Page 59 of The Lady Knows Best

Slowly, she twisted to look up at him with slack-jawed astonishment.

“But what boy, or even young man,” he went on, “born to such immense privilege, with none but an elderly grandmother to check him, would not have tested the limits of his authority from time to time? Purely a rhetorical question,” he assured her, raising a staying hand. “No need to reply.”

He glanced up at the windows of the winter parlor, wondering whether their little tête-à-tête was being held under the watchful eye of Lady Stalbridge. But the sun glanced off the panes of glass, transforming them into sheets of hammered gold.

“The correct answer, by the way, is obviously Lord Ryland.” He led Daphne toward a stone bench nestled into an alcove in the shrubbery, the only spot in the garden not in full view of the house. “He has shouldered his own inheritance—a crumbling estate and the care of seven sisters—with grace and generosity of spirit. If, in the last sixteen years, he has ever stepped a toe out of line, I’m sure I was behind him, giving him a nudge.”

“A pity he could not have been a better influence on you,” she said, as she sat down and arranged her skirts.

She was teasing him, or so he thought from her voice.

“Ah, Miss Burke,” he countered. “You fail to consider: without him, I might have been worse.”

Before he sat down, he broke off a single blossom from a nearby rosebush, a deep, vivid pink, almost red. When he held it out, she took it from him without meeting his eye, twisting the stem between her first finger and thumb. “What a vibrant shade.”

The stone was cool beneath his palms as he eased himself onto the seat beside her. “Almost as vibrant as you.”

She twirled the blossom again, lazily back and forth, then brought it up to her nose, inhaling its sweet scent and brushing its velvet petals over her upper lip. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Pay me such outlandish compliments. Flirt even when no one else is by to overhear.”

He considered the possible answers—and coy non-answers—he might offer. Then he remembered his wish, halfhearted though it might have been, that there had been some honesty between himself and Arabella Grey.

“Habit, I suppose,” he told her with a weary sigh, curving his hand around the front edge of the stone bench. They’d been in this position once before, in the Duchess of Raynham’s garden. He wasn’t sure yet how to measure that day in the progress of their strange not-quite-a-sham courtship. “Because, in my experience, those are the sorts of things women like to hear.” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the movement of her hand as she laid aside the flower, and her head, bobbing in agreement, her worst suspicions about him confirmed.

So, he cast his gaze out over the rose garden instead, thinking about the curious mixture of wildness and careful cultivation, the juxtaposition of sweetness and thorns. “And also because it is the truth, though I did not recognize it at first. You are beautiful and sweet and lively and sharp—whether you see those things in yourself or not. Whether you want them to be seen, by me or anyone else.”

The hum of insects filled the silence that followed, punctuated by the trills of a lark somewhere beyond the hedge wall. Daphne crossed and uncrossed her feet at the ankles. Her hands, which had been folded in her lap, slid to the bench, one on either side of her hips, as if she were preparing to rise and leave him there.

Then the little finger of her left hand brushed—accidentally, surely—against the little finger of his right hand. Hers gloved, his bare. He thought again of that moment beneath her sister’s rooftop arbor.

This time, however, she didn’t pull away.

“Does she know? About our . . .” She swallowed before speaking the word. “Betrothal?”

“My grandmother? No. Though I’m sure she senses something unusual in the air. I’ve never invited a young lady to Lyneham Park before.”

“Oh.” Her knuckles poked sharply against the soft leather of her glove as she curled her fingers against the stone. “Then I . . . I’m honored you wish to show it to me.”

“Even under the circumstances?” he dared to ask after a moment.

“Even then.” The tremor of a nervous laugh passed through her. “I think. That is to say—”

“I understand. We each of us had in mind a list of attributes that were wanted in the person we married. I have undoubtedly been more fortunate than I deserve, and you”—he turned toward her and winked—“you are mastering—mistressing?—your disappointment.”

She laughed, very clearly in spite of herself. “It’s not that—not exactly, anyway. It’s . . . well, I suppose it does come down to knowledge: the things I know, wish to know, may never know about you. But to be willing to share your home, your family, with me . . . Why, it’s as if I had dragged you to Merrion Square and offered to show you the box in which I kept all my childhood treasures. Are you not afraid you may reveal too much?”

“Afraid I may reveal too much? Ryland and my grandmama are the real dangers there, I should think.”

She shook her head, but reluctant amusement still danced across her features. “Aren’t you afraid this place may reveal too much, then?” she corrected herself.

He tested the notion. Ought he to be frighted by what she might discover about him here? Probably.

But for better or worse, he wasn’t.

“No.”