Oh, please hurry, Maria,she thought.I don't know what is happening to me. I don't know what I'm doing.
Simultaneously she thought:Please take forever, Maria.
“Are you timing it with your gold watch?” she asked Mr. Redmond.
She thought he might laugh.
But he didn't reply.
Suddenly the notion that he didn't speak because hecouldn'twhile he gazed at her made her heart lurch, then thunder as madly as...
...as madly and joyously as Jacob Eversesa racing up to their house on his mare.
“Thirty,” Mr. Redmond said quietly.
Somehow, she wasn't surprised he had indeed timed it to the second.
She slowly turned to face him.
He seemed subdued, almost transfixed. As if he had come up against a conundrum.
“There now. I believe we are even. Are you a great believer in fairness, then, Mr. Redmond?”
It was a moment before he spoke, as though he’d needed to compose himself.
“I think...fairness is relative, and should be considered in the context of the circumstances.”
He still sounded distracted.
She didn’t quite take his meaning, and this was both exciting and a trifle disquieting.
She was certain that Jacob would have snorted at the notion of fairness being mutable. Yes or no, right and wrong: those were the choices. Some people mistook Jacob’s brisk certainty for simplicity.She had come to know that a thousand thoughts whirred through his mind before he came out with a statement that sounded immovably definitive.
Mr. Redmond asked, “Did you come away from Tingles with anything interesting?”
Oh, dear.
The problem was: She had, indeed.
“A book and a pamphlet,” she confessed.
He detected her hesitation and narrowed his eyes in amusement. “What sort of book?”
She hesitated. Then she sighed. “Laugh if you must.” She handed over both of them.
He accepted her proffered purchases with great care into his elegant hands. She was startled to realize he hadn’t far to reach. Somehow, they had inched closer to each other with every word they’d exchanged.
“Laugh at you?” he replied, absently. “I?”
As if they'd known each other forever.
He examined the pamphlet first. “Ah! I see you have a new cotillion with...apparently a great many leaping steps. Intriguing. It looks challenging, indeed. And what have we here...”
Excruciatingly slowly, he read the title of the book: “A Venetian Romance. By Anonymous.”
He looked up at her with mischievously shining eyes. “Such a prolific author, Anonymous.”
Now he was teasing her. Her cheeks were warm. “You are humoring me, Mr. Redmond.”
