Scotsman of My Dreams (11 page)

 

Chapter 13

“I
really do not like being fetched, Your Lordship. I am not a parcel you left in a shop. I am not a book from a shelf. I am a living, breathing, human being. I am not to be summoned.”

Miss Todd stood in front of his desk. She really was quite good at upbraiding him. She reminded him of a cross between his nurse and his first tutor.

“My apologies, Miss Todd. It was easier asking you to attend me than finding my way to your carriage.”

There, a bit of pathos that silenced the woman. Only for a second, however.

“You're wearing an eye patch,” she said.

“Dare I hope it meets with your approval?”

“Are you expecting me to compliment you on your appearance? I shan't. No doubt there are many other women who would be delighted to do so.”

“Ah, but you're here and they aren't. In fact, you seem to be everywhere. I really do not like being followed, Miss Todd.”

“A pity, Your Lordship. I intend to be everywhere you are.”

“James, could I prevail upon you to ask Mrs. Thompson for another cup?” he asked. “Miss Todd, how do you like your tea?”

“Nonexistent at the moment,” she said, her voice very precise.

“James, do you mind leaving us alone?”

“Dalton—­”

“I can assure you, I have no intention of ravaging Miss Todd.” He inclined his head in her direction. “Do I have your guarantee that I am as safe from you?”

“Your virtue is safe, Your Lordship. That is, if you retain any virtue.”

“I shall not make any assumptions in regards to you, Miss Todd. No doubt you are as virginal as heaven's angels.”

“Are heaven's angels virginal? I might ask how you know such a thing. Did one of them confide in you?”

He heard the door close softly.

“In my case, you would be wrong,” she said.

He had committed the cardinal sin by referring to her virtue. Instead of calling him on it or acting shocked, she'd turned the tables on him.

He hoped he managed to keep the surprise from his features. Revealing what he felt would give her an advantage in this meeting.

“I saw absolutely no reason to remain virginal,” she added. “It was not an attribute in my case.”

“Why not? Don't you wish to be married one day, Miss Todd?”

“Good heavens, no. Why should I? It seems to me that it would be like yoking myself to an ox. When I want to turn left or right, I'd have to prod him in the rump.”

What an absolutely astounding woman.

“You have no intention of having a family?”

“I have a family, Your Lordship, or have you forgotten Neville?”

“Oh, the estimable Neville. The perfect Neville. I can tell you that I don't remember him being quite the epitome of all that was good and holy.”

“No doubt because you led him down the path of sin.”

He laughed, genuinely amused. “It has been my experience, Miss Todd, that most men don't require a great deal of urging to race down the path of sin.”

“Neville was a very nice young man until he met you.”

She could truly push a man toward exasperation.

“You have one vision of your brother, and that's from a viewpoint of being his sister. You see what you want to see, Miss Todd. That doesn't necessarily translate to the truth.”

“My brother is not an elephant, your lordship.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The poem by John Godfrey Sachs. The blind men and the elephant.”

“You have me at a disadvantage,” he said. “I've never read it. I don't, for the most part, choose to read poetry.” Nor did he want to read about blind men.

“Pity,” she said. “You might find yourself learning something.”

To his surprise, she began to quote.

“It was six men of Indostan

To learning much inclined,

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind.”

She then explained, “Each of the six had a different impression of the beast. The first fell against the side and decided that the elephant was like a wall. The second felt the tusk and thought that the elephant was very round and smooth and sharp like a spear. The third grabbed the trunk and declared that the elephant was like a snake. The fourth felt the elephant leg and stated that the animal was like a tree. The fifth, who grabbed the ear, said that even a blind man could tell that an elephant was like a fan. But it was the sixth man, grabbing the elephant's swinging tail, who remarked that the beast was very like a rope.”

“So am I, like a blind man, measuring Neville?” he asked.

“Yes, and your version of him is only a small part of who he is.”

“What can I do to get you out of my life?”

“In all honesty, Your Lordship, if you'd given me the information I wanted, I would have left you alone. But then you told me that Neville tried to kill you. Now I am as determined to clear my brother's name as I am to find him.”

“I don't think I'm out of bounds in saying that you are perhaps the most obnoxious, the most irritating, the most . . .” His words trailed off. Startling. Amazing. Incredible. What other words were there to describe Minerva Todd?

“Should I weep, Your Lordship, because you don't like me?”

“Do you always say exactly what you think?”

“Why should I not? I believe you do the same, do you not?” she asked.

“I have. At least in the past. I believe, in the last few months, that I have learned some restraint.”

“How awful for you. It seems to me that losing your sight should give you something in recompense. Some daring in words, perhaps. ­People can talk about you. ‘Did you hear what that scandalous Earl of Rathsmere said now?' Aren't you familiar enough with gossip as it is? I believe your reputation was shocking before you left for America. Don't you wish to continue in that vein?”

“Now should I be the one who weeps? Or should I be embarrassed? Or feel some measure of shame?”

“I doubt you've ever felt shame about anything, Your Lordship.”

That's where she was wrong, but he'd didn't illuminate her.

“Do you miss it?” she asked.

“I'm assuming you're speaking of my life of debauchery?”

If she nodded, he didn't know, but she followed it up with a comment that surprised him, as it appeared she was one of the few ­people he'd been around who understood. He couldn't bloody well see them, after all.

“Of course, your life of debauchery,” she said. “And the reputation you've gained. I always had the impression that you were very proud of it. Even your upbraiding by the Queen. Not very many ­people could boast of having Her Majesty say something bracing to them.”

He felt the tips of his ears grow hot.

“I can't exactly say that it was a bracing conversation, Miss Todd. I can tell you without equivocation, that Her Majesty has a particular way of bringing down all sorts of trouble about your ears if she disapproves of you.”

“Is that why you went to America?”

He had never been asked that question before, and the fact that it was Minerva Todd who figured it out startled him. He gave her the truth, a compliment, if she but knew it.

“Partly,” he said.

“Was another part because you were bored?”

“Again, partly.”

“No unrequited love? No disappointment in your conquests?”

“Perhaps a surfeit of them.”

Why was he being so honest with her? Why was his heart beating so rapidly, and why, most of all, did he have the most incredible urge to smile?

There was something about her that enlivened him, that made him want to goad her into saying something even more provocative or outrageous.

“I suspect that Her Majesty would not approve of you, either, Miss Todd.”

“I'm not entirely certain you're correct,” she said in a clipped way.

Had he insulted her? Had she taken umbrage to his comment? If so, it was the first time she'd indicated it.

“Although she's a great deal more traditional than I, there's something brave about Her Majesty, something that makes me think she would not hesitate if someone she loved needed her.”

“You mean she would be just as tenacious as you?”

“I believe she would be.”

“So,” he said, “I should now attribute royal behavior to you, is that it?”

“No, I doubt I should like to be royal. Or even of the peerage. All those ­people expecting you to be a certain way.”

To his surprise, he agreed with her.

“Did ­people expect you to act in a certain way,” she asked, “being the son of an earl?”

Another question no one had ever asked him.

“I'm not sure it was ­people who expected it as much as my family,” he said.

“So you left no doubt in their mind that you weren't going to be their person as much as your own.”

How the hell did she know that?

“I think Neville was the same. But instead of a family, he only had me. I became an object of his rebellion. Who did you rebel against?”

She really was the most amazing woman.

“If I tell you, will you tell me who you rebel against?”

“Why do you think I'm a rebel?”

“Because, Miss Todd, you're like no other woman I've ever met. You will have to take my word for it that I know a great many women.”

“Oh, I don't really have to take your word for it, do I? The gossips all say the same. You have cut a very wide swath through London society, Your Lordship.”

“Arthur,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Arthur is the one I rebelled against. He was perfect. He could do no wrong. He was gracious in every circumstance. He married well. He made my father proud, and when my father died, Arthur made the rest of us proud.”

“The Covington sisters.”

“The Covington sisters?”

“The three of them. That's who I rebel against. Why is it that bad things always seem to happen in threes?”

He bit back his smile.

“They live next to me and have been observing me from the day I was born. When my mother was alive, they were the first to inform her of every infraction. ‘Minerva was running down the street. We could see her petticoats. Your daughter picked up a toad in her bare hands. She was studying the creature. Minerva was playing with the boys again. She hasn't a feminine bone in her body.' Later, they began to complain about my deportment, the way I walked, my posture, and anything else that they noticed from their windows.”

When he didn't say anything, she continued. “Their nephew is at sea. He sent them a spyglass, of all things. Their eyes are failing, so this way they don't have to strain to see what I'm doing.”

“So you find yourself being more disreputable just to annoy them?”

She chuckled, such a surprising sound that he wanted to make her laugh more often.

“I'm not truly disreputable. Perhaps in certain ways I am, but they do make be want to do things like stick my tongue out at them or raise my skirts and show my petticoats. They have made it perfectly clear to me how idiotic it is to listen to other ­people in society. Society is just like the Covington sisters, always waiting for you to make a mistake.”

“So you make mistakes on purpose.”

“I do not need to try to make mistakes. I make enough of them naturally.”

Her candor surprised him.

“The one thing about the Covington sisters that annoyed me the most was that they never seemed to notice my mother loved me. She always took my side against theirs. They seemed to think that all they had to do was say something scathing about me and she would immediately believe them. She never did, of course, even when she probably should have.”

“Did you disappoint her?”

She didn't speak for so long that he nearly apologized for the question.

“I think, in a way, I disappointed both my mother and my father. Not in who I was,” she added, “but in who I didn't want to be. I was always interested in things that surprised them. I wanted to know about ­people who had lived centuries earlier. I wanted to dig in the ground and find things that other ­people had discarded generations ago. I wanted to imagine their lives. I didn't want to go to dances or balls. I didn't want to dress up. I wanted to go find something.”

The longer he talked to her, the more fascinating he found her. That in itself was a danger sign. He didn't want to be interested in Minerva Todd.

“So, other than Neville, you have no other relatives? No doting aunts or uncles? No insidious cousins?”

“I have two insidious cousins,” she said. Her voice sounded as if she were smiling. “We don't see much of each other. My female cousin is married and has three children. My male cousin is a banker. He, too, is married, and has four children. The two of them are trying to repopulate Surrey all by themselves.”

“They don't live in London?”

“No.”

“Then, in London, you have no other family.”

“I don't. Is that of particular interest to you?”

He found himself curiously interested in everything about her, no doubt an indication of his boredom. In previous days, a woman like Minerva Todd would not have garnered his attention. She didn't flatter. She didn't flirt. She was too direct. She used none of her feminine wiles, if she even had any. She was the most obstinate woman he'd ever met. In addition, she had opinions on everything.

She repeated gossip directly to his face, which no one had ever done. She assaulted him with tales of himself. Everyone else had merely ignored the stories or, if they were pressed, alluded to them. She didn't. She came right out and called him a hedonist. He had been, but he didn't go around admitting it.