Page 53 of The Subtle Craft of Courting Kate

Kate pursed her lips. “Hm? I beg you, what is hm meant to signify?”

“Well,” he said, as he settled his hands upon his thighs. “It’s just…she’s got green eyes.”

“Green eyes!” Kate said, and for once she was thankful for the dull roar of the crowd, which saved her from having embarrassed herself to have spoken at such a volume. “What is wrong with green eyes?”

“Nothing,” he said blithely, and when he turned to face her, she was relieved to see that odd stiffness had faded from his face to be replaced with that familiar mischievous grin. “Except that I happen to favor brown.”

An incredulous puff of laughter filled Kate’s cheeks. Exasperated, Kate shook her head. “I truly am going to strangle you,” she said.

“You won’t.” Again, the nudge of his shoulder to hers. “You’d miss me entirely too much.”

Chapter Twenty

You’ve hardly danced this evening, Lord Elliot,” Mrs. Littlefield said between sips of her lemonade as they watched Kate move through the paces of a reel from the edge of the ballroom floor. “Which is quite a shame, as you are such a fine dancer. Certainly more than one lady will be left disappointed.”

“There’s plenty of sets left,” Elliot said easily. “With Richard and Rebecca otherwise engaged for the evening, someone has got to make certain Kate doesn’t go off with any known rakes. I can hardly do so if I’m dancing.”

Mrs. Littlefield smiled over the rim of her glass. “I would think that a mother’s purview, wouldn’t you?”

“Ordinarily so,” Elliot agreed, “but this is London, and you cannot be expected to take the measure of a man’s character in the space of an introduction.”

“Oh?” Mrs. Littlefield said. “I’ll grant you that it has been nearly three decades since last I was in London, and there is also the fact that my social circle was rather a few steps down from yours. But I would place good money on the wager that I could still spot a rake at twenty paces, even now.”

Elliot’s brows lifted in interest, unexpectedly delighted with the declaration. “Would you, now?”

“I would,” Mrs. Littlefield declared. “I’ll admit you have given a passable attempt of rakish behavior,” she said, softening the accusation with a little pat to his arm. “Some rowdiness, as men are wont to display from time to time. But had I ever thought you to be a rake in truth, you can be certain that I would have discouraged your familiarity with Kate.”

“I confess that I’m not certain whether or not I’m meant to be flattered,” Elliot mused.

“Of course you are meant to be flattered,” Mrs. Littlefield said. “A child is where a mother’s heart lives outside her chest. There is nothing so precious to me in the whole of the world as my Katie.” There was a quavering note of sentimentality in her voice that had Elliot’s gaze once again seeking out Kate across the ballroom. Would he one day be privileged enough to comprehend that sort of sentimentality—the sort one could only truly know when one had a child of one’s own?

Mrs. Littlefield cleared her throat. “You have not asked my advice, Lord Elliot, and I hope I am not stepping beyond my place to offer it. But if you wish to dance, first you must ask her.”

The fine hairs at the nape of Elliot’s neck prickled as a wave of heat swept over him. Not from the crowded confines of the ballroom; only simple, horrible, wretchedly instant embarrassment. Ducking his head in a futile effort to hide the color he was certain had flooded his face, he stammered, “I—well—” Ah, hell. His breath left his lungs on a gusty, fraught sigh. “Mrs. Littlefield…”

“Do forgive me if I am mistaken,” she said lightly, in the dry, certain tone of a woman who knew herself to be entirely correct in her assumption, “but I have long had…a certain impression of your regard for my Kate.”

He was going to sink straight through the floor in abject humiliation. “You must know you are not,” Elliot muttered, hunching his shoulders. “How long, exactly?”

“Hm.” Mrs. Littlefield allowed herself a small smile, and behind the lenses of her spectacles, the corners of her eyes crinkled with amusement. “I suppose you would have been about thirteen when first I suspected.”

Elliot swiped his hand across his mouth to smother the groan that wrenched itself up from his lungs. Forever, then. As long as he’d known it himself.

“Of course I did not think much of it,” Mrs. Littlefield said dismissively as she adjusted her spectacles upon the bridge of her nose. “Such things are common in childhood, and they ebb and flow like the tide. You were bound for a larger life than that there was to be found in our little village. Even if you had nurtured that sweet little childhood tendre longer than expected, I thought—well, you would soon be off for university, and then out into the world, and that would be the end of it, wouldn’t it?”

It hadn’t been. His world had expanded, of course. He’d gone to London for the Season with his family even as a boy, had gone off to university. But he’d always come back home again, because his heart had always been in Northampton. With Kate.

“But it wasn’t the end of it,” Mrs. Littlefield said softly. “It persisted with every school holiday, and beyond. Christmases, even when your family was not in residence. Springs and summers. Half the time any young man of your age and status by all rights ought to have been in London.”

Had he been so transparent as that? “Does Kate know?” he asked.

Mrs. Littlefield managed an apologetic little smile. “I don’t believe she has ever suspected,” she said. “I have had many regrets in my life, Lord Elliot, but nothing so much as that my sweet little girl had to grow up so very quickly. She lost whole years of her life to hardship when her father passed. The years which ought to have been the best and most exciting of her life were instead wasted upon learning to survive without him. To adjusting us to our changed circumstances. To tending to her mother, instead of doing all those things young girls are meant to do. I doubt she ever gave so much as a thought to courting, to finding a husband. Beyond those rare public events which we attended, she never much sought out the gaiety and frivolity her peers enjoyed.”

“I don’t know,” Elliot said gently, reassuringly, “that Kate would ever have considered those years to be wasted.”

“No, of course she would not,” Mrs. Littlefield said, with a fond smile. “She is nothing if not steadfastly loyal.” She gave a soft hum of a sigh. “But she was so young when our lives changed so utterly, just dancing upon the very cusp of womanhood. Then, so suddenly, she had to pack away all of her hopes and dreams for the future. The future she ought to have had was gone in an instant, and I think she must have worked very hard to convince herself that she did not want it.”

“But you think she does?” he ventured, all hesitance, half-afraid of the answer. “That is, could she—”