“Come in.” She smiled and beckoned him from where he was hovering in the doorway.
He breathed a sigh of relief as she gestured for him to follow her to the big worktable. “I’m finishing up January.”
“Are your alligators in?” he asked as he took the seat she offered him. “And were my letters fine?”
“Your letters were fine—they were exquisite as always. And my alligators remain at large!” She walked around the table and pointed to a blank page on which she’d written “Alligators.” “I am afraid I may have to wait for February for the alligators. I am already pushing it with the printing deadline for January.”
“I shall write the February Mrs. Landers letters over Christmas.” He had yet to finish—he had yet to start—his letters for February. He had been too busy overhauling his life. “I don’t get the impression that my parents are coming home for the holidays, so it shall be a quiet Christmas at home. Plenty of time for letter writing.” Plenty of time to draw up investment proposals, too, to enact new schemes.
“Oh, yes.” She waved a hand dismissively. “I have no concerns over your February letters.”
The conversation came to a halt there. Normally, he would have had no trouble coming up with something to say, but there was something about the way she was staring at him that had him at a loss for words. She pulled out a chair opposite him at the worktable and sat, regarding him the whole time. He began to wonder if he’d said something wrong. Done something wrong. When he could stand her scrutiny no longer, he said, “What?”
“Can we go to the sea?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Southend-on-Sea. I have been looking into it. There aren’t frequent coaches as there are to Brighton, but it’s so close.”
What in heaven’s name was she on about?
He shelved that question in favor of a more mundane one, though he wasn’t sure why: “How would we get there?”
She sent him an appealing look.
“We would take one of my family’s conveyances,” he said, putting words to that look.
“Since your parents are away . . .”
“I could drive, I suppose.” That way they would only have to take the landau. They would not need servants to accompany them.
What was happening here? Transportation options were beside the point. He was still struggling to absorb the notion that she apparently wanted to go away with him, and to parse his own reaction to her proposal. A month ago, a week ago, that reaction would have been elation. Now it was . . . not elation.
It was the dream. The dream had impelled him to change everything.
“Do you drive?” she inquired.
“I can.” He preferred not to, historically. He was more comfortable as a passenger. As a passenger, one could daydream and such.
But suddenly the image of himself as a passenger, in, say, his father’s coach, seemed more akin to the image of a bird in its cage. He sat forward in his chair. “Do you remember Sally?”
Her brow knit. Fair: he had confused her with the abrupt change of subject. “Your parrot?”
“Yes, dear departed Sally.”
“I do. I never had the pleasure of meeting her as I did Leander, but you used to write about her rather a lot.”
“Do you think she was happy?”
“I don’t know anything about parrots, so I couldn’t possibly say.”
“I loved her. I believed that she was made happy by my loving her. I no longer know if that was true. Or if itwastrue, if it was enough.”
Her brow knit even more. He shook his head. He was getting off track, and he was confusing her. “Where would we lodge on his holiday you are proposing?”
She offered a tentative smile. “There is a pub right on the sea called the Castle where we might find a bed. And I understand that as of a few years ago, there are steamboat rides. Can youimagine? I would adore an account for the magazine.”
Effie was stuck on a phrase she’d tossed off earlier.Where we might find a bed.
