Without moving from his side, Sophia tracked the tray with her eyes.Vincent had noticed she also had a bit of a sweet tooth, or at least behaved as though she couldn’t get enough to eat lately.For someone so small with a slender waist, she put away a lot of food.He’d only noticed because he’d been noticing, well, everything about her.
Oh.Perhaps she hadn’t been the one eating all of it?If she was hiding Miss Ebrington, the girl would need food.Vincent mentally smacked himself.Of course Sophia had eaten soup and such, but foods that she could put in her pocket probably had been secreted away and delivered to the girl.
“Fancy a biscuit?”Vincent said, glancing down at Sophia.
“Yes, thank you,” Matthew replied, now playing the second movement.
Sophia softly chuckled, the sound warming Vincent’s heart.
Vincent wanted her to get refreshment but also wanted to keep holding her hand, and recognized that both could not happen under the watchful eye of Gert and Agnes.
In unspoken accord, Sophia and Vincent separated and went over to the tea tray.While she busied herself fixing a cup and selecting biscuits and tiny cakes for her plate, Vincent grabbed a biscuit and went back to the pianoforte.Without missing a note, as soon as Matthew saw the biscuit in front of his face, he opened his mouth and took it.
“Lucky you’ve got all your fingers,” Agnes said with a chuckle.
“Sometimes you have to feed the musician to keep getting music,” Vincent said, finally getting to sit beside Sophia on the sofa and fill his own plate and cup.
Before he could take more than a sip, Wallace and Xavier strolled in and settled on the opposite sofa.
No one said a word.
Matthew kept playing.When he reached the end of the second movement, he paused for his reward of polite applause.
“That Greek form of writing you were struggling to learn for taking notes?”Wallace said into the momentary quiet to Xavier.“Miss Walden seems to have mastered it.”
“You know tachygraphy, Miss Walden?”Xavier lifted his brows in polite query.
“Indeed,” she replied.“I’ve often used it for taking notes.It allows me to keep up with Mrs.Digby’s dictation.”
“It’s Greek?”Vincent had learned to read and write in English using the Greek alphabet, and her secret writing didn’t look like any Greek that he knew.
“There are several forms of shorthand, going back centuries.”She bit into a biscuit.Vincent wanted to clean the tiny crumbs from her bottom lip.He stifled a groan as she caught them with the tip of her tongue.“The instructor at Madame Zavrina’s Academy available to teach it happened to know the Greek form rather than the modern Samual Taylor method, or any of the other forms.”
“Isn’t that where you taught?”Gert said.
“First I was a student.”She took a sip.“After I had a Season, Madame Zavrina hired me as an assistant music instructor, then promoted me after Mrs.Cowper retired.”Her cheeks pinkened as she busied herself pouring more tea and milk in her cup, as though she was embarrassed to admit she had not married after only one Season.
No shame in that.Plenty of chits needed more than one Season in London to catch a husband.But why had she given up after only one?
“I would be happy to help you with your study of the subject,” she said to Xavier.“In my spare time.”
“I would be indebted, Miss Walden.”
Matthew began playing the third movement of Beethoven’s sonata.
They proceeded with the rest of the evening with the usual polite façade, taking turns playing and singing.Several times Vincent noticed Wallace staring at him.Not with malice or annoyance, as was his brother’s custom, but with a mix of consternation and confusion.
Perhaps Miss Walden and Gert had given him thoughts to think he’d previously rejected.Lord knew Wallace had not listened when Vincent or even Xavier tried to talk sense to him about Mother’s loyalty to Father.After years of him being impenetrable as a castle wall, perhaps the ladies had found a chink in his wall and got through to him.
Chapter 18
“You’re sure about this?”Vincent quizzed Matthew the next afternoon in the kitchen.Aunt Gert was having her nap and Miss Walden had disappeared, as usual.Matthew and Vincent were gambling that she had gone to the beach to meet up with Miss Burrell and Miss Ebrington.
“Absolutely.”Matthew peeked under the checkered cloth covering the picnic meal, added another half-dozen tea cakes, and covered it again.“I cannot wait another day.”His arm tucked through the basket handle, he nodded his thanks to Mrs.Bickford for providing the food, and opened the kitchen door to the tunnel.
Vincent lit a torch and led the way.He hardly stumbled when they passed the cave-in.His headaches had abated, though Lawrence still had to be careful not to open the healing wound when he dressed Vincent’s hair.Miss Ebrington would probably forgive Matthew quickly for his part in their subterfuge.Miss Walden, though… he wouldn’t put it past her to part his hair with a chair.
But she had also been engaging in subterfuge.Hadn’t she?
