Page 17 of Never a Duke
“Far from it, and I am not merely a loyal abacus, though your reminder caught me by surprise.” He took her hand and bowed over it. “Until Thursday, my lady.”
She dipped a curtsy and Ned waited until she’d disappeared into the house.
As he took up the reins and signaled the horses to walk on, his mind presented him with another observation: Her Grace, the Wentworth sisters, Stephen’s Abigail, and Duncan’s Matilda would all brace Ned on any topic they pleased, however uncomfortable to him, and expect honest answers from him.
He might find the interrogations unpleasant, and even resent them, but he held each of those ladies dear and esteemed them greatly for both their integrity and their courage.
“Time to get back where I belong,” he muttered, which set the horses’ ears to flicking about. “Back to the ledgers I am paid so handsomely to mind.”
Chapter Four
Venetian breakfasts were neither Venetian nor truly breakfasts. For Rosalind, they were a sort of outdoor penance, where she ran into people she’d rather avoid and had twice also acquired a bout of food poisoning.
“An orange,” she said to Mr. Wentworth. “I will start with an orange.”
He selected two from the bowl on the buffet. “Only an orange?”
“You will think me daft, but I don’t trust Lady Walters’s kitchen.”
“What of her bread and butter?” Mr. Wentworth asked. “Safe enough?”
Safewas an interesting word in the context of Mr. Edward Wentworth. Rosalind had sorted through a year’s worth of society pages and found no mention of him anywhere. The financial pages were equally silent, though his titled Wentworth associates were much commented upon.
Who was he? Who was hereally? “A slice or two of bread with butter will do,” Rosalind said, “but not the croissants, please.”
He assembled the food on one plate. “Let me guess: croissants are messy.”
“As a girl, I loved them. I’d take mine to the garden to eat with jam and clotted cream, and no child ever indulged in such gustatory bliss. Let’s find some quiet, shall we?”
The gardens stretching behind the Walters mansion were just beginning to come into their spring glory, with daffodils blooming in the occasional sunny corner and tulips still tightly furled in others. Pots of heartsease added color, and the new foliage on the birches and oaks stirred in the afternoon breeze. The setting would have been lovely, were it not for the traffic thronging the paths.
“This way,” Mr. Wentworth said, turning down between two hedges. “I want to know what came between you and your gustatory bliss.” He led Rosalind to a bench before a sundial, the hedges giving the place an air of seclusion belied by periodic laughter from the direction of the back terrace.
“Miss Tait is in good form today,” Rosalind said, taking a seat on the sun-warmed bench. She ought to have asked Mr. Wentworth to find her a place in the shade, and she ought to have kept her parasol handy, and she ought to have declined this invitation, no matter how badly Papa would have fussed at her for doing so.
“One does not want to appear ungentlemanly,” Mr. Wentworth said, taking the seat beside Rosalind, “but the lady does have a distinctive laugh. Rather like a coach horn with a stocking stuffed in the bell. Part bleat, part hoot. Shall I peel your orange?”
He offered his observation in such polite, bland tones that the analogy took a moment to bloom in Rosalind’s imagination.
“Not a stocking,” she said. “More of a hedgehog, desperate to get out.”
“Just so.” Mr. Wentworth passed Rosalind the plate and stripped off his gloves. “A hedgehog.” He picked up an orange and began tearing the skin off, tossing the rind into the lavender border behind the bench. “Tell me about the croissants.”
He would ask. “There’s not much to tell, and everybody in polite society has heard the story, thanks to my brothers. I was enjoying my treat, as I usually did, but on the day of my ignominy, the crumbs attracted some particularly aggressive pigeons. I grew frightened because they would not desist, and I even suffered a peck or two. I ran crying into the house, a croissant clutched in my hand, only to learn that my brothers had observed the whole incident and found it hilarious.”
The fragrance of the orange perfumed the air, and watching Mr. Wentworth dispatch the peel distracted Rosalind from an old tale that ought to no longer pain her.
Except it did.
“How old were you, my lady?”
“Eight.”
“A difficult age, when we aren’t as grown-up as we want to believe we are, or as our governesses insist we behave.” He tore the orange into sections and set them on the plate. “Did you get even?”
“Even?”
He took up the second orange. “With your brothers, for their meanness. They should have raced into the garden to scare off the nasty birds. Not watched and laughed while a younger sibling grew frightened and flustered.”
