She might be in trouble.
How was a woman to withstand the charms of the reformed-perhaps-unreformed rake Lord Rhys Osborne?
“But then I wouldn’t be able to ask you a question that’s been on my mind since we spoke at Hope House.” He hesitated. “In the scullery.”
In the scullery, they’d spoken of her past.
And now he had a question?
She mustered up some bravado and opened her mouth. “What’s your question?”
He shifted on his feet, looking a hair anxious, and it only increased his attractiveness. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“All right.” Now she really wanted to hear this question of his.
“What’s your dream, Miss Birdwell?” He looked as earnest as she’d ever seen him. “You mentioned having one, and I must confess to finding myself incredibly intrigued.”
Her? A woman who incredibly intrigued Lord Rhys Osborne?
Blow her down.
Perhaps it was his earnestness or perhaps it was being the object of his intrigue, but she found herself saying, “I told you what my dream once was.”
He nodded.
“But that’s the sort of dream little girls have, innit? So, when Isabel came along and swept me into her world, that was when my life really began, and I became skilled at something that makes me proud.” She swallowed against a sudden knot in her throat. “I never thought I could be proud of myself.”
The way he was watching her made her feel like she could tell him anything.
So maybe that was why she was.
“Isabel and her sister, Eva, have this dressmaking business together, and it got me to thinking and dreaming. Not about making dresses, but a business where I can instruct folk how to make themselves fashionable. You see, being a stylish lady ain’t just about wearing a pretty French dress or the most expensive strand of South Sea pearls. It’s how a lady wears that dress and them pearls, and the thing I’ve learned is that most women—ladies and otherwise—they’re not born knowing how to accomplish that. But me? I was.” She shrugged. “And there is my business opportunity.”
A few beats of time ticked past where Lord Rhys studied her silently and she sat very still with her hands clasped in her lap, fingernails digging half-moons into her palms.
“When do you plan to start your business?” he asked, at last.
She didn’t hesitate. This was a point of pride for her. “In fifteen years.”
His brow wrinkled. “Fifteen years?” He looked genuinely perplexed. “How old are you? Twenty…”
“I’m five-and-twenty years old,” she stated, sounding no small bit huffy.
“So, when you start your business, you’ll be?—”
“Forty years old.”
He was proper scowling at her now. “That’s too far in the future.”
“Well, that game of Loo brought it in by a few years, didn’t it?”
His brow released as if an unanticipated thought had struck him. “Is this about money?”
“Aren’t most things?” The good and the bad, she wouldn’t say, but truly, lords and their loose association with the concept of economics.
“Why don’t you ask Lady Percival to help you?”
“I’ll not be repaying the new life she gave me by begging from her. My business will start as I mean it to go on—under my own steam. I’ll not borrow a penny to see it through.”
