Page 18 of More or Less a Countess
Then again, a man who couldn’t even bother to correctly identify the lady he’d invited for a drive didn’t truly merit her concern, did he?
Perhaps not, but careless behavior on his part didn’t excuse reprehensible behavior on hers, and if she did go for a drive with him, it would only encourage him to call on Hyacinth again, and Violet didn’t want the scoundrel who’d, ah…entertainedLady Uplands in Lord Derrick’s library prowling after her precious little sister.
“Come, Miss Somerset. A drive around the park won’t do you any harm.”
But if she did go with him, mightn’t it have just the opposite effect? It wasn’t as if gentlemen enjoyed her company, or ever fell in love with her, and a gentleman such as this—a rake, with such a winning smile and such lovely gray eyes—was even less likely than most to find her at all desirable. Why, one day with her, and he’d likely never call on Hyacinth again. Really, she’d be doing it for Hyacinth’s own good, and—
“I advise you to stop gnawing on your lip like that, Miss Somerset. You’ll make it bleed. Now, will you come for a drive, or not?”
She gazed longingly at the phaeton, her fingers digging into the smooth leather of her sketchbook.
Fortune favors the bold…
“Well, Miss Somerset? There are only so many hours of daylight left.”
That made up Violet’s mind. “Very well, my lord. I’ll come for a drive with you.”
His eyes lit up with ill-concealed triumph. “Wonderful. Do you prefer Hyde Park, or Richmond?”
She stepped around him and made her way down the stairs. “Neither,” she tossed over her shoulder as she climbed into his phaeton. “I want to go to Islington.”
Chapter Five
Unusual. That’s what Lord Derrick had said about Hyacinth Somerset—that she wasunusual. He hadn’t said a word about her being the most irritating young lady in London.
“Did you know, my lord, this burial ground is rumored to have been a plague pit? Bunhill Fields has quite a history. During the thirteenth century they brought cartloads of bones from the charnel houses at St. Paul’s Cathedral and dumped them here.”
Here. Nick blinked again, but no matter how many times he did, he was greeted by the same sight each time he opened his eyes. Weathered gray headstones, half of them tipped crazily on their sides in the mud, gnarled tree branches on bare trees, and, in the midst of this desolate landscape, Miss Somerset, a sketchbook tucked under her arm and a glowing smile on her face.
She’d taken him to a burial ground.
When she’d asked him to take her to Islington she hadn’t said a word about burial grounds, but here they were at Bunhill Fields, and there she was, her hat straggling down her back and her hair falling from its pins, looking as pleased as if she were parading down Rotten Row with a crowd of besotted suitors on her heels.
“No, I didn’t know that. How…”
Morbid? Distressing? Chilling? If he could judge by the fascinated expression on her face, Miss Somerset didn’t seem to find it anything of the sort, and Nick was determined to treat everything she said as the most extraordinarily precious pearls ever to drop from a pair of feminine lips. In other words, this wasn’t the moment to refuse to share her interest in the, ah…cartloads of corpses.
He forced a pleasant smile to his lips as he floundered for the right word. “Interesting?”
She turned and beamed at him, heedless of the rain soaking her cloak. “Isn’t it? Only they didn’t bury them properly, you see.”
“No?” As far as Nick knew there was only one way to bury a corpse, but he did his best to sound enthralled.
“No. They just tossed them on the ground and covered them with a thin layer of soil.”
Good Lord, was he trampling upon some poor devil’s skeleton? Nick’s gaze shot to his feet and he instinctively jumped back, half-afraid he’d find a skull crushed under his heel, but all he saw was a ruined pair of Hoby boots.
HisHoby boots.
But as bedraggled as he looked, Miss Somerset wasn’t precisely the picture of ladylike modesty he recalled from Lord Derrick’s dinner party. She was wandering among the crooked stones, dragging her hand over their damp, mossy surfaces as if she didn’t notice that her slippers were splattered with mud and her hems a sopping mess.
Every now and then she paused to prod at the mud with her toe, as if she hoped to turn up a bone or two. “Why, I imagine they were tripping over piles of bones for ages afterwards. Oh, I wish I could have experienced it, don’t you?”
Oh, yes. Of course he did. Didn’t every Englishman long to have been alive to experience the joys of the great plague? “Do I wish I could have seen cartloads of bones, or shallow graves? No, Miss Somerset. I can’t say I do.”
Nick winced at the irritation in his voice. He’d called on her every day for nearly a week only to have her toss him out on his ear each time. Now he’d at last persuaded her to an outing and secured an opportunity to gain her affections, and his legendary charm seemed to have dissolved in the downpour.
But damn it, how was a gentleman meant to embark on a courtship when the object of his pursuit was half-drowned in mud and so preoccupied with the skeletal remains of plague victims she hadn’t even noticed how utterly delightful he was?
