“Yet you lived so close by. Surely you would have seen each other in the park, if nowhere else?”
“My father has not left this house in five years,” Kevin said in a matter-of-fact manner.
His father noticed her surprise. “Too crowded in Town now. Too dirty. My friends visit me here. My family has chosen not to.”
“Your sisters think you should call on them,” Kevin said.
“Spoiled girls, the lot of them. Now, Miss Jameson, you have a fortune and half of my son’s enterprise. Pity you aren’t married. Dare I trust you will be soon?”
“Your isolation has made you forget the most common courtesies, Father. One does not ask women that.”
“I’m sure Miss Jameson doesn’t mind.”
“Actually, sir, I do.”
He startled at that response. “Well, then, I must apologize. However, let me tell you why I asked. You see, if you were married, you might have a husband with a good knowledge of trade or mechanics, who could take this invention my son has and actually do something with it, thus relieving him of the obligation to spend all his time on such ignoble matters.”
Kevin’s jaw hardened.
His father looked back, stone-faced and equally belligerent.
Rosamund looked from one to the other. The air fairly crackling with the impending storm.
It was Kevin who chose to stand down. “The meal is done,” he said to her. “Let us take our leave and find a place where we can speak of déclassé things out of my father’s hearing. It has stopped raining, so the garden is available.”
She rose quickly and made a clumsy curtsy in her host’s direction. Kevin escorted her out of the chamber.
“I apologize for my father’s atrocious behavior,” he said as soon as they were alone.
“It went better than I expected. I thought he would insult me directly. I never expected him to save that for you.”
“He loves nothing better than to instigate a row. I’m sure he’s keenly disappointed that I refused to rise to the bait.”
“That must be tiresome on a daily basis.”
“I assure you that I manage not to see him very often.”
“Why still live here if he enjoys baiting you?”
He brought her to the morning room and opened the door to the garden. “The family never visits him and friends ceased doing so years ago. If I did not live here, he would be completely alone.”
* * *
It had been a short rainfall and already the breeze dried the grass and paths as he strolled beside Miss Jameson.
He stole a glance in her direction. Although she looked at the new growth showing on the plants, her expression showed her preoccupation about something. Also perhaps a little fear, as if she hesitated now.
“You said you wanted to talk about something.”
“Two somethings. The first one be awkward.... When we were in the park, Mrs. Radnor said something to me about the late duke’s death being a bit mysterious. She said . . . it was perhaps not an accident.”
Felicity was an interfering little fool. “No one really knows what happened.”
“She said—she said the family thinks he may have been done in.”
“The Home Office looked into it and determined it was an accident.”
“Do you think it was?”
Damnation. “I leave it to others who are wiser about such things. Chase made inquiries, I know, and he has not declared it other than an accident, so it appears it was just that. And the other matter you wanted to talk about?” he asked lightly, hoping she would now move on. After a precarious pause, she did.
“I am in need of some help. I do not want to impose on Minerva.” She stopped walking and faced him. “I want someone to show me how to be a lady. Like you said it could be done. Minerva is going to help me with me penmanship, and you said the doing of it will improve my reading, but all the rest—I can’t do the doing of it until I learn what the doing is. The speech, the walk, the quality way to do things.” She flushed. Her earnest expression touched him. “I thought maybe you know of someone who does that. Who fixes people like me.”
“You don’t need any fixing.”
“I do. Even for my shop, I do. I’ve tried. I had some friends, and I copied them and got better, but I know I still make mistakes, especially when I be flustered or excited. Do you know anyone like that? Who would give me lessons?”
“I can find out. And if there isn’t one person, several might do. One for speech, for example. Others for other things.” He pictured her attending to the tasks as they were given, mastering them, becoming ladylike in the ways she wanted. The image made him a little sad. “I hope that you will not let such a program of improvement ruin you.”
“Ruin me?”
He groped for a way to put it. “When you put on a very expensive hat, does it change who you are? I don’t think so. Let any of these improvements you seek be like a new hat.”
“You mean don’t put on airs.”
“I mean don’t forget the value of who you are no matter what kind of hat you are wearing.”
Her expression cleared. He tried not to be affected by the gratitude he saw in her eyes as she gazed at him. “I think I understand,” she said. “I should remember that I be just as worthy now as I will be when this is done.”
She smiled at him then, and there was so much sweetness in that smile that something ached in his chest.
“Exactly,” he said, perhaps a bit harshly. “Now, are you sure you want to do this? Because it will be criticism after criticism once you start.”
“I am sure.”
They might as well find out now if she had the stomach for it. “Well, for example, while your speech is probably much different now from when you were a girl, and you have shed much of your accent, you still hold on to some notable errors. ‘I be,’ for example. ‘I be just as worthy.’ It is ‘I am.’ Never ‘I be.’”
He watched the impact of his words on her face.
As she absorbed what he was saying, to his surprise, she did not display any embarrassment or shame.
“‘I am,’” she repeated. “I am just as worthy. Not ‘I be.’”
He nodded.
She beamed at him.
“Yes. Like that. Just like that. You must do it again whenever I slip. Right away.”
To his astonishment, she stood on tiptoe then and kissed him on the cheek.
Her face was so close to his. Dangerously close.
His own kiss came in that instant, without thought. He merely brushed his lips on hers, but in that moment he felt their warmth and velvet softness and inhaled her scent.
Her hands went to her lips as she took a step back. He too stepped back.
She tore her gaze from his own after what seemed a long count, but that probably only lasted one more second after the last.
She began walking back to the house, and he fell into step next to her.
After a few moments, she said, “Do you think it will take long, the lessons?” As if nothing had happened.
He followed suit. “It will take some time to find tutors.”
“I be—am leaving Town for a spell, to take my sister to her school. I hope to start when I return.”