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“You find humor in my discomfort?” he asked.
“Not at all,” she said. “Forgive me. It is only that your words conjured up a rather comical scene of you fighting off scores of ladies, rather like a knight slashing his sword right and left, defending his castle from marauders and dragons.”
“That description is not too far off the mark, at least from my perspective,” he said. And he’d acted foolishly as a result. He’d allowed himself to become overly flattered, and with Father gone and Mother remarried and living in Edinburgh with her new husband, there had been few to guide him. Harris, his valet, had attempted to caution him, but Ben hadn’t been willing to see the signs of warning when the beautiful Society darling Miss Gemma Crawford had openly flirted with him. When she had spoken his name and looked at him with those sultry gray eyes of hers, he’d become enamored. Too enamored, as it had turned out.
“My marriage, if nothing else, did end the onslaught of eager ladies looking for a titled bridegroom,” he said. “Sadly, my marriage ended tragically, with the death of my wife. Even though my year of mourning is near its end, I am not of a mood to make an appearance back in Society yet, nor have meddling mamas and ambitious young ladies set their cap at me. And so, learning of my inheritance from my great-uncle was the perfect opportunity for me to be alone and avoid the flirtations and machinations of this first Season out of mourning.”
“I believe I’m beginning to understand,” Rebecca said. “Thank you for your honesty. I have had no such troubles in my life as the ones you’ve experienced thus far. I am at a loss as to what to say.”
“Then perhaps you may speak to me with your music once more,” Ben said.
Rebecca smiled, and Ben’s heart, which had felt dead for so long, stirred within him, but not with fiery passion; it was something gentle, something akin to joy.
“Perhaps a livelier song this time,” she suggested.
“I agree entirely,” he said. “May I assist you back to the pianoforte?”
“I would like that very much,” she said.
And so he did.
