“I…” she hesitated.
But why not? Why shouldn’t she speak to him, in a room full of people? Hadn’t he already proven that he intended her nothing but kindness.
“All right,” she said at length. “I would enjoy that.”
It wasn’t until he was pulling a chair out for her that she remembered, with a shock of guilt, that she had already promised to sit with Lord Harlston.
Chapter 12
“Thomas!”
Henry was sliding into a seat on the other side of Lady Valeria. He was smiling, but his eyebrows were lifted in mild surprise. “I had thought you would be entertaining Lord Milton during our meal?”
I had thoughtyouwould eat at the head of the table!But there was no chair placed at the head of the table. Thomas supposed he shouldn’t have been too surprised by that. Custom or not, Henry wasn’t really the sort to place himself above his guests. He would want to be in the thick of things.
“I asked him to join me here,” Lady Valeria said. “I think Lord Milton is more than capable of finding a dinner companion of his own, wouldn’t you agree?”
Henry laughed. “It remains to be seen!” he said. “But this is wonderful. We can all enjoy one another’s company. Tell me, have you two been catching up?”
“Just a bit, Thomas said. “It’s been only a week since we saw one another, so there’s not all that much for us to catch up on. But it’s always a pleasure to see Lady Valeria again.”
“Ah, and here’s Duncan,” Henry said, for Duncan had just taken the seat directly across from him. “And Lady Earlington. Charming!”
Lady Earlington beamed at her niece. Thomas thought he knew what that was about. She probably hoped she was seeing the first signs of Lady Valeria opening herself up for courtship. After all, here she was, seated between two gentlemen.
I must make sure Lady Valeria knows that I have no such expectations, or she may regret ever sitting down next to me.
Henry was already helping to serve Lady Valeria from the ham at the center of the table, so Thomas helped himself to some turkey and said nothing, merely waiting to see what would transpire next.
Duncan caught his eye and frowned, his eyebrows pinching together. He must have been worried, Thomas thought, that his words in the foyer of Earlington Manor were about to go unheeded. Perhaps he was worried that Thomas was going to try to win Lady Valeria over without care for the fact that she had expressly said that wasn’t what she wanted.
I’ll have to prove myself to him, too. I’ll have to show them both that I wouldn’t do such a thing.
He couldn’t say, exactly, why it was so important to him that Lady Valeria not think wrongly of his character. He only knew that, even if life carried them far away from one another, he didn’t want her to look back on any of the time they had spent in each other’s company with regret. He didn’t want her to think of him as someone who had bothered her, someone who had made inappropriate demands.
There would be no courtship. She would never return his affections. But he wanted her to remember him fondly, at least. And there was still a possibility that that might happen.
He glanced down the length of the table and saw that Lord Milton and his wife had taken seats not far away. He wondered why they would do such a thing. They had both made it clear that Lady Valeria was someone they couldn’t stand.Why don’t they trouble themselves to stay away from her, if that’s the way they feel about it?
He tried to turn his attention away from them. There was no reason he had to think about them.
He was helped by the sound of Lady Valeria’s laugh—that was a good distraction. He turned to see what had amused her.
“Really, Lord Harlston,” she said. “You are too much.”
“Am I?” Henry laughed right along with her. “Well, perhaps I am. But I find you really can’t get through these things if you don’t have abitof a sense of humor.”
“Get through them?” Thomas couldn’t help himself, even though he knew chiming in on a conversation that was already in progress might be considered a bit rude. “You’re the one who arranged the party, Henry. Now you talk aboutgetting through itas though it’s a hardship. Didn’t youwantto have this party?”
“I did,” Henry said. “But I find that everything in life is both joy and hardship, at least in some measure. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Lady Valeria looked very surprised. “That’s exactly how I’ve been feeling,” she said. “About coming to live with my aunt, I mean.”
“That’s been difficult for you?”
“Well, it has meant saying goodbye to the life I knew for a long time,” she explained. “But it also meant an opportunity to spend more time with people I value greatly—my aunt and my cousin.”
“And to meet new people, of course,” Henry said.
