He took care to avoidher.
Which was not an easy feat.
Once, he’d tried her way of drinking tea. He’d popped a lump of rock sugar into his mouth, then drank the tea. He’d swallowed it all down with a grimace. Not only was it too sweet, but he also did not like tea. He really preferred coffee.
One morning, she stood in front of him, unexpectedly.
There was something different about her, and it took him a while to discover what it was.
Her hair was tied back neatly in braids, revealing the long, elegant curve of her neck. She also no longer wore her old, faded blue cotton dress, but a high-waisted white silk gown that flowed like water about her limbs. For once, she wore shoes: delicate little white slippers with embroidered beads.
“Are you going to a ball?” He wondered why it had never occurred to him to take her to the village assembly ball.
“No.”
He stared, fascinated, at the dimples that appeared when she smiled.
“What do you think?” There was a repressed excitement about her as she clasped her hands, her eyes like stars. She twirled in front of him. “Pretty?”
She looked at him expectantly, as though his opinion mattered.
She was.
She was a fetching little thing, really. Quite pretty when she wanted to be. She could hold her own with any lady in theton.
No, the truth was that she’d outshine them all. Easily.
The thought came unbidden, and with it, something that felt unpleasantly like panic.
“It’s passable.” His voice came out colder than he’d intended. “It’ll only be a matter of time until you stain it with tea.” He regretted his words as soon as they left his mouth.
She dropped her hands. The light in her eyes died.
He turned on his heel and strode out, desperate to shake off the sudden confusion that had taken hold of him.
He took a long ride in the park to clear his head, yet the image of her big, brown, hurt eyes, and the tears that welled up and quivered on her long lashes like dew on a blade of grass, haunted him for the remaining day.
When he returned, he saw her sitting on the library floor reading.
She was wearing her old blue dress again, and her hair flew wildly about her shoulders. She did not look up to greet him.
He hesitated, then decided to read his book elsewhere.
“Lonely little thing,” he heard a maid whisper to another as he passed them in the corridor. “Cook made her a cake, which she ate alone. Must be hard to have no one to celebrate her birthday with. What with Lady Regina so ill and Mr Fane always shut up in his study.”
He froze on the steps as the implications of the words sank in.
He ran his hand through his hair and ascended the remaining stairs slowly.
It was her birthday.
She’d dressed up because she was turning eighteen today. Nothing more or less.
What a fool he was.
He approached her after supper. Her face was drawn, and she drew up her shoulders stiffly to briefly acknowledge him, but intending to walk past him.
He cleared his throat. “I have this for you.” He held out a package. It was wrapped in cream silk paper and tied with a simple string. Nothing fancy. Merely a leather notebook he’d bought at his favourite stationer in London that he had no use for.
