The soup had been the only simple course, for everything else he’d needed to use a bloody knife and fork, and trying to cut something then spear it was not proving successful.
“Here, let me, Henry,” Alethea pulled his plate over to cut up his food for the third time. “I do not mind…”
He damned-well minded! It was uncomfortable. He did not like the need to be reliant on her in such a way. He hated the need to be reliant on anyone. Yet he bore it gallantly—even though the pain in his shoulder and the rest of his body cast him into a very ill-mood.
Alethea’s lips pouted delicately as she focused on the task.
She’d grown into a very pretty woman. Although he had known prettier in town.
Some of her blond hair had become loose from the knot secured on top of her head. It fell in tiny curls on to the back of her neck. The curls slipped forward as she cut up his food. The back of a woman’s neck was one of the places on a woman’s body he’d always thought the most appealing—he liked the delicate curve.
When Alethea had finished she looked up and slid his plate back towards him. “There.” She sounded as though she spoke to a child, but she said it with a smile. There was no ill-meaning. She was simply being kind.
When Henry’s gaze lifted as Alethea focused on her own food, he caught his father’s eye. There was a look of expectation. He’d seen Henry admiring Alethea. Henry was perfectly happy to oblige their parents and fulfil their wish—but for God sake not yet.
He looked at his plate and pierced a piece of the mutton with his fork. Then looked across the table, to avoid catching his father’s eye again. Susan was speaking with Sarah. He doubted Susan had looked across the table once. Certainly she would not seek to engage him in conversation.
She made him smile, and laugh, in private. She was so different to her sister. Her fingers lifted and pushed her spectacles a little farther up her nose. His smile rose; it was just one of her quirky little habits.
“Where did you go to this afternoon, Susan? You disappeared.”
Her grey eyes turned to him. Her eyes were a little magnified by the prescription of her spectacles, but not overly so, and her spectacles did not make her look awkward, merely intelligent and perhaps distinguished—
“Withdrawing to the library is hardly disappearing. I walked out of the drawing room. I did not vanish.”
It was a harsh whip from the lash of her quick wit and sharp tongue. Henry laughed. He equally laughed at the thought of her being distinguished, though, she’d never been that—rebellious yes, angry often, and independent always. But distinguished—never. “The library is the answer then. What did you find there? Did you enjoy it?” Of course he was teasing her, it had been one of his favourite pastimes as a boy, mocking her sharp retorts. She was clever, but he was clever too and he liked spurring her. She had always disliked him and perhaps it was his own fault for teasing her, yet he’d always liked her oddness, it amused him.
She was forever stopping to pick a tiny flower in a field, or point out a butterfly or beetle. Alethea, though, was impatient in nature, and so they had often left her sister and her odd observations behind.
Her lips twisted in the same annoyed look she’d always given him. “I enjoyed it very much, thank you.” She looked away from him, at his father, baring the nape of her neck. None of her brown hair had escaped its knot.
It was a very vulnerable curve, it expressed a side of Susan she never showed.
“Uncle Robert, would you mind if I used your book of orchids and copied the paintings in it? I wish to learn how to paint as well as the illustrator and it occurred to me that if I copied the images, it might help me understand how to build that level of detail.”
Henry shook his head as his fork lifted another mouthful. He was truly home. Nothing had changed here. His mother and father were the same, Alethea was the same, and Susan was the same—as bookish, dogged and independent as ever.
“You may borrow it of course. Take it home with you if you wish?”
“Thank you. But may I paint here? Alethea will want to visit Henry and I will need to accompany her.”
“I am in accordance with whatever arrangement suits you, Susan. I shall be out of the house visiting the farms this week and next, or with Rob the majority of the days, so you may have the freedom of the library.”
“Thank you.”
Susan’s thank you resounded with heart felt pleasure. Over painting bloody orchids… He smiled in the same moment his father looked at him.
“Rob is looking for a new ram. We are going to the market together. You might wish to join us?”
“My shoulder is not really up to it.” And he had no interest in competing with his cousin. Rob rented a property from his father and all Henry heard every time he came home was Rob has done this or is planning to do that. His cousin had become the son his father had always wanted and every comment was made with an intent to incite Henry into an interest and a desire to compete. It was one competition he’d not been drawn towards, land management… One day, when he inherited the land it would come with the package of such responsibilities but until then he was happy to avoid it. His father managed it all well enough without his help.
Sarah asked Susan something about the book she’d asked to borrow. Susan responded with animation, the pitch of her voice lifting and a light of excitement catching in her eyes.
She was an odd woman.
The voice in his head laughed. He’d met a hundred women like Alethea in town, but not a single one like Susan. Perhaps because that type of woman did not go to balls, nor mix with men like him. Clearly Susan would not mix with him by choice; she had withdrawn to the library rather than join in the conversation in the drawing room earlier, even though she had not seen him for almost a year.
She was rebellious—not distinguished. The impression her spectacles gave was a lie. He doubted anyone else would call her rebellious, though, that was the side of her nature she saved solely for him.
Her head turned and her gaze caught on his, as though she’d sensed him watching her. She did not immediately look away. Perhaps she saw the laughter in his eyes because her mouth formed a firm line, expressing annoyance. She looked down at her plate and focused on eating.
A little sound of the humour that he tried to catch in his throat escaped his lips as he turned to Alethea again. He coughed, choking on his silent laughter, then smiled. “Now Susan has decreed you will visit me, so that she may paint orchids, you must visit me often.”
Alethea gave him one of her brightest, prettiest smiles. “Susan knows me well enough to be certain I would come. She did not force my hand. You are injured. So she was not being presumptuous if that is what you are hinting at, merely kind enough to understand how much I want to be with you.”
Prettily said, and very commendably done. The sisters were close. Whenever he and Susan sparred verbally in Alethea’s hearing she would step in to defend her sister. Not that Susan had need of a defender, she was perfectly capable of defending herself.
When he answered Alethea his voice turned sickly sweet for the sake of Susan’s hearing it across the table. “Then thank you. I will look forward to your visits.”
But he was truly melancholy and feeling selfishly sorry for himself since his accident, and he would, without any jesting, appreciate Alethea’s presence; she would jump at his every breath to please him. There was much to be said for being at home when he was ill.
Alethea’s bright turquoise eyes, shone with the strength of her happiness. Her moods were as open to a person’s view as one of the books in the library