“I am not mocking you,” she said.
“Then what was this show all about? Your hair?”
Her hand went to the curls that hung beside her cheeks and she yanked, as if she could straighten them with one hard pull. He could see her pale skin stretch and it hurt him to see. The fact shocked him. He had always believed that was an old wives’ tale, to feel hurt when someone else was hurting. But he felt the pain of hers, deep in his chest. He could almost feel his chest crack open, as he saw her flagellating herself.
He reached out. “Mrs. Reid, please. The curls are pretty, but they just aren’t…you. I must ask again, what is this charade?”
“Charade?” she asked, looking at him. Now he could see hurt in her expression, which he didn’t understand at all.
“Yes, charade. You are wearing more ribbons than one person ought to possess, with your hair dressed as if for a ball. Youmy lordme five times—” he looked at her to see if that indeed was the correct number, but she said nothing, so he assumed it was correct. “—and you won’t state an opinion or a fact at all. And your face! Whatever made you take this grotesque expression of your normally pleasing features?”
Ah, there. Her face moved into a shrewd and calculating look he knew well. She was parsing his words in that machine-like mind of hers, about to break down some new folly he had committed. She swallowed, sighed, and shook her shoulders out of the slump, and held herself to her normal upright self.
“Let us speak over this Assam, shall we? It’s usually my favorite. I’d hate for the tea to grow cold.” She poured for both of them, the steaming brew a deep red brown that was not unlike her hair. The aroma was rich and he sat back with his cup—no need for milk or sugar in tea this fine—and waited.
She took no additions to her tea either, but she took her time eyeing him. “I am embarrassed, sir.”
He couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at that. “You don’t look embarrassed.”
“I have no doubt of that,” she said. “My outsides rarely match my insides.”
“Is that what that face was all about?” He pulled an approximation of her rictus grin.
At least she had the good humor to chuckle at him. “Quite.”
“What was it for? What purpose did that expression serve?”
She cleared her throat and sipped at her tea, not looking at him. Ah, there was the embarrassment. He could learn to read her better, that was true. But he was learning that now, which was not nothing.
“I was attempting to behave like an attractive lady.”
Beckett almost spit out his tea. “Like a what?”
“An attractive lady. A woman who would be seen as the marrying kind. The available kind. But not in those harlot sort of ways.”
He couldn’t believe she just said the wordharlotto him. But it was better than not saying anything at all. He was having trouble parsing all of this. Did she need to practice this behavior? Was there a ball coming up? “And what was the purpose in behaving in such a manner?”
She looked at him as if he were the dumbest creature to ever walk the Earth. That Noah had inadvertently added two creatures to his ark, named Fool and Stupid, and he was their descendant. This, at least, was a familiar expression from her.
“I wanted you to see me as an attractive lady.”
For some reason, as soon as he heard those words, his hearing stopped working. All he could hear was a high-pitched whine. He could no longer take deep breaths. The teacup dropped. The spilled hot water seared his thighs. He hopped up, pulling the wet wool away from his body.
“Oh dear,” she said, with real concern. “Jacobs!”
The manservant entered and immediately saw the concern. The hot water burned through his trousers. He ushered Beckettto another room, fetching towels and his footman. It was a small powder room, though clearly it was now being used as storage.
“Are you well my lord?” his footman called through the door as Beckett undid his trousers to see if he had scalded himself. Fortunately, he hadn’t, though the pale skin that never saw sun was red from the heat of the spill. His valet would be upset that he’d have to redye the fabric to hide the stain. But perhaps the man knew tricks to get tea out of wool.
“I’m fine, thank you. But I’d like you to fetch me a new set of trousers and return straight away.”
“You won’t be leaving sir?” The footman sounded surprised.
“I want to try all that damnable tea,” he snapped. He’d been looking forward to it all week. There was nothing more pleasing than the perfect cup of tea, and he wanted to see the expression on Mrs. Reid’s face when they found the one together. “Fetch me new trousers.”
The footman left, and Beckett rebuttoned the fall of his trousers, not tucking in his shirt. Well, now what would he do, with twenty minutes of standing in a small closet, the only light coming from the small window at head height?
The towel had soaked up some of the tea, so he wasn’t sopping wet. Still, what an irritation. What had made him drop his cup? Oh yes, her protestation that she wanted him to see her as an “attractive lady.” It made his skin crawl to think about it.
