Page 54 of The Viscount's Silent Pugilist
He seemed to shake off his skepticism, because by the time he strolled around behind his desk and faced her, he was smiling.
“What lesson do you have for me on this fine afternoon?” He tapped on the back of a chair that he had pulled beside his, then pulled it out, as a gentleman should. “Please, join me.”
She approached, arranged her skirt, and sat.
“No icing, pictures of animals, or color cards today?” he asked as he sat beside her.
Lawks, the color cards had been a disaster, just another way she’d treated him as a dimwit instead of an intelligent peer of the realm. In her defense, her heart had been in the right place, and she wasn’t a trained teacher.
She handed him the word shield.
“Did you make this?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Interesting.” He ran his finger over the gold embroidery. “Lovely stitching.JD. My initials, so I assume this is for me.” His baritone soft, he thanked her. “A blue ribbon. You remembered my favorite color.”
She never forgot anything he said.
He turned it over and then held it upside down.
She suspected that he had no idea what it was, and he didn’t want to inquire and sound ungrateful.
She reached for the document that was on top of the Pile of Despair and folded it in half. Demonstrating, she placed the fabric-covered pasteboard on top of the paper. She gently tugged on the ribbon, which in turn moved the fabric-encased foolscap. Like magic, the letterMwas revealed in the slim cutout window. She continued until the wordManorwas visible. Meanwhile, the rest of the document remained hidden.
“Fascinating,” Jonathan said. “So, this only reveals a letter, or a word, or a line of text at a time?”
Nodding enthusiastically, she demonstrated how to reset each line and move it down the page.
“’Tis ingenious. I shall give it a try. I suppose you folded the document in half so that I only read half a page at a time.”
He understood perfectly. So far, this was going exactly as planned. Before she could change her mind, she traded his document for the note she’d written to him.
“You want me to read this?”
She nodded.
Jonathan took hold of the ribbon and slowly pulled it to the side, reading out loud as he slowly deciphered each word.
“I want to talk, but when I try, it feels like someone is squeezing my neck, so the words get stuck. It also feels like there is a heavy weight on my chest.” He paused to swallow, the spark in his eyes gone. “My throat is paralyzed, and I freeze, and if I do manage to talk, the sound is so horrible it is humiliating.”
He struggled a bit with the wordparalyzedbut eventually sounded it out.
“Oh, Gen,” he said, his voice soft and sincere. “I am so sorry. I assumed as much but thank you for explaining your circumstances to me.”
She hadn’t meant to depress him, but she had to tell him the truths she could. Pointing at the note, she encouraged him to go on. Meanwhile, she held her breath because he was about to read one of her secrets out loud.
He slid the shield down the page, then reset the slider and read, “I could talk until I was 10 years old. That is when I watched my mother die.Dear God. You were so young.” He met her gaze, his expression and tone sympathetic. “Did…did Kilsby… murder her?”
She should have anticipated that he would ask that, but she hadn’t. She had expected him to assume her mother had died of consumption or a fever and not to jump to murder immediately. But as awful as Lord Kilsby was, to her knowledge, he wasn’t akiller. The evil malefactor was her father, the Earl of Shipley’s brother. She shook her head vehemently.
“I’ll kill Kilsby,” he roared so loudly that Horatio sat up. “I’ll wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze. Hell, I’ll cut out his heart and shove it down his throat. I’ll slice off his bollocks—”
“Jonathan,” she softly said as she pressed her finger to his lips. “No.”
Jonathan clamped his lips closed, his eyes so round they reminded her of carriage wheels. Then his lips parted. “Gen, you just spoke.”
By God, she had, and she’d shocked herself as much as she’d shocked him.
