“I knew you would!” he gushed. “I feel like I have come to understand you through your poems and letters. It was impossible that we should not become friends. You are so unlike any other woman I know!”
He stopped abruptly, his gaze dropping away just as suddenly.
“I…I am sorry. You must think me terribly forward. It is a fault I struggle to overcome.” He looked up, his eyes pleading. “Please say you will not take offense. I mean no harm.”
“It is quite all right,” Sophia replied, surprised to find that she meant it.
His demeanor bounced back to cheerfulness instantly, a brilliant smile creasing his laugh lines. “Excellent! You are a miracle, Miss Grant! How fortunate a man I am to be acquainted with you.”
Sophia was speechless. Did the man not have eyes? Clearly, he did, for they stared at her unblinkingly. Was he a fool, then? His letters had seemed intelligent enough. And yet, he persisted in admiring her.
A bowl of soup was placed before Mr. Mannerly, and he turned grudgingly toward it.
“You will forgive me, Miss Grant, but I shall have to give all my attention to the dish. I wish I were not a clumsy man, but soup has often been my undoing.” He grinned sheepishly. Then, his brow furrowed in concentration, he dipped his spoon into the creamy, white liquid.
She watched him more closely now that she was free to do so without being watched in return. She was trying to reconcile the man before her with the assumptions she had made about him. His connections with nobility had thrown her, to be sure. She had imagined him to be a more worldly sort of man, mixing inall the right circles, flamboyant, even a little inclined to preen, like the younger of his two uncles. Certainly, he was dressed immaculately. And there was not a hair out of place. Not a single one of his perfect sandy-blond curls. They all fell to the side in a soft wave.
It would feel good to run her fingers through hair like that…
His lips, too, were shapely, closing about each spoonful gracefully and then firmly embracing the spoon as it was drawn slowly from his mouth.
Sophia felt a slight sweat forming in her neck.Tch, they made the fire too hot!She pushed the rug from her lap. It slid to the floor.
In a trice, Mr. Mannerly had reached down and collected it. He offered it back to Sophia, his face turned toward her once more. Now she could see his blue eyes. They contained none of the haughtiness she had presumed would be there. No, they were kind and open. And in them she could see a future worth having.
“Did you not want this?” he asked, still holding out the rug to her.
“Oh,” she managed to say, trying to collect herself. “Oh that,” she added, as if seeing the rug for the first time. It was almost impossible to tear herself away from those blue eyes that looked at her with the patient question still unanswered. “Er…the footman can take it away. I am no longer cold.”
“No, indeed, your cheeks are quite flushed,” he noted.
His comment made her more self-conscious, and she felt the warmth deepen upon her face.
He peered more closely at her.
“Actually, Miss Grant,” he said with concern, “you seem to be developing a fever.”
“I assure you, I am quite well,” Sophia insisted. His focused attention only heightened her embarrassment, and shedesperately willed her face not to betray her. She knew she must be quite crimson by now.
Mr. Mannerly’s skin, by contrast, drained of its color. He flung the rug to the floor and grasped her hand as if to support her. “This dinner is too much for you,” he said with some alarm. “You are overexerting yourself.”
Several of Sophia’s siblings looked up from their soup with some surprise. George opened his mouth—no doubt to protest at Mr. Mannerly’s liberties—but Adriana shook her head at him urgently. George subsided, but Sophia had the feeling his soup did not receive his full attention anymore.
Meanwhile Tobias was looking at her hand, its bony, ashen form nestling in his own sturdy palm. He shook his head sadly. “It is my fault. I have badgered you for a meeting. But you knew better. You knew you would not manage. I have been selfish in my enthusiasm. I have not understood.”
Sophia gingerly drew her hand from his. In the corner of her eye, she saw George exhale and relax into his chair. “You are not to blame, sir,” she told Tobias. I am pleased you have come.”
Of course, she meant it. The reality of his presence had been more than she could have hoped for in her private fantasies. But it was time to come down to Earth again. She pursed her lips. “Yes, it is very good that you have come. For now you can see the facts before you. You understand. I am little more than an invalid.” It was a relief to pull the veil from his eyes. If they were at least to be friends, he should understand what little she had to offer. “All you knew of me before were words on a page,” she continued. “My writing gives me the means to enter a world that is otherwise closed to me. In my letters, I am whole. But here you see me as I am. Weak. Confined to my chair. Easily flustered. Perhaps now you will see fit to adjust your opinion of me. At least there will be no further cause for false compliments.”
There. No more pretense. Sophia was glad of it.
Then why did it stab at her heart so?
But there was no relief in the face of Mr. Mannerly. Instead, the worry turned to confusion and pain.
“False compliments?” His voice was a whisper, as if uttering the words were an offense to the ear. “You believe I have tainted my admiration of you with dishonesty?” He sat back, running his fingers through his mop of hair. Then he threw his hand up in frustration. “I know my faults, Miss Grant. I am wordy to excess. But I never exaggerate. I am sorry if you have found my praise tiresome, but it was never, ever bloated with flattery.”
The hurt was so shallow in his eyes that Sophia could not bear it. She wanted to cup his face in her hands and cover it with slow, comforting kisses. He was like a child in his innocence, but in every other way, a man. A very dear man. A very lovely, lovely man.
