Page 34 of The Beast of Beswick
“She doesn’t!” Isobel clapped her hands, bright eyes a shade darker than her sister’s meeting his. “Do you, Astrid?”
“I do not think we should impose on the duke’s time, Isobel.”
“It’s no imposition,” he said. “I spend most of my time there.”
“Why?” Isobel burst out.
He met a second pair of ice-blue eyes, ones far more guarded than the first. “When I can’t sleep, swimming helps with insomnia.”
Thane almost grinned at the moment Astrid realized that he might have been there as well when a bright splash of color bloomed along those regal cheekbones. She dragged her eyes away on the pretext of taking a sip of her tea, but the hue of her cheeks belied her fraying composure. Thane followed the blush as it stole along her skin, only breaking concentration when his aunt cleared her throat.
The duchess stared at him with a suddenly fascinated look, and he scowled. “My poor nephew has been plagued with insomnia since he was a boy.”
Astrid replaced her teacup. “I’ve read an academic text on alternative remedies where meditation can help with sleeplessness as well. Besides exercise, I mean.”
Aunt Mabel nodded with interest. “Where did you find it?”
“Careful, Lady Astrid,” Thane said. “The color of your stockings is showing.”
Isobel gasped, and Astrid shot him a disparaging look. “The color of one’s intimate garments is inappropriate conversation, sir.”
“If I recall correctly, you called yourself a bluestocking.”
“I called myself a scholar,” she returned. “That bigoted term was yours. And you know very well it has nothing to do with women’s garments. It came from themenwho attended literary salons wearing informal blue hose. You attempt only to shock, Your Grace.”
He leaned back with a slow grin. “Alas, shocking tender sensibilities is my only source of amusement.”
“Then, I should hate to be as bored as you,” she fired back. “And pray tell, what is so wrong about a woman who enjoys literary or intellectual pursuits? Or reading scientific texts?” She rolled her eyes. “The horror of it! No one faults the men for their education.”
“I, for one, do not see the point of a man’s education for a female,” Isobel said primly. “A young lady should be accomplished in thefemininearts. Music, singing, dancing, art, and whatnot.” She tossed her blond curls. “My erudite sister here, however, does not agree.”
“And yet you exhibit your own superior intelligence with simple word choice.” Astrid sent the girl a wink. “The mind is a muscle,” she said. “If not exercised, it will weaken. And we erudite females shouldn’t let the patriarchy rest on their laurels, should we?”
“Hear, hear!” Aunt Mabel crowed. “I always did like a chit with some spirit.”
“Says the woman who lived to scandalize the matrons of London in her hoydenish younger years and had quite a number of the patriarchy on their knees,” Thane said dryly. “And still does.”
“When one is a duchess, one can do as one pleases,” she said with a grin at Astrid.
To his surprise, the lady laughed, her eyes shining with intelligence and humor. “You are truly a shining beacon of our underestimated sex, Your Grace,” Astrid said, smiling at the duchess. “I, for one, should love to hear more of your adventures in hoydenism.”
“That is not a word, Madame Scholar,” Thane said with a laugh, drawing the surprised attention of his aunt as well as Culbert, who stared at him as if he’d grown two heads. His laughter cut off abruptly. “What?” he snapped.
“Nothing,” Mabel said with another of those fascinated stares. “I haven’t heard you laugh in some time.”
“I laugh all the time.”
“Perhaps when you’re terrorizing young children,” Astrid said and covered her mouth with a shocked giggle.
Isobel gasped.“Astrid!”
But Aunt Mabel’s guffaw simply took precedence. She laughed until tears were leaking from the corners of her eyes, uncaring of propriety or decorum. “Oh, indeed. Priceless. Terrorizing…young…children.” And off she went into gales of laughter again.
Thane rolled his eyes. “I’m glad to see I’m such a source of amusement, Aunt.”
Astrid looked as though she were torn between laughing and running from the room, while her sister had a bewildered look on her young face. The difference between the two of them was remarkable. Thane couldn’t fathom the composed and poised Lady Astrid ever being so young and green as Lady Isobel. But according to Fletcher’s notes and by her own admission, she would have had her London Season at the same age, when Cain had proposed marriage.
Had her thoughts been as eccentric as they were now? Most men of his set, including Cain, would have been appalled at the idea of a woman challenging his manly intellect or spouting revolutionary notions of female parity. Her dry, clever wit would have been lost on him or any of them. A lady of Isobel’s temperament and philosophy would have been far better-suited to theton.
