“I do not wish to make you uncomfortable,” Hattie said. “I do promise I shan’t haunt your property in hopes of a chance encounter.”
“May I ask what you do intend to do?” he asked, carrying the palette toward the easel and busying his hands with setting up his painting station, all while his heart flapped like the wings of a flock of starlings.
“Mr. Warren is perfectly aware of where I live. I plan to do nothing.”
She spoke with such confidence and pride that Bentley nearly wished he had chosen to accompany Warren to that blasted ball if for no other reason than to witness their interactions. But it was impossible for him. He could never attend a social function such as that. It would be dangerous.
“If you won’t haunt my woods, then how shall we contrive another lesson?”
Hattie screwed up her nose in thought. “Do you have any hollow logs in the woods? Somewhere I might leave a note if I need to?”
He thought on it. “Nothing hollow comes to mind, but there is a tree that was struck by lightning some years back. I’m certain it would be easy to slip a small note into the charred portion of the trunk.”
“I know exactly the tree,” she said, surprising him. “I noticed it when I ran home after our last lesson. Very good. Shall we plan to correspond through the lightning tree? I will check it every morning as I take my constitutional walk, and you may inform me on days when you know it is safe to come.”
It was a good plan, he’d give her that. This way they could do their lessons only when the house was free of Warren.
“Shall I sit?”
“Yes,” he said, gesturing to the chair that remained opposite his easel. He hadn’t allowed her to mix any of the paint. He hadn’t even explained his purposes in which colors he chose and how they brought out more red or deeper brown; he’d been so preoccupied with Hattie that he had failed her in her lesson.
Pointing out the various colors in her hair had been to prove a point, but she’d also learned something. He’d have to be satisfied with that today.
Bentley immediately began painting her soft, simple coiffure, streaking the obvious brown with reddish-brown and gold. His brush expertly mixed the colors, giving the painting the rich, luxurious hair color he saw when he looked at Hattie. Time passed silently between them as he worked, and he found himself getting lost in the comfortable repetition of dipping the brush and stroking it along the canvas.
“I hope you do not find me too forward,” she said, drawing his attention from her portrait to her face. “I would never presume to imply that Mr. Warren has indicated any preference for me.”
“But you believe he might come to do so?”
“I hope he might. I know this might make me sound mad, but when I saw that fox on Midsummer’s Eve, I knew it meant something. It had to.”
“If he does come to show a preference for you, what then?”
“Then I will tell Mrs. Fowler that her incantation worked, for I’ve found my fox.”
Bentley nodded. Any desire to tell her of his own claim to the word died swiftly on his tongue. The very last thing he wanted was for Hattie to believe he was throwing his name in for consideration—despite his wish to do just that.
He turned back to the painting, allowing Hattie to continue telling him of the ball. The people who’d gone, the dinner menu, the superb musicians…all of it combined to put an image in his head of the night she had shared with Warren. It was easy to imagine, for most Society functions were quite similar, and he’d attended a number of them before his father’s death.
He would still be doing so if he hadn’t overheard that fateful conversation on the night of his father’s death when he had learned the truth. Disgust rippled through him at the thought. If he hadn’t learned of his mother’s misdeeds, of his father’s ignorance, would he have been at the same ball last night? Would he have met Hattie and danced with her?
No, likely not. He would have married one of the women his mother had lined up for him seven years ago and done his duty to the dukedom, as his father demanded of him. As he’d demanded of himself. But without Father, there was no purpose, no cause in doing so now. He would only bring ruin upon their name and spread scandal were the truth to be discovered. And for all his mother had done, they both owed it to the previous Duke of Bentley to end the line with him.
Bentley was firmly decided. He could not, under any circumstances, allow Hattie to discover that his name was Silas Fawkes.