Page 110 of A Modest Independence

“Jenny?” he said her name quietly as he approached.

She turned her head. Her mouth trembled on a smile. “Tom.”

“What are you doing down here?”

“Feeding nuts to this wretched parrot. You wouldn’t know to hear him now, but only five minutes ago he took a cashew directly from my palm.” She dusted her hands off. “Have you only just returned from the railway station?”

There was an odd catch in her voice. An echo of the emotion she’d expressed earlier when she’d wept so piteously into his handkerchief. He’d never felt such tortured confusion as he had in those moments, crouched down at her feet, at once so indescribably grateful that it was he she was weeping over, and yet, at the same time, so utterly ravaged that he could do nothing to take away her tears.

Nothing that he could think of then.

Now, however…

“Yes,” he said. “Only just.”

“With Ahmad?”

“He’s gone to fetch Mira for an outing. And you’re already dressed for dinner, I see. I’m unforgivably behind the times, as usual.”

“We’re not on a schedule.” She moved away from the wall, her skirts swaying around her legs like a bell. “Shall we sit down and talk awhile?”

Tom glanced at the tables scattered about the courtyard. Two soldiers sat at one of them, smoking cheroots. At another, an older lady and gentleman engaged in low conversation. The rest of the tables were empty. “If you like.”

“It’s private enough here.”

Not as private as her room. Or his. But Tom wouldn’t argue the point. He gestured to an empty table at the far side of the courtyard, opposite the rippling marble fountain.

Jenny preceded him there, waiting as he pulled out a chair for her and cleaned the seat with his handkerchief. “Parrots aren’t the tidiest of creatures.”

Tom grimaced. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“Some ladies in London keep them as pets.” She sat down, arranging her skirts all about her. “They’re quite fashionable. One can even train them to talk.”

“Do these parrots talk?”

“Not that I’ve heard. I daresay no one has taken the trouble to teach them.”

He sat down beside her, angling his chair so he could look her in the eye. “Enough about parrots. There’s something I wish to tell you.”

“And something I wish to tell you. I had a visitor while you were gone.”

“Did you?”

“It was Mrs. Anstruther.”

Tom listened in stony silence as Jenny recounted the particulars of the lady’s visit.

When she’d finished, she sat back in her chair. “Well? What do you think of that?”

What he thought was that, though in this case Giles may not have been the rank seducer he’d been portrayed as by Colonel Anstruther, it didn’t follow that his behavior with other ladies had been exemplary. One need only look to Jenny’s experience to know that. Giles had kissed her, leaving her to believe Tom knew not what.

True, she hadn’t been weeping over the man today. But he had hurt her. Hurt her enough that she’d crumpled up his final letter and thrown it away.

Such events loom large in the life of a young woman.

It certainly put a different complexion on the matter.

“I have several thoughts,” he said. “The first of which was what prompted me to visit the railway office.”