Page 58 of Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

He touched the bruised skin of his cheekbone. “A stripe?”

“No, in your eye,” she clarified, because it wasn’t as if she could take the comment back. She might as well make her meaning clear. She motioned awkwardly in the air with her right hand, darting forward as if to point it out, but then jerking back since she could not touch him, and certainly not in his eye.

“Oh. Oh, that. Yes, it’s odd, isn’t it?” He made a strange sort of face. Well, no, not really. It would not have been strange on anyone else, but on him it was. It was a little bit modest, almost a little bit sheepish, and so thoroughly and wonderfully human that her heart skipped a beat.

“No one else has ever noticed it,” he added. “It’s probably for the best, really. It’s a foolish little imperfection.”

Was he fishing for compliments? She pressed her lips together, avoiding a smile. “I like it,” she told him. “I like anything that makes you less than perfect.”

Something in his expression warmed. “Is that so?”

She nodded, then looked away. Funny how it was easier to be frank and brave when he was angry (or, she supposed, tipsy) than when he was smiling at her.

“You will find many things to like about me, then,” he said, his voice too close to her ear for her comfort, “once you get to know me better.”

She pretended to study the map. “Are you telling me you are not perfect?”

“I would never presume to say that,” he teased.

She swallowed. He was leaning far too close. He probably didn’t even notice the nearness; his voice sounded completely unaffected, his breathing controlled and even to her ears.

“Why did you say my eyes were brown?” she asked, still keeping her eyes on the atlas.

“I didn’t. I said they looked brown.”

She felt a completely unbecoming swell of vanity rise within her. She’d always been proud of her hazel eyes. They were her best feature. Certainly her most unique. All of her sisters shared the same blond hair and skin tone, but she was the only one with such interesting eyes.

“They looked green this morning,” he continued. “Although I suppose that could have been the drink. Another pint of ale and there would have been butterflies coming out of your ears.”

She turned at that, utterly indignant. “It was not the drink. My eyes are hazel. Far more green than brown,” she added in a mutter.

He smiled rather stealthily. “Why, Amelia, have I discovered your vanity?”

He had, not that he was going to get her to admit it. “They’re hazel,” she said again, a little primly. “It’s a family trait.”

Someone’s family, at least.

“Actually,” he said quite softly, “I was rather marveling on their changeability.”

“Oh.” She swallowed, discomfited by his gentle compliment. And at the same time rather pleased. “Thank you.” She turned back to the map, which sat, safe and comforting, on the table before her. “Look how big Greenland is,” she said, mostly because the big blob at the top was the first thing she saw.

“It’s not really that big,” he said. “The map distorts area.”

“It does?”

“You did not know that?”

His tone was not insulting. It was not even condescending, but nonetheless, she felt foolish. It seemed like the sort of thing she ought to have known. And certainly it was the sort of thing she’d like to have known.

“It comes from having to spread a spherical object onto a flat plane,” he explained. “Try to envision wrapping this map around a sphere. You’d have a great deal of extra paper at the poles. Or conversely, try to imagine taking the surface of a sphere and laying it out flat. You would not get a rectangle.”

She nodded, cocking her head to the side as she considered this. “So the tops and bottoms are stretched. Or rather, the north and the south.”

“Exactly. Do you see how Greenland looks nearly equal in size to Africa? It’s actually less than one tenth the area.”

She looked up at him. “Nothing is as it seems, is it?”

He was silent for just long enough to make her wonder if they were still talking about maps. And then he said, his face devoid of emotion, “No.”

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