Page 60 of Brave New Earl (The Way to a Lord's Heart 1)

“To explore a possibility.”

“What sort of possibility?”

“Let’s see how I do before I explain.”

Benjamin had to be content with this unsatisfying reply, because in the next moment his uncle was gone.

• • •

Jean took a gown from the wardrobe, folded it, and put it on her bed. She hadn’t summoned Sarah to pack for her because the physical movement was a relief after the scene she’d just endured. Also, Sarah would notice that she was ridiculously upset. So she hadn’t ordered her trunk to be brought either. Yet. “Regard,” Jean muttered, pulling out another dress. “‘Of course I feelregardfor you.’ Really? As one does for a distant acquaintance? Or perhaps a doddering old retainer?”

Tab, dozing on the window seat, raised his head from his paws and looked at her.

“Even you expect something more thanregard,” Jean said to him. “And you are a cat.”

A knock on the door silenced her. Briefly. If Lord Furness had come to offer more insulting arguments and tepid sentiments, she’d be glad to give him a piece of her mind. She’d thought of several cutting remarks that she really ought to have delivered in the library. Jean flung the panels open.

Geoffrey flinched on the threshold. He stood there all alone, small and a bit grubby. “Geoffrey,” said Jean, surprised. He’d never approached her so directly before.

“I brought you this.” The boy held up a little figure made of twigs and an acorn and bits of moss. “I made it myself,” he added, then ducked his head. “Well, Tom helped me stick some of the bits together, but I thought of it. It’s a forest fairy, like in the storybooks.”

“It’s wonderful,” said Jean, taking the gift carefully. The figure was sturdier than she’d expected.

“You like books.”

“I do.”

Geoffrey nodded like a boy whose theories have been confirmed. He regarded his offering with similar satisfaction. “If you make things out of stuff you find, no one can say you can’t have them,” he added. “’Cause they’re yours.”

“Very true.” She remembered a tiny village she’d created out of similar materials in a secret corner of her childhood garden. No one had taken it from her because no one ever found it.

The boy’s gaze moved past her to the bed and the folded garments resting there. “Are you going away?”

Jean hesitated as Geoffrey took a step backward. The emotion she’d glimpsed on his face—sadness, resignation?—was quickly masked.

“Everybody leaves here.” He shrugged and turned away, head bent, as if disappointment was his native habitat.

The slump, the abandonment of hope, was hauntingly familiar to Jean. She knew, viscerally, how it felt in body and soul. She knew that despondence could become engrained. It was odd but undeniable that she’d rarely felt more akin to anyone than to this little boy. She couldn’t walk away from Geoffrey, even though he had the most infuriating father in the world. “No, I was just looking over my dresses. To…to see which needed pressing.”

He looked back. His expression could not have been called hopeful.

“I can’t go.” Jean held up the figure he’d made for her. “Now that I have a new friend.”

The cat padded over to investigate, his eyes on the gift. “See, Tab thinks so, too,” said Jean, though she feared he saw the little figure as a new chew toy.

Geoffrey did not smile. But he gave a small nod before walking away.

When he turned the corner of the corridor and disappeared, Jean shut the door. She placed the wood fairy on a bit of carving above the mantelshelf, well out of Tab’s reach, she hoped. Its tiny painted eyes glinted at her. As much as she wanted to flee Furness Hall, she also wanted to stay, Jean admitted. For Geoffrey’s sake, and other reasons. Which she did not intend to explain just now, even to herself.

She began to return her dresses to the wardrobe.

• • •

Lord Macklin returned in less than an hour. Hearing the sound of carriage wheels, Benjamin went to look out the window and saw his uncle emerge from the vehicle, then turn to hand down a lady in her middle years. The newcomer was beautifully dressed and carried herself with immense dignity. When he went downstairs to investigate, he found the pair in his front hall.

“Ah, Benjamin,” said his uncle. “Mrs. Thorpe has agreed to come and stay with us for a while, lending her countenance to our household.”

He gave no hint as to who she was or where he’d found her. Benjamin was quite familiar with his near neighbors; she wasn’t one of them. A grande dame such as this would have been a force in local society.

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