A small clock in the dining room chimed the hour, signalling the time to depart. Maddy stopped in the hall and gave her hair a cursory glance. She’d sat in front of one looking glass or another while her mother stood over her shoulder, dishing out her endless criticisms while a hapless maid tried to contain Maddy’s wild hair or fade her freckles with some homemade concoction. Mirrors had become a reminder of her shortcomings, and she’d come to dislike them. There was always an improvement to be made. Fixed, as if she were broken. Even at Everwell, she had to endure Elouise’s well-meaning sessions in front of a mirror. And while Lou loved Maddy’s wild hair to the point of envy and delighted in her freckles, it was exhausting.
So when Beau stopped beside her while she was attempting to shove a hairpin back into place, his question took her aback.
“Am I allowed to tell you you’re beautiful?” Beau asked.
Maddy grimaced. While they had both enjoyed the lovemaking in the garden, Maddy could not just rid herself of the lingering distrust that came with the compliment. Beau seemed to genuinely admire her. Why was it so hard to accept? She knew he was not Malcolm Ferguson. Malcolm had had the veneer of charm, but it had been stretched over a littleness of character that could not stand even the smallest test.
A fresh wave of guilt—that same guilt she’d carried with her for nearly two decades—landed on her shoulders like a lead cloak. Yes, she hadn’t intended to hurt Malcolm, even though he had every intention of hurting her. But it did not change the fact that a man was dead, and even if she had fought to protect herself, she was partially responsible.
The story in the society pages of the Halifax Chronicle haunted her. Last fall, during the Red Coat Job, Gemma had heard rumours through a member of the New Women’s League that Everwell not only housed women of questionable character and possibly thieves, but something even more dark… a murderess. Gemma had told the story over tea laced with a generous helping of whisky after it had all concluded. While most of her fellow spinsters had laughed off the accusation as something so ridiculous it belonged in the bin, Maddy—who was not given to drink of any kind—swallowed her tea in a single gulp. Only Phillipa Hartley knew her entire story, which meant Lady Em and Tilda did, too. How the whisper of that dark chapter in her life had followed her here, she did not know.
And yet Beau wanted to know if he could tell her she was beautiful.
“I don’t know,” she replied at last.
“Would you deny that the sun rises in the morning?” he asked.
“Of course not,” she replied. “That’s a fact.”
“So is your beauty,” he replied.
She rolled her eyes. “You are beautiful,” she said, turning to face him. “And that is a fact.”
“Why is it I am beautiful—thank you—and you are not?”
“Because look at you!” she said. “Your face could be put in a dictionary beside the very term. It’s what Rimple would call an ‘objective truth.’”
He cocked an eyebrow, not bothering to disguise his disbelief. “So what you are telling me is that your opinions matter, and mine do not.”
“That’s not what I am saying,” she said. “You have not had a lifetime of people trying to improve you.”
“That’s a rather remarkable conclusion to have.” An unmistakable edge dampened his usual lightness. “How well do you know me?”
She blinked, taken aback by his question. “I?—”
“I spent a lifetime with a man who tried to turn me into a version of himself,” he said. “And I suppose he partially succeeded.”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” she conceded. “Because you seem like a perfectly fine man. A very good one, in fact.”
He’d called himself selfish on more than one occasion, but the longer she spent with him, the harder it was to believe. He treated the Chandlers with respect. He treated her with respect. And after she was able to move past the fear of encountering Nelson Taylor on the street, the fact that Beau was willing to defend her honour so easily was something she would not forget.
Beau da Silva was a good man in a world where it seemed hard to be a good man and be celebrated for it.
“I believe you are humbling me,” he said, his cheeks flushing from her compliment. “Mark that down in one of your books, Madeline. I can’t recall the last time that happened.”
“How about I let you tell me how beautiful I am,” she said. “Because perhaps I need to be a little less humble.”
He cocked an eyebrow, looking at her with the same eagerness she’d seen in tigers at feeding time at Down’s Zoological Gardens.
“Where do you want me to begin?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous. “At the top of your head, or the bottom of your feet?”
Chapter Twenty-One
After a rather breathless—and entirely too short—round of lovemaking, Beau and Maddy managed to put themselves together in time for supper, arriving at the Chandler’s door at the appointed time.
The Chandler homestead was built in the common fashion of many farmhouses in the area, with whitewashed boards and window sashes accented in green. Unlike The Grove, this was very obviously a working farm; the nearby barn was full of animals, and below, fields full of potatoes and grain glistened in the gentle summer evening light. Under the windows, there were boxes full of violets, pansies, and a host of other plants that Beau could not name but gave the house a welcoming glow. Nearby, the twinkling of a homemade set of chimes adding their gentle music to the birdsong and leaves that made up Mother Nature’s symphony. Through the nearby window, which was open, notes of savoury herbs and roasting chicken wafted through the air, rousing his appetite.
Beau put his hand to the door and after a moment’s hesitation, gave it a gentle tap. It had been ages since he’d been this nervous. An old fear clawed at him, and despite Madeline’s assurances that they would not have invited him here if he was not wanted, it lurked under the surface. The endless demand to prove his worth had not stopped with Frank’s death. Indeed, it had crystallized it to a fine point. Now he was standing at the door of a family he didn’t know until two days ago, and part of him wondered if he would pass their test.
