“That is the general idea, yes.” His voice felt two octaves lower than normal, gravel in his chest.
She sighed. “And that makes a woman want to…” The implication hung in the air.
He stared at her, flattened, gutted with surprise. “Typically, yes.”
She nodded. “You are indeed very practiced,” she said. “Like a set of fencing moves. It’s obvious you’ve done this dozens of times.”
Hundreds, you chit, he nearly blurted.
“I suppose there is something lacking in me. I suspected as much.” She held out her hand to shake. “Thank you for the lesson, Lord Daring.”
Darien didn’t shake her hand. He couldn’t move. He simply stood there, rooted to the spot, about to go up in flames of mortification and rage. Blithely, as if she had not just been kissed by the most practiced rakehell in the kingdom,Miss Henrietta Wardley-Hines rearranged her shawl, nodded politely, and strolled back into her house.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Henrietta sat in her study, staring at the sheet of foolscap before her. Yesterday her themes had seemed so orderly, her points well-made, but now her chicken scratches seemed substanceless and stupid. And what did an intellectual debate matter, anyway, when there was so much staggering sorrow and injustice in the world?
Sometimes she wished the angels would descend with swords and fire to smite all the wicked. But then who would be left?
She pulled a fresh paper toward her and took a small knife and quill from the escritoire. The letter required only two lines, but her tears blurred the ink. She sanded the page and let it dry while she hunted for her seal, a small soapstone with the profile of Minerva carved into it, a gift from her former schoolmistress. Henrietta folded the letter, dripped the hot wax to seal, and addressed it.
The notes for her debate stared up at her. She put her face in her hands.
“Caller for you, Miss Hetty,” the butler said from the doorway.
“I am not receiving today, Dearbody,” she said through her fingers.
The butler cleared his throat. “Lord Darien Bales, miss.”
Henrietta wiped her tears with her hands, wishing she could as easily push away the flutter in her belly. There he stood, taller than she remembered, in a burgundy coat that brought attention to how very wide his shoulders were and breeches that left nothing to wonder about the length and strength of his legs. He was like the big cats explorers had discovered in faraway lands, huge, supple, lithe, predatory, walking the earth as if they owned it.
“Lady Clarinda sent me up,” he said, an apologetic note in his voice. “She said you might be in need of company.”
“In fact, I am just leaving on an errand,” Henrietta murmured. She was glad to have tasks to distract her, a reason to avoid Darien’s unsettling company.
He was calling only because it was proper to call at a home where one had been a guest. Lord Darien had exquisite manners when he chose to exercise them.
He had pinned her to the garden wall, given her a long, practiced, mechanical kiss, and held rigid and cold and distant the entire time. She could not name all the emotions that had swirled through her then and rose again at the sight of him now, but she would do her best to hide them. Some new awareness swept through her body at his nearness, but she was alone in it; he was the tutor, instructing, correcting, unaffected. She would not let him see how he affected her.
She rose. “Dearbody, would you ask Sir Pelton to frank this letter for me? The family will not be able to pay the post.”
Dearbody withdrew but gave Darien a hesitant look. Henrietta rarely received male callers.
“What is the matter?” Darien asked. He had black lashes around his very blue eyes—one reason the color seemed so intense, his gaze so riveting.
She reached for her sodden handkerchief. “Mary Ann,” she choked.
“The girl from the workhouse?”
She nodded, surprised he remembered, even more surprised when the truth came pouring out. “The one we took to the Sisters of Benevolence.” She curled her hand into fists. “Her son is dead.”
“Oh, that poor girl.” His face softened with pity. “You found out today?”
“It happened this morning,” she said, chest heaving. “He…he died while I was with them.”
She covered her face again. She had been strong for Mary Ann, held the girl and comforted her, commiserated with her loss, promised she would write her family. She’d had no one to comforther.
She was surprised to feel Darien’s warm, firm hands on her shoulders. She had thought he would bolt from the room. What man could endure a woman’s tears?
