It was intended as a joke, but he did not so much as attempt to smile. All he did was cover her hand with his and she let it remain there.
“No,” he said simply. “I apologize.”
She relaxed a touch. “I was befuddled, that is all. You suggested this, so I thought you would not care where I directed my fancies. And when we mentioned a ‘better match,’ there were no limitations set upon it, such as station and fortune.”
“You are right, we did not.” He nodded stiffly and held her gaze. “But still, if you hold my opinion in any regard whatsoever, make it anyone but him.”
Bemused, Arabella tried to make sense of this blatant dislike. It could not simply be a matter of Lord Powell disregarding or disdaining those of a higher station. This sort of resentment came from a deeper, darker place. Where it stemmed from in Henry, she did not know, and as he got to his feet and started to walk away, she sensed she never would.
Chapter Nine
Sprawled out on the Persian rug by the fireplace, waggling her feet as she turned the page of an old favorite, Arabella found herself more distracted than usual. After the din of London, the Surrey Hills were jarringly quiet. Too quiet, as if she were standing alone in an empty, silent corridor, while everyone else was in some other part of the house, enjoying raucous revels.
“Good gracious, Darling!” The library door opened to reveal her mother, in her prim housecoat, staring open-mouthed at the scene. “Are you a common wastrel? Are you a cat in disguise? It is unseemly to lie there like that, and what in heaven’s name are you reading? I ought to toss those sordid tomes into the fire.”
Arabella tugged her book to her chest and folded her arms over it, determined to protect it with her life if her mother made good on the threat. “I am reading poetry,” she lied. “After seeing Dear Lord Haskett and walking with him in Hyde Park this afternoon, I was filled with a sudden desire to read Wordsworth. True, Hyde Park is no Lake District, but my betrothed spoke such wondrous verse when we were there, that I almost mistook it.”
And you would certainly rip this from my hands if I said I was reading Byron.She smirked, thinking of the books of his poetry that she had hidden in her chambers, under a loose floorboard. The only safe place to conceal Byron.
Her mother softened immediately. “How wonderful, Darling!” She clapped her hands together. “You must have had a lovely day in his company?”
“The loveliest,” Arabella confirmed, doing her best to put on an expression of starry-eyed bliss. “I am almost cross with my brother for keeping Lord Haskett to himself all these years. Had I but known what a rare gentleman he had become, perhaps I would have considered a courtship sooner.”
She knew she might be overdoing the praise slightly, but subtlety tended to fly right over her mother’s head. As such, Arabella needed to be aggressive in her pursuit of this romantic ruse if she stood a chance of keeping her mother off the scent.
Her mother swept in and perched on the armrest of the brocade settee. “If you are already so delightfully smitten, we ought to announce the banns immediately.”
“No!” Arabella all but yelped, sitting up sharply. “I mean, it would not do to rush things, Mama. You promised we would have the summer to court at our leisure, so we might have a union of true love by the time the seasons change. I know you will think it absurdly romantic, but is that not something you hope your daughter might have? Please, Mama, continue to grant us this.”
An unexpected sadness furrowed her mother’s brow and turned her gaze down to her delicate hands. “My apologies, Darling. I was too enthusiastic. Of course you must be allowed to have your courtship. One ball and one afternoon is not enough to know if he will be…” She trailed off, deep in thought.
“Mama?” Arabella prompted, shuffling on her knees to where the older women perched. She did not care if her mother scolded her for being unseemly again.
Her mother lifted her head. “Hmm?”
“You were about to say something.”
“Ah… yes. What was it?” Her mother made a show of trying to remember, only to wave her hand in dismissal. “No, it appears the thought has gone. I am sure it was not important.”
Arabella observed her mother’s stiff expression, reading between the forced lines she was trying to project. Beneath the faintly wrinkled forehead, the flecks of gray hair, the slight loosening of skin, and the creases at the corners of her mother’s eyes, Arabella could see the young woman she’d once been. Had that woman had romantic hopes and dreams, too?
“Were you ever in love, Mama?” Arabella asked quietly.
Her mother’s eyelids flickered, and she looked away sharply. “Of course, Darling. With your father. He is my only love.” She said the words as though she were giving a eulogy, or a very dull speech at the dinner table.
“You love him?” Emboldened, Arabella pressed the issue.
“Of course,” her mother repeated flatly, before adding, “in my own way.”
Arabella shuffled nearer and put a hand on her mother’s knee. “There was never another, whom you loved the way you read of in poetry and novels?”
“That is fantasy,” her mother replied wistfully. “Poets and authors write about it in the realm of fiction because it does not exist in reality. I knew I should have banned you from the library.” She flicked her cheek and Arabella saw a glint of wetness upon her mother’s fingertip.
“What if it could?” Arabella patted her mother’s knee gently, not knowing what else to do to comfort a woman whose maskneverslipped like this. They were not the sort of family who ever embraced one another, and Arabella could not recall the last time her mother had kissed her forehead. She must have been very young, she reasoned, and possibly unwell.
Her mother continued to stare away at the wall to her right. “Is that how you feel for Lord Haskett?”
“I will have to tell you once the summer is over,” Arabella replied, though she was thinking of another. The kind of fellow who could not bear to see a lady standing alone in the middle of a ballroom, abandoned by her partner.
