“Yes, she is. She’s a friend of mine. She has been very kind to me.”
“She was nice to me, too,” Hattie said. “Couldn’t I stay up just a little longer?”
“Not tonight, I’m afraid. Nanny will be worried about you. She’ll be terribly cross if we don’t return you to the nursery right away.”
Hattie thrust out her lower lip in a pout—and then thrust out her hand to him. “Will you take me back up?” she asked. “It gets awfully dark at night.Sometimes it’s scary.”
For a moment, Captain Sharp only stared at that small hand outstretched toward his. And then, at last, he took it in his own. “Of course,” he said, and once again his voice had gone hoarse, his eye misty. “Of course, sweetheart.It would be my pleasure.”
Chapter Eleven
Anthony returned to the library to find Charity still seated upon the sofa, haloed in the light of a lamp upon the table and surrounded by a number of books. In the time it had taken to return Hattie to the nursery and place her once more beneath the care of the harried nanny—who had been preparing to organize a search of the household for her missing charge—it seemed that Charity had thumbed through an assortment of books, leaving the bulk of those she’d already examined lying open to specific pages.
“How did it go?” she asked absently, brushing away a loose curl that had bobbed before her face as she bent over the pages of the book open upon her lap.
“Surprisingly well. Evelyn was already asleep, but Hattie”—he curled his hand at his sides, still feeling the clutch of those small fingers within his own—“Hattie said she would tell her that I wasn’t so frightening as they had thought me to be after all.” He gave a small shrug of his shoulders. “I might have promised her a puppy.”
A smile curved Charity’s full lips. “Did you?”
“Ifher mother agrees.”
“She will. It would be prudent of her, in her position, not to quibble over it.” She turned a page, scanned the lines. “Close the door, if you please. Your niece has got a predilection for spying.”
“Has she? I’ll instruct the housekeeper to give me a set of keys.” A locked door wouldn’t adequately hinder an eavesdropper, but at least it would circumvent prying eyes. Especially very young ones. “My apologies. You did not come to play nursemaid to my nieces. I’ll see that neither troubles you again.”
“I’m not troubled.” Another flick of the pages, her brows pinching in concentration. “I don’t dislike children. It’s only that I’ve never been much in their company—or they in mine. I’m far too infamous for most to expose their precious little darlings to my influence.”
And yet, it had taken only one conversation with her to shift Hattie’s perception of him. “Do you know,” he said, “My behaviorfrightened Hattie every bit as much as did my scars. She must have been skulking about when she overheard me snap at her mother for creeping up upon me where I could not see her.”
“Has it happened often?”
“More than once, I’m ashamed to say, and with nearly everyone in the house at some point or another. I have been so long on my own, it is—odd, I think, to have so many people in my vicinity.” And startling, when they appeared unexpectedly. “Her mother told her that I might shunt them out of the house at any moment.”
“I doubt that was her intent,” Charity said, laying the book aside and reaching for another. “But it is true enough that they are, for the moment, dependent upon your largesse. Probably she meant only to impress upon her children that they should be polite and amiable while living within your household.”
“Probably,” Anthony allowed. But the result of that instruction had been to create fear within the minds of two young, impressionable girls. And his surly behavior had not aided in that perception. He had been made into a monster in their minds, and he had with his own actions, however unknowingly, contributed to that assumption. His scars had only been the dressing upon an already-frightening unknown quantity. “I suppose children are not renowned for their superior reasoning skills. Hattie can be forgiven for leaping to a conclusion beyond what was intended. Her life has changed so much, so swiftly.” Of course she would find it confusing and frightening. Her whole world had been upended, marred with loss and grief, her position within it abruptly tenuous.
But a little less so, now. Or so he hoped she would learn. “What are you doing?” he asked as he crossed the floor.
“Finding some suitable books,” she said. “It is common to share favored romantic novels and poetry.” She gave a delicate roll of her wrist toward the books she’d set aside already. “If you would care to browse my selections.”
He craned his neck to peer down at a few books. “Shakespeare,” he said. “Wordsworth. Byron. Coleridge. A bit…predictable, don’t you think?”
“A bit of predictability can be beneficial. If you should share a favored poet or author with your intended, then that is something to discuss.” She set aside another book. “Regrettably, your library is somewhat lacking in more recent offerings. But that is no matter; any bookshop is likely to sell them.Did you send flowers?”
“To Lady Cecily? Yes, of course.” As she had instructed.
Her brows lifted in interest. “Roses, I assume.”
Apredictablechoice, she meant to imply. “They seemed an inoffensive selection.” Not red, for a passion that would be insincere to claim on so new an acquaintance. Nor a juvenile pink. But white, which might yield itself eventually to any number of hues. “I’m meant to call upon her on her next at-home day,” he said. But Charity must have guessed that much already, given that she had spent her time collecting and assessing books.
“You got on well enough, then?”
“I found her a pleasant companion.” Lady Cecily had neither gawked nor stared. She had been perfectly pleasant during their dance, skillfully carrying the conversation when he might have floundered for lack of something original or interesting to say. “I didn’t tread upon her hem, or upon her toes. She is attractive, accomplished, and intelligent.” And as kind as had been suggested of her.
“A paragon of womanhood,” Charity suggested, with a wicked quirk of her lips. “You see? They do exist.”
“She could not have refused a dance,” Anthony said with a sigh, swiping away a small stack of books to claim the seat beside her. “Not without the rejection perceived as impoliteness.”
