Once she’d stripped down to her shift, she dove under the bed linens and turned her face to the wall. “It’s safe now.”
“Safe.” He made a wry, disbelieving noise. “For whom?”
She tried to feign sleep as he moved about the room, removing his boots, casting watch and cufflinks aside. Stirring the fire. Making all sorts of unapologetic, manly sounds. Men never hesitated to declare their presence. They were permitted to live aloud, in reverberating thuds and clunks, while ladies were always schooled to abide in hushed whispers.
The bed creaked loudly as he dropped his weight next to her. His arm brushed against her back. Just that slight contact set her whole body humming. As he settled into the bed, she was so aware—so clearly, perfectly aware—of every part of him. Every part of her. Everywhere their bodies touched, and everywhere they didn’t.
“Will you be able to sleep?” she asked, after a few minutes.
“Eventually.”
“Did you want to talk?” she asked the wall. She felt like a coward, unable to turn and face him.
“I’d rather listen to you. Why don’t you tell me a bedtime story? One you read as a child.”
“I didn’t read any stories as a child.”
“I don’t believe that. You always have your nose in a book.”
“But it’s true,” she said quietly. “When I was a girl, it took them ages to realize my farsightedness. Everyone thought I was just mischievous at best or dull witted, at worst. My mother chided me for frowning, for daydreaming. Diana would always be reading tales from her storybooks, but no matter how she tried to teach me, I couldn’t make sense of the letters. We had a nursemaid who sang ballads as she went about her work. I used to follow her everywhere and listen, memorizing as many as I could. They were my stories.” She closed her eyes. “Eventually, a governess realized I needed spectacles. When I first put them on my face, I can’t even tell you . . . it was like a miracle.”
“Finally seeing properly?”
“Knowing I wasn’t hopeless.” A knot formed in her throat. “I’d believed there was something incurably wrong with me, you see. But suddenly, I could see the world clear. And not only the parts in the distance, but the bits within my own reach. I could focus on a page. I could explore the things around me, discover whole worlds beneath my fingertips. I could be good at something, for once.”
She didn’t know if he could understand, but this was why the symposium was so important to her. Why Francine meant everything. This was why, a few mornings ago, she’d opened up the trunk that held her trousseau and swapped out those bridal fantasies for new, scientific goals. Minerva had never been the daughter her mother would have wished. She was different from her sisters, and she was reconciled to the fact. She could live with being a hopeless excuse for a fashionable, elegant lady . . . so long as someone, somewhere, respected and admired her just for being her. Minerva Highwood, geologist and bookworm and . . . and after tonight, sometime troubadour.
“Once I learned to read,” she said, “they couldn’t tear me away from books—still can’t. But I’d already outgrown the fairy tales.”
“Well,” he said, sounding drowsy. “That was a fine bedtime story. Downtrodden girl. Kindly nursemaid. Happy ending. The fairy tales are pretty much all like that.”
“Really? I was under the impression most of them feature a handsome, charming prince.”
The silence was prolonged. And miserable.
“Well, yours does have a knight,” he finally said. “Sir Alisdair the Colleague.”
“I suppose.” Hoping her voice didn’t betray any disappointment, she curled her fingers in the bed linens, drawing them close.
His weight shifted beside her. “You know, I’ve been wondering something. If that diary that so rhapsodically extolled my charms was the false one . . . what on earth did the real one say?”
Chapter Eleven
Kate Taylor cringed into her water goblet. This just didn’t seem right.
Across the dining table in the Queen’s Ruby, Charlotte flipped through a small leather-bound book. “This and that . . . something more about rocks . . .”
“Keep looking,” Mrs. Highwood said. “It’s Minerva’s only diary. She must have mentioned him somewhere.”
Mrs. Nichols, the rooming house’s aging proprietress, directed the servants to serve dessert. As an apron-clad serving girl placed dishes of syllabub before each plate, Kate exchanged glances with Diana. She knew they had to be sharing the same mix of curiosity and mortification.
Naturally the elopement had been the talk of Spindle Cove, and Kate was as eager as anyone to learn the particulars of Minerva’s unlikely romance. But reading her diary aloud at the dinner table? It did seem rather tasteless.
“Really, Mama,” Diana put in. “Is it necessary to read Minerva’s journal? Aloud? Shouldn’t she be allowed some privacy?”
Mrs. Highwood considered. “Ordinarily, I would never snoop. Would I, Mrs. Nichols?”
Mrs. Nichols shook her head. “Never, Mrs. Highwood.”
“But in this case, the circumstances justify some investigation. Don’t they, Mrs. Nichols?”
“Of course, Mrs. Highwood.”
“That Corporal Thorne keeps insisting he should chase after them, or at the least, alert Lord Rycliff. He seems to be under the mistaken assumption that Lord Payne is up to some sort of devilry. But I would never believe that of him. Would you, Mrs. Nichols?”
“Absolutely not, Mrs. Highwood. He’s an excellent young man. Always praises my pies.”
“Oh, here. Here’s something about a grand discovery,” Charlotte announced, opening the journal wide to a middle page.
Everyone at the table perked.
Charlotte scanned a bit further. “Never mind. It’s about lizards.”
“Lizards!” With a groan, Mrs. Highwood pushed away her serving of syllabub. “I don’t know how in the world she managed to snag him.”
“She didn’t snag him, Mama. I keep telling you, she’s been snagged.” Charlotte flipped another page. “If she liked him, wouldn’t she have confessed it to her own diary? I know I’d fill whole books with poetry if a man so handsome as Lord Payne took a fancy to me.”
Kate accepted a slender glass of cordial from a serving tray. “Perhaps Minerva just isn’t given to poetry.”