Page 20 of An Enchantress for an Earl

If the world had been spinning before, it was moreso now. What she had just said… such passionate belief in the value of learning – and an implied immediate belief in him as a person – for she had not in any way questioned the idea that he might know more than a professor!

“I do not know. But everyone else seems to think that he had the authority to do as he wished, and that I should just have accepted it.”

“Then everyone else is foolish, Lord Merryfield. Wrongs should be righted, even at personal cost.”

“Thank you, Lady Violet.”

The music slowed, and they spun to a stop. Which did not, at all, slow the spinning of his thoughts.

She smiled at him, and he reluctantly released her from his arms, turning to escort her back to her family. She looked up at him, and her lips curved into a genuine smile. He could not drag his eyes away. He wanted to kiss her – not just because she was a beautiful woman, but because of what she had said. Because she was the first person, outside his family, to unreservedly accept his view on such a matter.

“What will you do?”

Her voice was soft, and the words simple, but he understood the many layers contained in that question.

“What I have been doing. Continue studying. Hope that, within the next two years, I will be permitted to complete my degree. Attempt to turn what I have already learnt to useful purpose where I can. And try, somehow, to find a way to prevent my obsession with things being correct from ruining anything else.”

There was that bitter sharpness in his voice again. He swallowed – she was kind, she did not deserve to be faced with his bitterness.

“I do not think that correctness ruins things. Surely it is the unwillingness of others to learn that causes the problem. I do not like lies. In society, there are times when prevarication is necessary, absolutely, but that is a different matter from outright falsehoods.”

Kind indeed. Perhaps she did not truly grasp the degree to which his obsessiveness drove him. They were fast approaching her family, and he was startled to realise that he did not wish to leave her.

“It is. Although even prevarication of the socially expected kind is something which I find difficult.”

Why was he being so open with her about these matters? He never spoke to anyone of his obsessions, and the difficulty of daily life. Somehow, she felt safe. Perhaps he was an even bigger fool than he had already believed himself to be.

“Perhaps we should set a trend in society, for terrifyingly blunt honesty? Although I admit, given my sister Hyacinth’s… experiments… in that approach, I suspect that it would not go well.”

“That sounds intriguing – you will have to tell me about that.”

She lifted her eyes to his for a moment, and they sparkled, full of laughter.

“I will, for it is a most interesting story – but not one to be told in public…”

Warmth filled him, in the strangest way, for what her words implied – that, one day, they might be in a circumstance which was not in public, where she might gift him family secrets.