Dalton downed his brandy. “Watch thatyoudo not find anything highly romantic this season. Miss Dell, in particular. You fancy yourself in love with her, no doubt.”
“What matter if I do?” Giles said. “She is a charming lady.”
“As you may have noted, had you paid the slightest bit of attention, flirtations have a way of getting out of hand. Right out of hand and to an altar.”
“Come now, Dalton,” Giles said, laughing. “How many years have you known me to be infatuated with a lady?”
“As many years as I have known you.”
“And how many years has it been the same lady?”
“None,” Dalton admitted.
“There you have it,” Giles said. “Being in love is as air to me, I must have it. However, it is a fickle and fleeting thing.”
In truth, though Giles was in the habit of spouting off about love, what he felt for the parade of ladies over the seasons was not love. Not in its finest sense. Not as Shakespeare would have it. Not as Byron or Wordsworth or Blake would have it. His experience of love began with a merry chase—and then when the chase was over, the feeling reliably faded. He was fairly sure that love as poets and playwrights imagined it did not even exist.
He ought to bemorethan fairly sure. His own parents had come to hate each other. It could not have ever been real love. Nobody in the same house with them now could fail to feel the icicles forming in the air and the dagger looks shot across the room. It was hinted to him once that his father had been besotted, but his mother had married for title. That was an even more ghastly idea. What if real love was possible and he fell prey to it? What if he put himself in the power of a lady? Only to discover too late that she’d only wished to be a duchess…
He sometimes berated himself for his high-flown ideas about love. It was no wonder at all that real people could not live up to it and would always disappoint. Though he hid all knowledge of it from his friends and understood it to be a fantasy, he could not forsake his volumes of Shakespeare. Many a school break, while closeted in his room as his parents raged below him, he’d lost himself in those volumes. Who could not be touched by Beatrice and Benedick or Rosalind and Orlando? If he were feeling particularly crossed, he might even thumb through Romeo and Juliet. Though, he’d only read the ending once and thought that was quite enough for one lifetime.
As for Miss Austen, well, those novels were even more hidden from view. Only LaRue knew of their existence. His friends would excoriate him if they ever discovered his appreciation of the lady. Though, who could not pray that Elizabeth and Darcy would come together? Who could not be utterly disappointed in Willoughby, no matter that one had already read the story and knew he would not come up to snuff?
Those stories were all dreams of what mankind aspired to, but in no way reality. Infatuation was fleeting, though it masqueraded as love. If real love as Shakespeare and Miss Austen wrote itdidexist, it would be far too fraught with peril and he would steer well clear of it.
It suited him to ally himself with Dalton. Neither of them would marry for quite many years yet, and then only to get an heir. Romance was all well and good to play at, but one should not take it seriously. Fire brought warmth, but get too close and be burned.
He had lost his other friends to the altar, but he would not lose Dalton. At least, he hoped not. Dalton was the only thing between him and a flea-infested flat somewhere in Cheapside. Or even further afield.
“Look to yourself, Dalton,” he said. “See that you do not make the mistake with Miss Danworth. You and the lady of the flowing blond curls are frighteningly well-suited—you both swim in the same chilly sea.”
“Do you imply we are both cold fish?” Dalton asked.
“Rather,” Giles said, laughing. “You have said yourself that underneath her smiles she’s as cold as ice. You might stare crossly at each other over a dining table for all your days and neither of you would wonder why the other one scowled.”
“I can assure you Miss Danworth is no danger to me,” Dalton said. “AndIam even less of a danger toher. My father is her father’s entailed heir and I believe it irritates the lady.”
“Really?” Giles asked. “I didn’t know.”
“He is a distant cousin, and that side of the family has had a remarkable run of daughters. I do not wish to have anything to do with it and pray the old fellow will remarry and produce a true heir.” Dalton paused, then said quietly, “Though I would pity the woman who married him, he is an unpleasant sort in public and I presume worse in private.”
“There were rumors,” Giles said, “when his wife still lived.”
“Yes, there were,” Dalton said briskly. “In any case, make sure Miss Dell remains only a flirtation. Now, we’d better go or wewillbe late, despite my planning.”
Chapter Two
Kitty had arrivedat the London house sans telescope. She supposed after all it was no great loss. The houses were so crowded together that she’d have to climb to the roof to see anything interesting. Shehadmanaged to smuggle her microscope in an oversized hat box. It had been a sixteenth birthday present from her father and was too precious to leave behind. What if there were housebreakers who perceived its worth?
On the day she had been given it, her father had pulled her into his study. He’d handed her a small book to go along with the microscope. In low whispers, he’d told her that the lenses in the apparatus were from van Leeuwenhoek’s own collection and the book contained drawings of some of his earliest observations. Kitty had been stunned and asked how these things could possibly have been acquired. Her father would not say specifically, only that there were certain persons to be met in dark and low neighborhoods who traded in such things. He had requested that such a lens be located and brought to him. Three years and a large sum later, it had been.
It was an extraordinary piece of equipment and she would keep it with her always. She did not expect to see anything remarkable under it in town, though she could at least collect some local flora to examine.
She had not often been to the house on Berkeley Square and when she had, she’d always stayed in the nursery, sharing a large old, creaky bed with her younger sister. Now, a room and attached sitting room had been prepared especially for her use.
Her dear mother had arranged everything just as Kitty would wish. The rooms had a soft look to them, filled as they were with rounded furniture and rich velvets in the deep blues and purples she favored. The sitting room had freshly painted white bookshelves, left empty for her to fill. An almost ludicrously overstuffed armchair in navy velvet with silver tacking was ready to accommodate her late-night reading. The thick carpet underfoot imbued the place with a hushed feel. Kitty had sometimes wondered if her love of softness was in some way a rebuke to her intellectual mind. Still, she could not be comfortable in anything over-austere.
Kitty was well aware that it had been her mother alone who had made all the arrangements. Her father, Lord Penderton, was perennially buried in his books and would not notice if the whole house had undergone a transformation, other than tripping over moved furniture. It was the baroness who was the beating heart of the house.
