Page 33 of Never a Duke
Lady Rosalind had been ready to do battle on behalf of Ned’s dignity. She’d taken umbrage at Constance’s preemptory words, when all Ned had felt was a passing annoyance.
Kisses were lovely, and Lady Rosalind’s kisses in particular had much to recommend them. But kisses didn’t explain why she made him want to laugh, cheer, applaud, and offer her his heart. Kisses didn’t explain the half of it, and that was a problem.
Though a lovely problem indeed.
***
The Wentworths maneuvered so subtly that Rosalind didn’t catch them at it until she was alone with Mr. Wentworth in his coach, the horses plodding along at a sedate walk.
“I did not see that coming,” she said as the carriage drew away from the Rothhaven town residence. “I did not…One minute, Mrs. Barnstable was maundering on about her nerve tonic, and Lord Nathaniel was handing her up into the ducal coach…”
“The next,” Mr. Wentworth said, “we’re setting Her Grace down, and left with my own conveyance to ourselves. I will take you directly home of course.”
“But Mrs. Barnstable will think Her Grace chaperoned me when in fact…” Her Grace had pleaded fatigue and asked to be dropped off first.
Mr. Wentworth hadn’t objected.
Neither had Rosalind.
“I need to let you know something,” he said, taking off his top hat and setting it on the bench beside him.
“Might you share the forward-facing seat when you do?”
His lips quirked. “Is that wise, my lady?”
The shades were drawn, the lamps turned down, but the mischief in his smile blazed brightly. “If you change seats, you will spare me the effort, Mr. Wentworth.”
His gaze became considering, then troubled.
“You are afflicted by an excessive concern for propriety, sir. I was sent down from two finishing schools, and that’s in addition to the one that rejected me because of my stammer.”
“You were not sent down,” he replied. “You were allowed time at home for a repairing lease. You were given leave to quit the term early. Earls’ daughters are not sent down.”
“In the first instance,” Rosalind said, “I proposed that for one week, the students and teachers change places with the servants, in inverse order. Headmistress would become the scullery maid, while the scullery maid would have the running of the school.”
“What prompted that mad flight?”
“Headmistress decreed that our debate topic for the term be the benefits and burdens of enslavement. Her family held property in the Indies, and her views on abolition were less than enlightened. Her brother was our vicar. The sermons he propounded made me bilious.”
“Headmistress did not take your suggestion about switching places?”
“I proposed that firsthand experience with both powerlessness and authority would enrich the depth of our argument. Just as Wellington—a seasoned soldier—was regarded as an expert on the effective use of the military, nobody without experience being subjugated should support policies that perpetuate it. Headmistress opined that I had been reading too many philosophers, and was suffering a brain fever. I told her…”
Rosalind had shouted at her, in fact. Probably the last time she’d raised her voice to anyone.
“What did you tell her, my lady?”
“That a headmistress with so feeble a grasp of logic ought not to be permitted any role in the education of impressionable young females. My bags were packed for me, and I was on my way home the next morning,before my condition worsened.”
Rosalind had never related that story to anyone, though the telling of it fortified her somehow.
“I thought my suggestion entirely rational,” she went on. “You don’t ask the butler to cook or the head stable lad to greet callers, do you? Why are people, particularly a lot of men, who’ve never beaten a rug or hoed a row of turnips…” She fell silent, for Mr. Wentworth’s gaze had gone unreadable. “You will think me ridiculous.”
Whatever he thought—and he was thinkingsomething—he remained on the opposite bench. “What occasioned your second fall from grace?”
“I permitted the curate’s brother liberties. He was visiting for the summer, which was a way of saying that he hadn’t been welcome to holiday with the family that employed him as a tutor. He lent me books, andThe Wealth of Nationswas my downfall. I found it fascinating, but Mr. Woodhouse only let me read one chapter at a time, and to earn a chapter…”
“You had to part with some of your own riches?”
