Page 45 of The Cornish Mermaid

Kit stopped but didn’t turn around. Teach her to dance? She was a girl who couldn’t dance? Surely all girls learned to dance while in the school room. Everything about Morvoren Lucas only continued to become more and more mysterious. She knew how to ride astride but not how to dance. When he had composed himself, he turned around. “Very well. But with only the three of us, it won’t be easy.”

“I already have an idea for that,” Ysella said. “Sam Beauchamp can join us as well and we shall make two couples. He’s a good dancer. That will make things far easier. As for the rest, we’ll have to imagine the other dancers.”

“And the music,” Kit said with a wry smile, and left the room before his hot color betrayed him.

Chapter Nineteen

Morvoren

The first dancing lesson was organized for the day after the debacle of the early morning ride. Morvoren and Ysella rose early for another ride but confined themselves to riding sidesaddle, like proper young ladies, under the escort of one of the grooms. From the amused look on his face, it was evident this young man knew all about their adventure of the previous day.

After breakfast at ten, Kit informed them he planned to spend the morning with Sam Beauchamp again, but that after a light mid-day repast, he and Sam would be at Ysella and Morvoren’s service for the better part of the afternoon.

Morvoren had a few doubts about this. Did she want to spend time in Kit’s company when he made her feel so… so what? She couldn’t put her finger on the fluttering that disturbed her stomach whenever she caught him looking at her, and when he so pointedly looked away. Could it be desire? Did she fancy him? Could she be falling in love with someone who’d died two hundred years before she was born? Was that even possible? He was undeniably good looking, after all, and she liked him. But why was she feeling this way about someone who didn’t seem to like her back very much, probably found her an infernal nuisance, and was likely ruing the day he’d offered his help.

From an upstairs window, Morvoren watched Kit and Sam ride out to visit some of the estate tenants, whom, he’d informed her and Ysella, were in need of the sort of help they’d so very kindly donated to the young seamstresses and their families—at his own expense. Had there been a glint of wry humor in his dark eyes as he said this?

He sat his horse well, riding with a loose ease that Sam Beauchamp, an altogether more solid young man, didn’t possess. As though, perhaps, he’d been born in the saddle, which he well might have been as his mother was so experienced a horsewoman. The way he rode, even though now only at a jog trot, reminded Morvoren of Ysella’s style—relaxed and natural with a hint of recklessness to any possible injury.

She continued to watch the two very different young men until the track they were following reached the woodland and the trees swallowed them.

Now what? Ysella had informed her at breakfast that her mother wished them both to join her in the morning room, so it was with nervous steps that Morvoren now made her way there.

Ysella was already seated with some needlework in her lap and a faraway expression on her face, and Lady Ormonde, too, was engaged in some kind of sewing related activity. Unfortunately, sewing had never been Morvoren’s thing. When you could buy clothes ready made for very little money and wear them a few times before you threw them away, what was the point of learning to sew?

She made an elegant curtsey to Lady Ormonde and her apologies for being late, then sat down beside Ysella, peering at what she was stitching. No way could she sew with such neat, tiny stitches. No way could she sew. Full stop.

“It’s a bonnet for my sister Meliora’s baby,” Ysella explained. “Mama is embroidering the gown, and I am to work the bonnet for the child.”

Aha. For the sister who was pregnant. Morvoren kept her mouth shut about that though, as no doubt her knowledge and choice of words would more than shock Lady Ormonde.

“Perhaps you would like to embroider a kerchief,” Lady Ormonde said, holding out a square of white muslin. “It should not overtax you.”

What? Was she a mind reader?

Better to be honest. “I’m afraid,” Morvoren said, choosing her words carefully, “that you would not like my stitching as it’s never been something I’ve practiced. In short, I don’t know how to sew.”

“Lucky you,” Ysella whispered.

Lady Ormonde looked nonplussed, as well she might. Presumably, sewing was a thing all girls did in this time period. To occupy their time. Although the added bonus of providing new clothes for babies must be useful too.

“Perhaps you paint, or play the piano?”

There was a solid no coming on those two pastimes as well. Morvoren tried a winning and apologetic smile. “I’m afraid not. My skill at drawing is similar to that of a six-year-old, I’m afraid, and I’ve never learned to paint. Art was not a subject I studied while at school. And I’m afraid I’m tone deaf and unable to play any instrument.” She paused. “I do admit it’s one of the things I would change about myself if I could—I’d love to be able to sing in tune, and be just a little bit musical.”

Lady Ormonde’s brown eyes, so like Kit’s and Ysella’s, widened. “Tell me, Morvoren, what did you learn at school then?” Her tone of reprimand had gone and pure curiosity had taken its place, as though she were genuinely interested.

Morvoren’s parents had sent her to a fee-paying school where she’d had an excellent all-round education—for the twenty-first century, but maybe not for the early nineteenth. “I’m afraid I learned a lot of things you might not find all that useful. I studied maths, which was my favorite subject, along with English and biology.” Those had been her A level choices, but explaining that to someone in 1811 lay beyond her.

Lady Ormonde fastened on the one she presumably knew the best. “English, as in reading books, or perhaps how to keep a journal?”

Not quite, but Morvoren nodded, glad she’d found something to approve. “I am very fond of reading.”

Lady Ormonde smiled back quite kindly. “Then perhaps you would care to read aloud while Ysella and I sew, as that is always a pleasant accompaniment to industry.” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Ysella, perhaps you will run to the library and select a suitable book.”

Ysella dropped her sewing with alacrity and hurried off. In a few minutes she was back, armed with a leather-bound volume. Belinda, by Maria Edgeworth. Not something Morvoren had ever heard of. She’d been half-hoping for a Jane Austen, but maybe 1811 was a little early for something of hers.

She opened the book, cleared her throat, and began to read. “Mrs. Stanhope, a well-bred woman, accomplished in that branch of knowledge which is called the art of rising in the world, had, with but a small fortune, contrived to live in the highest company.”