“What? This? I say, it’s bloody awful. I absolutely loathe riding sidesaddle. I actually had a tailor in London run me up some trousers, you know, such as you fellows wear. Unfortunately, Ada saw me and it gave her such a fright she walked straight into a wall and the doctor had to be called. Complete carnage.”
Micha suspected he had an understanding of “carnage” rather different to the residents of Nettlefield, and he was just hiding a smirk when he caught a glimpse of Laura’s sparkling eyes and realised she was laughing too. “Poor Ada.” He managed a tolerable approximation of sincerity.
“She had a bruise the size of a shilling,” confided Laura. “A shilling. Can you imagine?”
“It hardly bears thinking of.”
“I know.”
Wonderful. Now he needed a different topic. Clothing had clearly been a false lead. Micha tried to remember if he had ever been fit for company or whether life had simply accommodated his deficiencies by throwing him to the bottom of the pile, where nobody would care about them. Perhaps he had been in the right profession after all. His education had included the rudiments of Latin and Greek; his secondary education had taught him what it meant to love, to truly love, another human being. And, finally, when all other lessons had been lost to time and circumstances, he had learned how to efficiently bring a man to completion. At no point hadhe wondered how one talked appropriately to young ladies, nor felt the lack of such knowledge.
“Um,” he said, finally. “Nice horse.”
Laura became suddenly quite animated. “Marvellous, isn’t he? We call him Gulliver.”
“Yes, I can see that. He’s very ... large.”
“Only thing I ever learned. ‘Ride a really big horse.’”
“I see.” He gave her a confused look. “Is there more to that story? Or is it just a family motto? Uh ... something ... ‘Equus magnus’?” (Thomas, he thought, Thomas would know. And Isidore, of course, who flowed through languages like water.)
She gave a wild shout of laughter. “It should be, dash it, it should be. But I used to have this awful governess called Miss Wheezle, one of a long line of awful governesses, actually. They were always coming and going, trying to get me to sit still, be a lady, hold a teacup, embroider a cushion. Who has the time, really? To embroider a cushion. In any case, I managed to get rid of most of ’em, thank God, but Wheezie was like a burr under a saddle blanket. Couldn’t shift her. Got quite fond of her, in the end, truth be told. What else can you do with someone like that?”
Micha tried to sort through this anecdote, in search of its relevance. “And she told you to always ride a really big horse?”
“It was in a book, as a matter of fact. I can remember it almost exactly: ‘The most honourable exercise, that beseemeth the estate of every noble person, is to ride on a great horse.’ And I thought, ‘Why bloody not.’”
Micha surprised himself by grinning. “Why not, indeed?”
“Better than all that Italian rubbish. ‘Be feared, if you can’t be loved, but don’t be hated; try not to employ mercenaries, and always wear your own armour.’”
“Was Miss Wheezle trying to raise you to be a lady or to invade Europe?”
Laura was silent for a moment. “Oh, you don’t know, do you? I sometimes forget there are people who don’t know everything abouteveryone else.” She gestured at the manor house, which was a blur of golden stone against the horizon. “I’m actually, well, Lady Chalfont. I’m the only child and there’s no entailment, so all this is, well, mine. Bit embarrassing really.”
“Oh good God.”
“Don’t worry about it or anything,” she added, fervently. “We don’t stand on ceremony here in Nettlefield.”
“Yes but—”
“Shush. And that’s an order from your social superior.” Micha shushed, and Laura went on abruptly: “Listen, you seem like a decent chap. I’m sorry I haven’t been completely square with you. I mean, about who I am, or why I’m talking to you now. The thing is, I sort of wanted to ask you something. You know, as a man of the world.”
Micha choked. “As a what?”
She eyed him appraisingly. “You are, though, aren’t you? A man of the world.”
“I don’t know what that means,” he said faintly.
“Oh, you know, lived a bit, had your heart broken, and all that?”
“I suppose . . .”
“Good. Yes. I knew it. So, let’s say, hypothetically you were, say, interested in, you know, some ah, well, in my case, fellow, obviously—let’s say you were me and interested in some fellow, how would you go about making that known? To the fellow?”
“Um.” Micha had even less experience in courting women than talking to them.
She looked at him expectantly. “Well?”
