“Nor should you,” he said, opening his eyes. His expression was twisted; he was fighting his way back from somewhere dark and desperate.
“Go on then,” he said. “Tell me how very much like Imogene you have been.”
“Oh no, I am nothing like Imogene. That is—I was difficult as a girl, andsheis difficult, but there is one crucial difference in that she is very beautiful. I was a bit of a—of an ugly duckling. My appearance was the source of my willfulness—or a very large measure of it. I cannot say what feeds Imogene’s, but it’s not the way she looks. Her beauty gives her confidence—which I also did not have.”
“An ugly duckling?” he questioned, shooting her a look.
Now it was Drew’s turn to close her eyes. He was studying her now and she couldn’t endure the scrutiny. He looked at her like a man searching for a hidden lock on a very plain box, lined inside with velvet.
Please leave it, she thought.
Please ask again, she also thought.
“Miss Trelayne?” he asked, sitting up again. “What do you mean ‘ugly duckling’?”
The chief benefit of the new governess—no, the newstylist—was that she’d taken his nieces in hand. Ian knew this.
Another was that she hadn’t blamed or ridiculed his sister—at least not openly.
She also hadn’t openly blamed or ridiculed him. This was less a benefit than a bloody miracle.
Mostly the benefit was that she hadn’t fled screaming into the night.
But a fourth, nofifth, was that he genuinely enjoyed talking to her.
He rose from the banister, eyeing her. It had been so very long since he’d spoken to anyone at length, least of all a clever, pretty girl.
He was out of practice, but even his long-suffering solitude was no excuse to pry. He would not have pressed her about the alleged “ugly-duckling” years if her blue dress hadn’t struck him as quite so... so... striking. The opposite of ugly, surely.
Nor if her ginger coronet hadn’t intrigued him.
If her insect pin hadn’t—
He glanced again at the blue stone twinkling in the moonlight. She’d attached the beetle in such a way that it slanted, just a little, every time she moved. Its antennae were constantly pointing the way to another creamy expanse of her freckled skin. Her shoulders had been swallowed by his coat, but she’d not bothered to button it, and it gaped in exactly the correct spot. He could see the pin. He enjoyed looking at the pin.
“Oh yes, well,” Miss Trelayne was saying, “no woman escapes a lifetime at this particular height, or with this particular shade of hair, or with these great many freckles, without considerable attention paid.”
“Quite. But how is this achallenge?”
She stared at him.
He ventured, “The fawning becomes a nuisance, no doubt?”
She frowned, the look of someone who’d been asked to spell her name a fourth time.
“Sorry,” he said. “You’ve mentioned your great humility. I won’t force you to boast.”
“Boast?” she repeated.
“About your bright hair or intriguing freckles or—”
He stopped himself from sayingbody. Even he knew this crossed some sort of line.
But then he cast his eyes up and down said body—he couldn’t help himself. She’d been designed like a marble statue in a garden. Perfectly formed. She wanted only a toga. Although the blue dress, as he’d already noted, was also very nice.
“I, er—” she began.
“Sorry,” he cut in. “Ignore me, please. I am... out of practice with... conversation. I might as well have been consigned to T.O.E. these last five years.”
