AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Well, I can’t think what sort of—”
“And, to crown all, when you do finally come home—at midnight, if you please—all the excuse you can think of is to claim you have been looking through a telescope!”
Maidie waited a moment, meeting the fiery brown gaze. All remembrance of her discomfort at his odd conduct had vanished with his return to normality. She raised her brows at length. “Have you finished?”
Delagarde was breathing rather heavily. “I have barely begun.”
“Well, then, let me tell you—”
“Maidie,” interrupted Lady Hester, “don’t allow yourself to be dragged into a pointless argument. You must expect some such reaction, after all. Laurie has been truly concerned. It is only natural relief should produce an explosion.”
“Thank you, Aunt Hes. However—”
“Have you really been concerned?” Maidie asked him, sudden contrition attacking her breast and causing a resurgence of irregularity in her heartbeat.
“Of course I have. A pretty sort of fellow I should be if I had not! I am in some sort responsible for you.”
“Oh.” Was that all? Maidie was conscious of a drop in spirits, and her pulse steadied. What else had she expected? Not that she cared whether Delagarde had been worried about her. But need he spoil the enchantments of the evening? Typical of him. Then a wave of remorse hit her. She was demonstrably in the wrong.
“I am sorry you should have been put to so much inconvenience.”
“Nonsense!” Lady Hester spoke in a bracing tone. “One evening’s worry over someone else? I wish we might all come off as lightly. The only pity of it is, Maidie, that you missed the ball.”
“I missed the ball!” struck in Delagarde. “No one thinks of that.”
“Nobody asked you to miss it,” Maidie pointed out. “It is not my fault if you decided it was your duty to remain here with Lady Hester and wait for me.”
Delagarde eyed her with hostility. “It had occurred to me to throttle you for this night’s work. I cannot think why I have not done so. I must be feeling extraordinarily merciful.”
Maidie was swept with a sudden gush of merriment, and she giggled again. “Oh, Laurie, pray don’t be so out of reason cross. You may readily go to the ball now, if you choose. I am sure it is not over.”
“Your solicitude overwhelms me, but I find I have lost my appetite for it.”
She laughed, and held out her hand. “I am truly sorry. There! Do let us cry friends again.”
He took her hand and held it loosely imprisoned in his larger one, an echo in his head of her use of his given name. “That is all very well, but I am not at all satisfied, Maidie. What is all this about? You are not seriously expecting me to believe you have indeed spent all this time examining the heavens?”
Maidie stared at him, withdrawing her hand. “But this is mad! Will nothing convince you I am wholly and exclusively devoted to the subject of astronomy?”
“You!” A disbelieving laugh escaped him. “No, Maidie, I don’t think so.”
“You will have to show him, Maidie,” recommended Lady Hester, laughing.
He turned frowning eyes upon his great-aunt. “Show me what?”
Delagarde stared in astonishment at the small telescope fixed to a stand set at the precise centre between the French windows in Maidie’s bedchamber. It was of brass, with a retractable length she was pulling out.
“I cannot get it to its full size without opening the balcony doors,” she said, unclipping the cover over the glass end and lifting it up. “Although this is only Great-uncle’s travelling piece, which he used when we went out on what he called his expeditions.”
Delagarde was frowning heavily as he tried to take in this extraordinary new perspective of his unwanted charge. “You went with him?”
“Always.” Maidie laughed. “Which made it very much an expedition, for Worm would insist upon all manner of comforts for me, particularly as Great-uncle would rarely let her come. Except once when we encamped in the wilderness—like heathen Bedouins, Worm said. We turned night into day for near a week, and the whole retinue had to do the same. After that, Worm was glad to be left at home, I think.”
The Viscount watched in reluctant fascination as she turned to the whatnot, lifting up a stack of large charts—some printed, some clearly made by hand—and leafed through them, explaining their purposes as she showed them to him by the light of the heavy candelabrum he had brought in and set down upon the dresser. There were maps of the night sky, charting the stars in their constellations; crudely drawn configurations, covered over with incomprehensible jottings; tables of names and figures, neatly labelled with times, positions by degrees and places of origin; and pencilled sketches, heavily annotated, which recorded the exploration currently engaging Maidie’s attention, she said.
“What are you exploring?” he asked, almost absently, for he was dazed by the evidence which proved beyond all possible doubt she had been speaking nothing but the truth.
“I am chasing a comet.” Then she tutted, stabbing at the sketch in her hand in some annoyance. “This evening I find I have miscalculated quite shockingly. By Sir Granville’s telescope, I was able to perceive its true path—oh, it is quite the most beautiful object, I had no real idea of that until tonight!—and I now see I must adjust my prognosis of its probable flight by quite a wide margin.”
