He was given the impression that Beatrice showed off for his benefit whenever he was there. Certainly she smiled and chattered excitedly, played the pianoforte and sang for him all her favorite songs, displayed her best stitches and her best sketches for his admiration, begged to be allowed to dine with his guests and join them on picnics and other outings, and generally, he guessed, was a severe trial to Miss Melfort. Miss Laura Melfort—he had discovered her given name.
Miss Laura Melfort, he also discovered, did not once smile during his frequent visits to the schoolroom, or once raise her eyes to his, or once show any awareness that he was in the same room or the same universe as she.
He wondered if she was as much obsessed by him as he was by her. He wondered if she wanted to go to bed with him as badly as he wanted to go with her. If the truth were known, he found her very quietness and primness almost unbearably arousing.
She had no choice one afternoon but to raise her eyes to his and acknowledge his presence. He was out walking with Miss Hopkins and her married sister and a few of his other guests. They were strolling among the trees to the east of the house, along beside the river that would lead them to the lake. Beatrice and Laura Melfort were seated on the bank of the river—until Beatrice spotted their approach and jumped to her feet. She remembered, he was pleased to note, not to race toward him, shrieking his name. She smiled brightly instead and blushed and curtsied and looked altogether the pretty, budding young woman that she was. He smiled affectionately back at her.
She had been permitted to take tea with his guests a few days earlier and had behaved quite prettily. Miss Hopkins and her sister made much of her now and invited her to walk with them. She glanced bright-eyed, at her governess, who had risen quietly to her feet and stood in the shadow of an old oak tree, and then at him. They both nodded to her, and she stifled a squeal and allowed Miss Hopkins to take her arm on one side and Mrs. Crawford the other and walk off with her. His other guests followed after them, a merry party.
Miss Laura Melfort, the Earl of Dearborne decided, was good at melting into the background. He doubted that Miss Hopkins or any of the others had even been aware of her presence. She was a servant, of course. Servants were meant to be invisible. He stood where he was, watching his chosen bride and his other guests move out of sight and out of earshot.
The contrast was enormous. Alice Hopkins, blond and petite and smiling, was dressed in fine muslin, her clothes, from bonnet to slippers, in the very latest mode. Miss Melfort, hidden in the shade of the oak tree, was dressed unfashionably and inexpensively in cotton. He would like to clothe her in silks and satins and muslins, he thought, not looking at her. He would like to deck her out in jewels. He would also like to unclothe her. He turned his head to look at her. She was calmly observing the grass at her feet.
Waiting for him to be gone so that she could slip away.
“For a moment,” he said, “I thought Beatrice must be desperately ill. She looked so absorbed in what she and you were doing that I thought she was not going to notice us. That is definitely abnormal.”
She looked up at him, and for a moment he was jolted by the directness of her gaze and remembered how it had gradually stripped him of sense in the library.
“Tell me,” he said. “I am convinced I must have been mistaken—a touch of sunstroke, no doubt. Was it a book that was so absorbing my niece’s attention?”
She almost smiled, and there was a hint of smugness in the expression. “Yes,” she said. “She wants to read it for herself. She is frustrated that she cannot do so with any degree of fluency, but she is making every effort to improve herself.”
“Good Lord,” he said. “Talking of sunstroke ... And how have you effected this alarming transformation, Miss Melfort? By putting her on a ration of bread and water? By administering the birch twice a day after meals?”
This time the smile and the smugness were unmistakable. “By introducing her to a story that she desperately wants to read for herself,” she said. “Hearing it told in my voice is not good enough. She wants to hear it in the voice of her own mind, though she has not expressed her wish in quite those terms.”
“Let me guess,” he said, trying not to remember how those slim thighs had felt pressed to his own and how her mouth had softened and opened under the persuasion of his. “Plato?”
“No.” She was looking triumphant, wretched woman.
“Ah, Milton?”
“No.” She was almost laughing. He wanted to continue the game until she did. A dangerous thought.
He grimaced. “Never tell me,” he said, “that she wants to listen to the virile and romantic Damon whisper to her in the voice of her own mind.”
She laughed. God! He did not want her to laugh. Or rather, he did. He wanted to catch her up in his arms and twirl her about and laugh with her.
“That is the book. I have made an English translation for her from the Latin,” she said. “It is a love story, you see. It has caught her imagination and she wishes to read it for herself, even though I have read it to her. I have even hinted to her that there are numerous other books she would find as satisfying.”
“Love stories?” he said.
She nodded.
“My niece,” he said, “is to 1earn to read so that she may entertain herself with sentimental drivel?” He tried to feel the disgust his intellect was dictating he should feel.
“Love is sentimental?” she said. “Love is drivel? Then give me sentimental drivel, my lord. Give me love.”
There was an arrested look on her face. He had seen it there once or twice in the library. He guessed that Miss Melfort sometimes got so caught up in an argument that she did not pause to choose her words with care. On this occasion she appeared to have opened wide her mouth and thrust her pretty foot firmly inside. And she had just realized it.
“That,” he said quietly, “is quite an invitation, Miss Melfort. You will forgive me if I do not take you up on it.”
Her eyes were directed downward to the grass again. For all the plainness of her clothing and hairstyle, he thought treacherously, she was many times more lovely than Alice Hopkins. Give me love. Oh, yes, quite an invitation.
“What is her name?” he asked. “Damon’s lady?”
“Angeline,” she said quietly, though she did look up at him again. “She might have chosen another man, one more like herself in every way. Damon was not from her own world.”
