On the other hand, Beryl liked a wide variety of texts. Maybe Eleanor was the same.
“What do you like to read, Miss Eleanor?” he asked.
“Gothic literature,” she declared, surprising him. “Anything dark and exciting. Rather the way it has been around here since I arrived.”
“What?” his lordship exclaimed. “Angsley Hall, dark and exciting?”
Eleanor laughed, a sound Gray had enjoyed many times over the years.
“Truly, my lord. Ever since I arrived, there have been heavy clouds, thunder, rain, and lightning.”
“Like every other part of Britain, most of the time,” Lord Angsley said. “I don’t think there’s anything particularly Gothic about it. But for better weather, you must come with me some time to Spain. When I have my next commission, perhaps. If Beryl is going, you can provide company.”
“I don’t believe she’ll be going until after she has been delivered of her little one,” her ladyship informed her husband.
“In any case, it’s not merely the weather,” Eleanor said. “It’s the clever way the writer includes terrifying nature in the story.”
“Terrifying nature,” Gray repeated, watching her pretty lips with their hint of pink, along with her healthy cheeks.Or was she wearing artful cosmetics?
“Yes, as if it were a character, like the storm in Mary Shelley’s masterful book. And sometimes the writer assigns human intelligence to things in the natural world.”
“Such as?” he prompted.
“The whale in Moby Dick,” she offered.
“Or Mr. Poe’s Raven,” he added, thoroughly enjoying their conversation.
“The American writer,” she said. “I’ve never read him. I hear he’s excellent. In any case, when you combine all that with mysterious circumstances, it transforms the ordinary into the Gothic. It’s really all in how one perceives the situation, sometimes not knowing the reality. Do you see what I mean?”
His lordship frowned, and her ladyship yawned. Gray felt badly for Eleanor, who was trying so hard to explain.
“You mean like the gunfire,” he suggested, “that turned out to be only a farmer but could have been a madman coming to do us all in?”
The Angsleys both exclaimed aloud, but Eleanor grinned.
“Precisely,” she said, turning back to Lord Angsley. “And then there was the mysterious night rider, which turned out to be Mr. O’Connor arriving last night—”
“Please, feel free to call me Grayson.”
“Very well.”
They locked gazes for an instant too long. A man could get lost in those gorgeous eyes.If that man didn’t think of her as a little cousin!
“As I was saying, when Grayson arrived so late, like a knight charging across the field to his castle, it was straight out of a Gothic tale.”
“Absurd,” Lord Angsley said.
“Or even the butler bursting in with a missive,” Eleanor pointed out.
“Mr. Stanley doesn’t burst,” Lady Angsley protested.
“Still,” Eleanor continued, “do you see how those few easily explained circumstances, when combined with a dark night and a storm, can set a certain tone? That’s Gothic literature. Most thrilling! Especially when one is safely tucked in bed or in a cozy chair by the fire, and the damsel on the damp moors or the man kept in chains in his castle is only on the pages.”
“I see what you mean, dear,” Lady Angsley said as she stood, causing both men to rise with her. “I prefer a plain novel of manners, with no hint of nerve-wracking elements. Simply men and women going about their lives, like one of Jane Austen’s works, God rest her soul. Such a talent!”
Gray and Eleanor bid the lord and lady goodnight, and then they sat back down. He was immediately aware they were unusually and rather unacceptably alone.
“Are you thinking what I am?” he asked.
