to be sitting down.”
“I was sitting down.”
“You were supposed tostaysitting down.”
She decided the truth would make an excellent explanation. “I was bored.”
He glanced over at the chaise in the distance. “Didn’t you get a book from the library?”
She shrugged. “I finished it.”
He quirked a brow in patent disbelief.
She returned his expression with an arch look of her own.
“Well, you need to sit down,” he said gruffly.
“I’m perfectly fine.” She patted her hip gently. “It hardly hurts at all now.”
He stared at her for some time, his expression irritable, as if he wanted to say something but didn’t know what. He must have left the greenhouse in a hurry, because he was quite filthy, with dirt along his arms, under every fingernail, and streaked quite liberally on his shirt. He looked a fright, at least by the standards Eloise had grown used to in London, but there was something almost appealing about him, something rather primitive and elemental as he stood there scowling at her.
“I can’t work if I have to worry about you,” he grumbled.
“Then don’t work,” she replied, thinking the solution quite obvious.
“I’m in the middle of something,” he muttered, sounding, in Eloise’s opinion, at least, rather like a sullen child.
