Unperturbed, she offered sweetly, “I could retrieve another from my trunk, if you’d like a different selection.”
“I would prefer silence.”
She shrugged one shoulder, utterly unbothered. “As you wish.” She opened her book and began to read silently, her gaze drifting over the pages.
Richard leaned back on his elbows and tried to ignore her, tried to enjoy the stillness of the shaded grove. The breeze was faint but cooling, and for a fleeting moment, he thought he might actually relax.
Then something wet and warm landed squarely on his cheek.
His eyes flew open, and he reached up instinctively, fingers brushing against something unpleasantly sticky. He pulled his hand back and grimaced.
Bird droppings. Of course.
Miss Theodosia choked back a laugh, her shoulders shaking. “You have… something on your cheek,” she said, with far too much amusement in her voice.
“Thank you for that helpful observation,” he remarked dryly.
Reaching into her reticule again, she pulled out the handkerchief he had lent her the previous day. She extended it with a smile that was far too cheerful for his liking. “Here. This might help.”
Accepting it with a sigh of resignation, he wiped his cheek and wondered if this day could get any worse.
As she returned to her reading, he lay back and stared at the canopy above. The birds chirped merrily, as if mocking him.
“Perhaps we should move the blanket?” Richard suggested, brushing once more at his cheek, even though the offending mess had already been wiped away.
Miss Theodosia gave him a look of such dry amusement that it bordered on affectionate mockery. “It is nearlymathematically impossible for the same man to be defecated on twice in one sitting.”
“Mathematics offers me little comfort in this instance.”
“Suit yourself,” she said, turning a page in her book with lazy elegance. “But I do believe the birds have had their fun.”
Still feeling vaguely offended by the indignity of it all, Richard tried a different tack. “What if you were to get droppings on your gown? Wouldn’t that distress you?”
She glanced down at her blue skirts, then back up with a shrug. “Not particularly. I can think of far worse things. My father, for instance, kept a parrot that used to screech constantly. Compared to that, this is a delight.”
“What an awful pet.”
“You are quite the complainer, my lord. One might even call you delicate.”
He bristled. “I am not delicate.”
“No?” she asked, eyes twinkling. “Then why the melodrama over a little bird droppings?”
“Because I value hygiene. And dignity.”
“And yet here you are,” she replied, waving a hand at their rustic setting, “sitting on a blanket in the grass like a disgruntled schoolboy.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Must you always speak your mind?”
“Yes,” she replied. “It’s my most charming trait.”
“I would not call it charming,” he muttered.
She tilted her head, lips twitching. “Have you ever stepped in manure?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“Well then,” she said, as though concluding a formal argument, “that is unequivocally worse. And as such, bird droppings are hardly cause for such dramatics.”
