Page 72 of The Favourite

“Why don’t you take off your veil?” he suggested casually. “We may as well make ourselves comfortable.”

Jane frowned but sat down before the mirror to unpin her veil. Despite the fact she had not left their rooms, she was still rather formally arrayed. He watched critically as she unpinned the arrangement that had been pinned up at the back but left the braids intact, flipping them over her shoulders.

“Do you never leave it loose?” he asked.

“No, I do not.”

“I should like to see it down around your shoulders,” he admitted, reaching for the bowl of walnuts. He selected two, placing them in his palm and squeezing them together until he heard the shells crack.

Jane, who had already been reaching for her unflattering sleeping cap, halted. “I thought we were getting comfortable,” she said, clearly flummoxed.

“Is it not more comfortable, unbound?”

“Certainly not. It would soon become a tangled mess, straggling down my back.”

“Who told you that?” He busied himself picking out the walnut halves and discarding the shells. “Your childhood nurse?” He could not hold back the faint taunt in his words, though a combative atmosphere was far from the one he was attempting to cultivate here.

Jane opened her mouth to refute the claim, then shut it again. “As a matter of fact, yes,” she answered with dignity.

He could not bite back his grin. “I expect you learned all your lessons by the rote.”

She ignored this, but he watched out of the corner of her eye as she reached for her braids and began to unfasten them. He placed two walnut halves on the square of fabric for her and popped the other two into his mouth as Jane slid her fingers through her woven hair to free it from the two tidy ropes.

To his fascination, Jane’s pale golden hair had fully taken the impression of the braiding. Instead of lying flat as he had imagined it would, it was a mass of crinkled waves. Seeing the direction of his gaze, she looked a little self-conscious but joined him on the bed, nonetheless.

He picked up another two walnuts and cracked them. “Those are for you,” he said, nodding to the small pile he had made.

She helped herself to them. “Thank you.”

“Your hair looks a little … unruly,” he commented, reaching for their wine. “I thought it would be better behaved.” She looked at him blankly. “I always imagined it was straight,” he explained, passing her a brimming goblet.

“Oh, it is. It was still damp when it was braided,” she explained. “This is what happens when that occurs.”

He tipped his head to one side. “I rather like the effect.” Jane cleared her throat and fussed with her pillows a moment. He wondered if she had swathed herself in her woolen mantle to cover up her delightfully tell-tale skin. “Did Ayleth dress your hair today?” he asked.

“She did.”

“You need to take on a younger maid. Ayleth is old-fashioned, and I don’t like the way she scrapes all your hair back.”

“You forget, my lord, that I have Marta,” she reminded him.

“Marta?”

“The maid I share with Osanna and Patience.”

“Ah yes. You will forgive me, but that does not seem a terrible practical arrangement. Surely all three of you require dressing for the same court events.”

“We always seemed to manage,” Jane replied vaguely.

“When you lived together,” he pointed out, “but that has all changed now. If you appreciate the services of this Marta, then mayhap we should poach her from the others,” he suggested.

“We are already overrun,” Jane said pulling a face. “Yet you wish us to take on another servant. I do not think we have the room.”

“I was going to make enquiries for larger rooms, if you remember.”

Jane looked doubtful. “I wish to keep Ayleth with me,” she admitted quietly. “At least for now.”

“Why? I fail to see her appeal.”