As if he could not, or did not quite want to, believe the wonder of her.
She found she could not look away from this expression. Even as she wanted to, because it confused her, and made her cheeks blaze with heat again.
“What do you do best, Miss Bellamy?” he asked softly.
Her mind blanked with surprise.
There was no reason she ought to feel ambushed by the question. But she did.
Survive.It was the answer that sprang at once through every one of her defenses, through the filters of charm and care and diplomacy.Survivethrobbed at the core of everything she did and said.
And yet this seemed patently absurd. She would never dream of saying something like that aloud to this man, who had saved the Duke of Valkirk’s life almost at the cost of his own. Wasn’t she here, on a beautiful and ancient estate, wearing this year’s fashions and a fine bonnet pinned too tightly to her head? Wasn’t she the well-loved daughter of a viscount?
But she had fielded deaths and dramas and illnesses and fluctuations in fortunes that had beset their family. She was proud of it.
But it was as if the colonel’s sudden question had held up a mirror. And for the first time, in it she beheld an exhausted girl.
Brightwall’s expression evolved into a sort of gentle, rueful sympathy. As though he knew every thought in her head at the moment. As if he understood.
Almost as if he’d wanted her to reach the conclusion she’d reached.
She turned slightly away from him. She decided she didn’t want to answer his question, and stubbornly refused to introduce another topic.
“Perhaps you know this, but I’m off to Spain in another month. The crown would like to make a diplomat of me, and I suppose that will be the end of shooting as a career altogether,” he said casually.
“Ah. Spain is warm,” she said somewhat inanely.
“It is indeed,” he agreed politely. He stood back. “Alas, I fear it’s time to bring out the weapons.”
“If we must. I’m certain I can repair it in some fashion, regardless.” Of course she could. Because didn’t she always repair what needed repairing?
“All right then. Put your hand on the top of your bonnet and hold it fast.”
From nowhere he produced a knife, and with a winking flash of the blade he cut the ribbon.
The fine branches snapped violently back like a slingshot, and took a scrap of her ribbon with them. Leaving her with the rest, thankfully.
They stared up at that pink scrap clinging to the twig, destined to wave in a breeze until a bird or a squirrel collected it for a nest, she supposed.
“Free at last, Miss Bellamy.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you, Colonel. I suppose we can add my rescue to your lore.”
“If you would be so kind as to lie about my skill with knots, I should be obliged.”
She laughed.
They regarded each other a moment longer. She had the strangest sense that he was memorizing her.
Perhaps because she was memorizing him, and how he looked in that moment. She would perhaps tell her grandchildren the story of the time the great Colonel Brightwall had freed her from the clutches of a tree.
“I’ll bid you good morning now, shall I, and leave you to your sketching? I hope you find the red crayon you’re seeking. I imagine it’s useful for drawing soldiers. And blushes.”
His eyes glinted wickedly again.
And without another word he continued his stroll across the grounds of the house her father might in fact be on the verge of losing. She noticed he favored one leg a very little, and her stomach tightened in sympathy.
After that, it had felt to her that they had become friends: often, she would catch his eye in a gathering, and his would shine like a coconspirator’s.
