Part 2 (1/2)
”Oh, dear! That was a fas.h.i.+on several years ago, wasn't it?” she asked.
”Dust is always fas.h.i.+onable in my chamber at All Souls,” he joked.
To his distress or delight-he wasn't sure which- she jabbed the needle into the fabric and pushed away the hoop this time. ”Sir, I mean the crocodile chaise!” she declared, speaking with some emphasis, even as she kept her voice low. ”You mean this, and I mean that, and we are ever at cross comments. If you do not say what you mean, how will we ever manage when . . .” She stopped and turned quite red, to his greater amazement.
”When what?” he asked, more curious now than surprised at her unexpected vehemence.
”Oh, nothing!”
She looked so adorably confused and off balance somehow that he surprised himself by taking her hand. ”My declaration is this then, in plain terms, Miss Olivia Hannaford-”
He could not continue, because she had turned quite pale at his words and was gripping his fingers so hard that he winced. He peered closer. ”Olivia, are you breathing? I wish you would.”
The moment pa.s.sed. She took a deep breath and relaxed her tenacious grip. ”It is this,” he continued, not certain anymore. ”Our house is shabby from neglect and needs the critical eye of a female. Will you come over tomorrow morning, walk through my house with me, and give me advice on what to do about it, short of a bonfire?”
She seemed relieved at his question; he could almost feel her sigh. ”Of course I will do that.” She pulled her fingers away and looked beyond him across the room. ”Oh, my. Mother is either exercising her fingers from too much discard at the whist table, or she wishes me to see about tea. Do excuse me, Lord Crandall.”
She rose gracefully, quite herself again, and left him there with only the scent of almond extract for company. Women are strange, he thought. Thank goodness that men have no truck with subterfuge. He sat there peacefully enough, admiring Olivia's handiwork on the embroidery hoop. She returned in a moment with tea for them both, and seated herself behind the hoop.
”Nice work,” he said after a sip.
”I like embroidery,” she replied, her attention on the hoop again. ”What a good thing that is, considering that I will have a lifetime of it.”
”What, no ambition?” he teased, and was astounded when she took a long look at him, then rose and left the room. Too embarra.s.sed to look at anyone in the suddenly silent parlor, James sat staring into the flames until what seemed like four centuries later when his father tapped him on the shoulder and said that it was time to go home.
He spent a completely sleepless night, certain that she would not show up in the morning, and equally positive that he would never see her again. The thought numbed him and set him pacing about, berating himself. All I do is apologize to her, he thought. Charles and Peter Winston are due to arrive any day. It is not a matter of fixing my interest with Olivia Hannaford before the compet.i.tion shows up-I cannot even get beyond apology. Lord D'Urst will come as a great relief to Olivia.
Or so he reasoned at three-thirty in the morning. Nothing had changed his opinion by breakfast, except that he had a great dread of spending one more day at Enderfield. After a long moment staring at breakfast on the sideboard, he turned on his heel and stalked to the library, where the furniture was comfortable and much more conducive to sulking. To avoid looking at the clock, he attempted to review his notes and then glance over his sketches. Easier said than done; he found himself mentally wagering how much time had pa.s.sed before each glance at the clock.
By eleven of the clock, he decided that Olivia was not coming. And who can blame her? he berated himself. I, for one, would not. Resolutely he turned away from the clock and tried to absorb himself in his studies.
It must have worked. He was sitting at his desk, staring out the window and thinking about action and reaction, when he heard a discreet cough almost at his elbow. He jerked his head around, startled out of his contemplation, to see the butler.
”Beg pardon, my lord, but the Honorable Olivia Hannaford is here to see you. Sir, are you in?”
Oh, I am, Withers, he thought. He paused and counted to ten slowly, not wis.h.i.+ng to give the impression of overeagerness.
”Yes, I am. You may show her into the sitting room. I will be there in a moment.”
When Withers left as quiet as he had come, James clapped his hands and stared at the ceiling. The Lord is good, he thought, and kind to fools this holiday season. He spent a moment before the mirror over the fireplace, and p.r.o.nounced himself totally shabby, from his worn-out s.h.i.+rt (kept because it grew softer with each was.h.i.+ng), to his corduroy vest (b.u.t.tons long gone but a prized possession because the vest pockets held any number of erasers and pencils), to his country leathers (comfortable beyond all reason, if not stylishly tight), to his shoes (at least they matched today). I could have combed my hair this morning, he told his reflection. Too bad that I did not.
Olivia, of course, looked as neat as a pin, dressed in a plain dark wool dress of no distinction, except that it reminded him how womanly she had become since the day eleven years ago when he and Tim had pulled out her two loose teeth. Merciful Father, that hair! he thought as he stood in the door of the sitting room, admiring her.
She was not watching him, but eyeing the crocodile chaise. ”Ugly, isn't it?” he said when he had had enough of gazing.
She turned around to smile at him. ”Actually, my lord, it is so stupendously, marvelously horrible that I confess I like it. Give it to me for Christmas, will you?”
”Absolutely, and up to half my kingdom, as well,” he told her, meaning each word.
She laughed, and he felt in his heart that for some unknown reason, he was quite forgiven for his thoughtlessness of last night. ”The chaise will be enough, my lord. I will have to keep it in my room, else Mama's pug will go into spasms. Well, are you ready to begin?”
Begin what? he thought wildly. Is this some carte blanche to pull you onto my lap and make little corkscrews out of your hair, and maybe see where it leads? Not even the Lord is that merciful at Christmas.
”Looking at your rooms, Lord Crandall,” she reminded him, which only made him realize that he must have been staring at her like a Bedlam inmate.
”Oh, yes, yes indeed,” he said. ”Let us attempt the west wing, Olivia. It's the newer part of the house.” He held his breath, but she made no comment on his use of her first name.
To reach the wing, they crossed through the gallery with its walls of Waverlys and Crandalls looking down, some single portraits and others surrounded by handsome wives and numerous progeny. It had never occurred to him before how fecund a family he came from, and he was glad that the woman beside him could not read his thoughts. Olivia seemed content to stop, gaze, and stroll beside him. ”Do you suppose the children played ball in here when the day was stormy?” she asked as they stood before one portrait.
He had never thought of such a thing, which his own mother would never have allowed, even if he had possessed brothers and sisters. ”Would you permit it?” he asked.
”Of course,” she answered promptly, ”after I had removed vases and other breakable items. What a wonderful room for blind man's buff.”
It was a pretty thought, and it made him smile, thinking of Olivia playing in here with their children. Oh, Lord, that is a reach, he acknowledged. Here I am thinking of reproduction, when I should be grateful she is still speaking to me this morning. And why she is still speaking to me ... I do not precisely understand the reason.
There were ten sleeping chambers in the west wing, and Olivia went through them all, making notes on the tablet she carried, but spending more time looking out the windows. ”Your view is so much better than ours,” she told him when he joined her at the window. ”Perhaps it is the slightly higher elevation.”
He uttered some monosyllable. Then they continued to another room where she admired the view of bare trees and snow-covered ground, and he admired her. If I could think of something brilliant to say, I would, he told himself, and then spoke anyway, as though his brain had no connection to what came from his mouth. ”Olivia, I was so rude to you last night. Why did you come today?” James winced as soon as he said it, alarmed with himself, but to his unspeakable relief, Olivia seemed unfazed by his plain speaking.
She sat in the chair by the window. ”I said that I would,” she replied simply, ”but we must get one thing straight: just because I enjoy needlework does not mean that I have no ambition. What it means is that I am a woman.”
She turned her attention to the view outside the window again, but he sensed there was more. It was his turn to speak, as clearly as though she had told him to, and he knew in his bones that what he said would be the most important words of his life.
He wanted to give the matter weighty consideration, but there she was, looking at him, expecting some comment. ”Do you mind so much?” he asked instead.
He quietly sighed when she smiled at him. ”Sometimes I do, Lord Crandall,” she told him. ”Do you remember how I cried when you and Tim left for New College?”
He had forgotten, but now he sat on the bed, recalling her distress all those years ago, and how exasperated Tim was. ”I seem to remember some rather caustic comments from your brother about watering-pot sisters,” he said, then stopped, struck by a thought so startling that he almost-but not quite-rejected it. ”But you weren't crying because you were going to miss him, were you?”
Olivia shook her head, rose gracefully, and headed for the door. She turned the page on her tablet. ”Two more rooms, my lord, and then I should be going. I cried because I knew I would never be allowed to go to college. I do believe this wonderful hall suffers from no more malignancy than the need for paint.”
Clearly, she did not wish to disclose any more of herself to him. As he followed her into the next room, and then the one after, he knew he had been granted-for whatever reason-some tiny glimpse into her most private corner. Papa says I should listen to what she tells me, James thought as they finished in the last room and she handed him her list of suggestions. She kept her own counsel as they retraced their steps through the gallery, and he thought through his conversations with her.
There was nothing to keep her in the house one more moment, he knew, as she made her way toward the entrance, and he had the dismal sense that he had failed her again. Oh, G.o.d, what is she telling me? he asked in desperation.
And then he knew, as plainly as though his own personal guardian angel-which he most certainly did not believe in, thank you-had tapped him on the shoulder and slipped him a handwritten note from the Lord Himself. ”Hold on there with that cloak, Withers,” he said to the butler, who was waiting in the entranceway. ”Olivia, when you asked me last week just what I was doing at All Souls, you meant it, didn't you?” He knew from the way her gaze deepened that he had finally said the right thing.
”I meant it,” she a.s.sured him.
He took a deep breath. ”I am studying time and motion, Olivia, and how the efficient use of the latter increases the former.” He was afraid to look at her, afraid that he would see polite boredom overtake her features, which up to now were animated. ”The applications are of enormous importance ...” He took another breath then plunged on. ”... in factories.”
”I imagine they would be,” she said with scarcely a moment's hesitation. ”If time and motion equal efficiency, then efficiency equals increased revenue, does it not?”
It did, but no woman had ever mentioned it to him before. Only the sternest handle on his emotions prevented him from picking up Olivia and planting a kiss on her forehead. ”Correct, Olivia,” he replied in what he hoped was a detached, professiorial tone. ”There is a professor at Harvard College in Ma.s.sachusetts who is a.n.a.lyzing the motions of mill girls at a textile factory in Lowell. He has written a treatise on the subject.”
The next logical step was to ask her if she would care to read the paper. He hesitated, thinking of his own friends, fellow scholars at All Souls, who had laughed and turned away when offered the paper. ”It can be as dry as ...” He stopped, humbled almost to his knees by the trust on Olivia's face. How strange that she should look at me like that, when I only want to spare her the tedium of Charles Ketchum's paper, for tedious it is, at first glimpse. And here you are, loveliest of creatures, looking at me as though this matters to you. ”Would you like to read Ketchum's paper?” he asked, his voice low, not sure if he was offering her the driest bone in scholars.h.i.+p, or a little glimpse of himself-take it or leave it-that he had never shared before.
”I would like above all to read it,” she replied.
”Don't move,” he ordered. He ran down the hall to the book room and s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from his desk, hurrying back, out of breath, afraid that great good sense would have taken over and she would be gone.