Page 38 of More or Less a Countess
She’d either slap him hard enough to make his ears ring, or she’d burst into a flood of tears. One of those reactions would be far more painful than the other, but as he grasped her cold hand in his and pulled her gently down onto the settee next to him…
It occurred to Nick he wasn’t sure which one.
Chapter Ten
It was his gray eyes. She’d looked into them one too many times, or for too long, and they’d bewitched her. They had to have, because there was no other explanation for why she’d just entrusted two full chapters of her beloved book—chapters she hadn’t even allowed her sisters to see—to a rogue like Lord Dare.
Handsome, fashionable gentlemen like Lord Dare had laughed at her before. They’d smirked during her torturous pianoforte performances, cringed over her quadrille—a few had even openly mocked her awkward efforts at flirtatious conversation. Her feelings had been hurt more times than she cared to count, but as painful as it had been to be laughed at, the sting had faded, because in the end Violet didn’t care about flirting, or her quadrille, or the pianoforte.
But this…this was different. This was her precious book, and she cared very much about it, indeed. So much, in fact, she was willing to endure Lord Dare’s derision to get the sketch she wanted. At any other time she might have appreciated the irony of the thing, but at the moment she was too busy bracing herself for his reaction.
She perched on the edge of the settee next to him, her spine rigid, and waited with a confusing combination of defiance and dread for him to open the portfolio and get on with the inevitable burst of hilarity so they could be on their way.
He took his time, but when at last he untied the thin leather string and drew out the thick sheaf of papers, it took everything Violet had not to snatch the beloved pages away before he could see them. But she clenched her hands together in her lap and forced herself to keep still as he stacked the pages neatly on the table in front of the settee and began to turn them over one by one.
He didn’t laugh, and he didn’t say a word.
Violet dragged a breath into airless lungs as she watched him handle each sketch—a good many of which she’d risked her reputation to get—and she tried to see them as he might see them. Some of the drawings were colored and some were simple black and white, in the manner of woodcuts. Most of them were rough still, but she’d copied a few of them over and over again from hasty sketches and mounted them on fine, heavy paper, almost like a real book.
Her sketches were quite good. Drawing was the one ladylike skill she’d managed to master, but it was the writing she enjoyed the most, and there were pages and pages of it in her neat copperplate script, each labored over with painstaking care so there were no blots or smudges of ink. No imperfections.
And still, Lord Dare said nothing.
He was going to laugh at her. Or worse, he was going to turn over the last page, then turn to her with a patronizing smile and tell her it was a sweet little book, but nothing a proper lady should be interested in. Quite a waste of her time, really—surely there was something more useful she could be doing? And now that he thought of it, did her grandmother know what she was about, or—
“Humph.”
Humph? What did that mean? Violet hadn’t the faintest idea, but at Lord Dare’s soft grunt her anxious gaze darted from his hands to his face. He’d taken up a page to get a closer look at it. It was one of her better sketches, of a night watchman in a heavy dark blue cloak, his iron bell attached to his belt and a dog on his heels. The lit lantern in his fist created a pool of light amidst the pressing shadows of a dark London street.
“How did you get this sketch?”
Violet bit her lip. As it happened, she’d had to sneak from her bedchamber at night to get that sketch. Even now she could perfectly recall the fear and excitement in her throat as she’d crept out the door and made her way to Bayley Street. But it was a smaller side street, and there hadn’t been a night watchman there, so she’d been obliged to go as far as Tottenham Court Road to get the sketch.
It wasn’t the sort of adventure she wished to confess to, particularly not to Lord Dare, who’d no doubt be scandalized.
He turned to her with a raised eyebrow when she didn’t answer right away. “Miss Somerset? The sketch?”
“I, ah…well, it was a trifle more challenging than some of the others,” Violet hedged, determined to give him as little information as possible. “But I think it’s quite a good one.”
“Yes, very good. Accurate, that is. Almost as if you were standing right next to the watchman when you took it.” He studied the sketch again, his sharp gray eyes moving over every detail. “On what looks to be the corner of Bedford Street and Tottenham Court Road.At night. But that can’t be the case, because a sensible young lady like yourself would never risk her safety in such a foolish way, would she, Miss Somerset?”
Violet blinked, confused once again. For a careless, reckless debaucher, Lord Dare had a surprisingly chivalrous turn. “It’s not a risk, my lord, when the young lady in question knows perfectly well how to take care of herself.”
The eyebrow raised another notch. “Humph.”
He set the sketch aside and picked up the first page of an essay she’d written entitled “Thief-Takers,” which was a lively but comprehensive history of crime, justice, and punishment in London, complete with a detailed account of several of London’s more famous Bow Street runners.
Lord Dare went quiet again, and Violet, whose nerves were stretched to the last degree by such resounding silence, darted another glance at his face to find him studying the page with fixed attention.
He read the entire essay, then gathered all the pages together, slid them carefully back into the portfolio, tied the string, and handed it back to Violet, his expression unreadable. “The Thames Police Office is in Wapping,” he offered, after Violet had squirmed through another endless silence.
“Is it?” Her voice emerged in a high squeak.
“It is. You’ll want to get a sketch of it while we’re there, I imagine.”
“Yes.” She waited, but he didn’t offer anything more. “Ah, is that all?”
He studied the flush on her cheeks, and a small smile teased at the corner of his mouth. “You look surprised, Miss Somerset. Did you expect something more?”
