Page 2 of A Lady of Conscience

His gaze was inscrutable. “Had you reason for concern?”

“Only that they’re in a strange place, far from home.”

“You need have had no apprehension on that score. Our head groom is excellent.”

“I’m certain he is, sir.”

“Yet still you’re here.” He dropped an enigmatic glance down the front of her velvet cloak, to where the cloth gaped to reveal the silk gown beneath. “And still in your evening dress.”

A flare of self-consciousness heated her cheeks. She drew her cloak more firmly about herself. “I-I was too restless to retire to my room after the dance,” she said, stammering a little. “I’ve had no opportunity to change.”

He looked at her steadily, his fathomless gray gaze impossible to read. “Ah yes. The dance. I’d almost forgotten.”

Hannah’s blush deepened. Naturally it hadn’t meant anything to him. He was a gentleman of breeding and bearing. A man of five and twenty, far older in both age and experience than her meager nineteen years. The waltz they’d shared this evening had been a thrillingly romantic event to her, but one he’d plainly forgotten the instant the music had ended.

“I’m not accustomed to parties,” she said in an effort to explain. “We live a quiet life at Heywood House. Even a small dance in a private drawing room is a great cause for excitement.”

He joined her at the side of the loose box. His arm brushed lightly against hers as he cast a brief look in at Dandy. “Whatever the cause for your excitement, you may be assured your horses are content.”

Her pulse fizzed at his touch, the same way it had fizzed when he’d taken her hand to dance with her. He wasn’t a comfortable gentleman to be around by any means. His very proximity did odd things to her circulation.

She followed his gaze into the loose box, ignoring the quivering in her stomach. Dandy was snuffling in his sleep, one back foot cocked at rest. Hannah’s mouth tilted up in a fond smile. “Yes, I see that now.”

“You weren’t genuinely worried, I trust.”

“I always worry about my animals.” She paused, struggling to explain in words what she so easily articulated in the letters and anonymous opinion pieces she wrote in support of the burgeoning animal welfare movement. “They can’t speak for themselves, you see. Not in a way that human beings can readily understand. It’s up to me to give them a voice. To be their advocate, if necessary.”

Her words were met with a prolonged silence.

Hannah’s growing sense of discomfiture increased exponentially. She supposed that, given her shyness, she didn’t strike him as much of an advocate. Naturally he underestimated her. He knew nothing about the strength of her convictions or about the lengths she was willing to go to for a noble cause.

“An admirable philosophy,” he replied at length.

She couldn’t tell if that was sarcasm in his tone. “It’s not a philosophy. It’s a moral duty.”

“Is that why you don’t eat animal flesh?”

He was the first one of the Beresfords to ask Hannah about it outright. The others had merely accepted her dietary restrictions as a matter of course. Hannah suspected that her brother had privately addressed the matter with Lady Kate when they’d arrived, thereby avoiding any awkwardness with the menu during their stay—or any awkward questions.

But Hannah didn’t mind questions about her principles. Not if they were asked in a spirit of sincerity.

“In large part, yes,” she said. She’d given up eating meat several years ago, in consultation with her long-distance correspondent, Miss Mitra, and other female members of the movement. “It isn’t exceptionable. Many in the world refrain from eating animals. The Hindu, for example.”

Lord St. Clare’s icy expression didn’t change. Hannah nevertheless thought she detected a faint hint of incredulity at the back of his eyes. As though he’d expected her to be ignorant of the world or wholly immature—or both.

“I read books,” she informed him. “And I correspond with all manner of interesting and well-informed people.”

“Do you indeed?”

“I do. I’m a capital correspondent.”

The barest trace of a smile shadowed the firm line of his mouth. “I’m sure that you are.”

She drew back from him with a frown. She didn’t like to be teased. Not by him. Not about something so serious as her feelings toward animals. “You think me amusing, I daresay.”

Lord St. Clare met her eyes in the lamplight. “What I think, Miss Heywood, is that your commitment to your beliefs shows a rather impressive largeness of mind.”

She blinked. “Oh.”