The woman sank haltingly down onto the settee, arranging her limbs like a living tableau. He’d seen puppets with morelife-like movements, and her speech had not gotten any less mechanical. “Very well, my lord, thank you for asking. And you?”
“Quite well, thanks.” He squinted at her. Did she have a twin and they were playing a prank? Surely this wasn’t the same woman he’d just spent an hour with in blissful silence circling the park. He was about to ask another question of her, but Jacobs entered with a tray.
A consummate professional, Jacobs blinked hard when he saw Mrs. Reid in her affectation but said nothing. At least it wasn’t just Beckett who noticed. He wanted to press the servant, wanting to say,See? It isn’t just me!Beckett nodded to the man, knowing that he would be required to make many more runs up and down the stairs than usual.
Beckett had even written out tented labels for each type of tea brewed, all in his own decorative script. He’d had a fondness for calligraphy in school—really all beautiful things—and had enjoyed using his best pens and peacock-blue ink to make the small signs. He’d spent time thinking about the groupings of the twenty teas, and how they might be presented. There was the hope that it would dazzle her without overwhelming her with choices.
Her eyes strayed to the labels, drawn to the written word as if she had no choice but to read. There was a flicker of her normal self as she took in the information, but then her face returned to that placid grimacing mask. “How very thoughtful of you, my lord.”
He was not one to be uncomfortable with his rank or the social hierarchy—it was so deeply engrained that he rarely thought of it. But her emphasis of it, the distance that it put between them was very off-putting. Why was she being so formal, when she hadn’t been so the very first second they’d met?
“Shall I pour?” she asked, her tone flat, and in any other circumstance, he would have assumed she was putting him on. But with her rigid posture and odd tilts of her limbs, he couldn’t be sure of anything.
“Please,” he said.
“Which shall I start with?” Her hands sat still in her lap.
Beckett blinked at her. This was her home. She was hostess. Why did she need his prompting? “Whichever excites you most.”
“Whichever one excites you most is what excites me most,” she countered, again in that toneless speech.
“You can’t be serious,” he blurted.
Her eyelashes fluttered, but she didn’t move.
“What has changed, Mrs. Reid? Is this a joke? A game?” None of his prompting made her answer his question. He lowered his voice. “Are you in trouble? Is there something amiss and you need help?”
Her eye twitched.
“You won’t tell me? Then please, stop making that ridiculous face. It’s remarkably unsettling.”
But her face didn’t change. She was like a horrid Samhain turnip carving. “I don’t know what you mean, my lord.”
“That!” he said, leaping up. He honestly could not stand fakery. And this was the worst kind, because he knew she hated it, too. A person couldn’t spend five minutes in the company of the real Mrs. Reid and not know it. “Always reminding me of my rank. You haven’t used a ‘my lord’ once in the previous weeks, and now you’ve done it four times in one sitting!”
“Five,” she blurted.
He twirled back around to pin her with his eyes. “Aha!” he cried, pointing his fingers. “There you are. I knew you were still in there somewhere. Has something bewitched you? What is going on?”
“I know not what you mean, my lo—”
“Don’t,” he cut her off, using his hand as its own stop. “Not another ‘my lord’ out of you. I’m not a violent man, but dear God, that strange grimace you are wearing makes me want to slap it right off your face. Why are you doing this? Is this a game to you?” He straightened, another thought occurring. “Are you mocking me?”
Part of the grimace fell away. She no longer crinkled her eyes in that strange manner, but her limbs were still held in that awkwardly rigid manner. “I would never mock you, my—sir.”
“Ha! That’s not true, and we both know it. I thought you didn’t lie, Mrs. Reid. That was what you told me.” Beckett was too hot to exist in this room. He wanted to pull off his cravat that was restricting his neck. Instead, he had to settle for running his hand through his hair, trying to release the heat that emanated.
“I am not lying,” she protested, but it was a weak one. Her voice was small and horrid, mechanical and thin.
“Then say what you mean, woman. Respect me and tell me to my face what has changed in the hours since I saw you last.”
The rictus fell from her face, and her body sagged. She’d given up whatever pretense she was attempting to hold to. Whatever game this was. His heart stopped pounding with anger and he slowed down, sinking back into the sofa. He wanted to go to her on her side of the room, take her hand, and ask what on Earth was the matter.
“Mrs. Reid. Please. What in all damnation is going on here?”
Her chin remained cast down, and he could barely recognize the woman he knew. She looked dejected, beaten. “I suppose I should tell you the truth, since that is what both of us typically demand.”
“Quite,” he said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I don’t like being mocked, nor do I like being uninformed.”
