He sat in a chair on the opposite side of a small table. The chair creaked as he settled himself. She didn’t look at him, watching instead the rain on the window and the silvery shadows the wet light made of the room. She spent several moments in silence before she realized that it might be awkward, that conversation at such a time was obligatory. Now she could feel his gaze on her face and longed to crack the silence like the spine of a book, but she had nothing to say anymore. She’d lost all her thoughts in paint and rain.
“You are reading Sterne,” he said at last. “May I?”
He gestured to the book, and she handed it to him. Jane was remembering a scene from the film ofMansfield Parkwhere a man read so sweetly to a lady he adored that the sound created a passionate tension, the words themselves becoming his courtship. Jane glanced at Mr. Nobley’s somber face, and away again as his eyes flicked from the page to her.
He began to read from the top. His voice was soft, melodious, strong, that of a man who could speak in a crowd and have people listen, but also a man who could persuade a childto sleep with a bedtime story. So she waited to be swayed by the words, but the words were . . .
“Wait, what’s going on?” Jane asked.
“I have no earthly idea.”
“I swear I’m literate, but not one sentence you just read made sense. It sounded like a bunch of random names and maybe something about wine?”
Mr. Nobley was trying very hard not to smile. He kept reading, but his lips were tight, and his voice scraped a couple of times over the incoherently boring sentences. Jane laughed at him, and then he did smile. It gave her a littlethwackof pleasure, as though someone had flicked a finger against her heart.
“Perhaps this wasn’t the most ideal passage,” he said.
“But you read it well,” she said. “I mean, your voice sounded . . . nice.”
“Nice?” He raised his brows. “Well, that is something.”
They sat in silence a few moments, chuckling intermittently.
Mr. Nobley began to read again suddenly, “ ‘Mynheermight possibly overset both in his new vineyard,’ ” having to stop to laugh again. Aunt Saffronia walked by and peered into the dim room as she passed, her presence reminding Jane that this tryst might be forbidden by the Rules. Mr. Nobley returned to himself.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I have trespassed on you long enough.”
He stood, bowed, and was gone before Jane could ask him to stay. Before she realized that she wanted him to.
When she returned to her room to dress for dinner, she picked a purple brocade and smiled at the mirror. Her reflection looked more like a character in a movie than any Jane Hayes she’d ever known.
She hurried downstairs to find her dazzlingly adorned dinner companions standing outside the door on the front stairs. The rain had stopped, and the whole world looked freshened up, water drops dangling like jewels from the half-bare trees, sparkling in the low light. The ladies met each other’s eyes, as if all feeling a similar sensation. They were as beautiful as a post-rain autumn and felt shy about it, the weight of embodying all that splendor almost too much to bear.
The butler came out to inform them that dinner would be a little later than usual, “due to an unfortunate stuffed-duck incident.” And so they decided to walk into the evening light. The sun was dallying flirtatiously with the horizon, and they watched the clouds take up the yellow and orange, colors bright and hot like a bonfire.
There was some fumbling of pairs until Andrews and Charming at last walked arm in arm. A Nobley and Heartwright coupling turned into Erstwhile and Heartwright, which became Erstwhile and Nobley, and there the musical partners game ended. Jane glanced over her shoulder and wondered what thrills of pain and hope might be pricking Amelia as she walked with her erroneously jilted love. Such fun.
When Jane turned back, she found Mr. Nobley had been staring at her. He did not flinch away his attention, holding her with his eyes.
“You look well, Miss Erstwhile,” he said.
“So do you,” she said, and meant it. The gentleman’s dark blue dinner jacket and breeches were appealing at a DNA level. She lifted her hand as if to straighten his cravat and then quickly pulled it away. He was not hers to fuss over.
“If it keeps raining all the time,” Miss Charming was saying,“I’ll go crazy. Can’t we do something more than play cards and walk around?”
She squinted at Colonel Andrews to detect if he approved of her suggestion.
“Just so,” he said, and Miss Charming beamed. “I’ve brought the very thing from London, a script from some little play or other calledHome by the Sea. There are six parts, three pairs of lovers, just right for us, and it will give us something to pass the time before the ball, so let’s rehearse and put it on for Lady Templeton.”
“Oh, yes,” said Miss Charming, clasping her hands at her chest, “jolly good, rather.”
“I’ll bet our Miss Erstwhile would be keen on it as well, right? Miss Heartwright would never disappoint me, I know, and East is a seafaring man—always ready for an adventure. What doyousay, Nobley?”
“I think it inappropriate to stage a theatrical in the house of a respectable lady.”
Miss Charming whined.
“Oh, come now, Nobley,” said Colonel Andrews.
