The toast earned him an unprecedented fourth glass of whiskey. The drink seemed to be loosening his tongue, which pleased her. She thought he was the most interesting man she had ever met. She could have talked to him all night. She never wanted to go to bed.
“You said you had three brothers.”
“My youngest brother is on his way to India now,” she told him. “That’s Dan. He’s only eighteen, the lamb. When you knocked, I was afraid you might be bringing me bad news.”
Reassured that her father and brothers were all out of the way, he had no further interest in her family. “How long have you been acquainted with Lord Skeldings?” he asked abruptly.
“Skeldings?” she repeated in surprise. “Which one is he?”
“How many have there been?” he wanted to know.
“Too many,” she said frankly. “One more lordship, and I’m off to America.”
He frowned at her. “Lord Skeldings is the owner of this house, Miss Cosy.”
“Is he so? It was all handled by agents,” she explained. “I asked only for a nice, quiet place in a respectable street. So I did all right for myself, I think?”
“Certainly Camden Place is respectable enough for anyone,” he said.
She wrinkled up her forehead. “Pretty steep, though, I’m thinking?”
“Yes; but walking uphill is good exercise.”
“No; I meant the rent.” She laughed. “Don’t you think it’s exorbitant? Sure England is a dear place; everything is exorbitant.”
“Not everything, surely,” he murmured.
By strict definition, it was impossible for everything to be exorbitant, of course, but Miss Cosy did not seem to concern herself with definitions, strict or otherwise. Her fondness for the word “nice,” for example, almost amounted to a speech impediment. “Aye; everything!” she insisted. “I’ve not had a nice joint of beef these three weeks together. Eleven pence a pound! And now it’s Lent, and I couldn’t have it, even if I could afford it.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. If Miss Cosy was to be his mistress, she would have to learn to be more precise in her choice of words, and to elevate her conversation above these mundane matters in which he had no interest. To that end, he would recommend books for her, to improve her mind and refine her tongue. Her soft, creamy voice would remain unchanged. He didn’t even mind her Irish accent. It occurred to him suddenly that she might not be able to read at all; reading was widespread among women of the upper and middle classes, but most of the lower orders, both male and female, usually were illiterate. This was especially true in Ireland.
“What do your friends call you?” she asked him suddenly. “Benny? Or Dick?”
He was appalled. “Neither, I trust!”
“They can’t call you Sir Benedict,” she pressed him. “It’s unnatural.”
“It is not unnatural,” he said stiffly. “It is my name. My brother and, occasionally, my sister, call me Ben,” he added reluctantly. “I don’t encourage it. I believe nicknames are a form of degradation.”
“It’s a form of affection,” she argued, laughing. “Ben. I like it.”
Rather to his own surprise, he made no objection to this form of degradation.
She leaned toward him. “Did you know that, in the Italian language, ‘ben’ is an endearment?” she asked him.
He shook his head. To his astonishment, she began to sing to him softly in Italian.
“Caro mio ben,
credimi almen,
senza di te
languisce il cor.”
He had not been sung to by a woman since his nursery days. Her voice was light and pleasing, though by no means perfect. As she sang, she moved her fingers along her knee as if she were playing the melody on a pianoforte. The simple, plaintive melody tugged at him, body and soul. Without understanding a word of Italian, he was seduced.
She translated. “My dear beloved, believe me at least. In want of you, my heart languishes.” She laughed at his amazement. “Sure, I’m Italian in my heart.”
“You should have lessons.”
“Is it as bad as that?”
“I didn’t mean—” he began quickly, but she waved him off.
“It’s true, I’m no singer. All the lessons in the world won’t change that.”
“But you’ve had some education,” he said cautiously.
“Now that would be grievously overstating the matter! I’ll say this for my father: if ever any of his children wanted to learn something, he made it possible. Fortunately, hooligans like ourselves never do want to learn much.”
He frowned. “Why do you say ‘fortunately’?”
“We never had much money,” she explained without hesitation. “What we had, my father, in his wisdom, gambled away. He’d have been overwhelmed, poor man, if the five of us had been scholars! I remember, once it was so bad, we had to sell everything in the house, except for my pianoforte, and we ate our dinners off it because we had no table.”
“Oh?” he said. “You play the pianoforte?”
“At least as well as I sing,” she said. “My father won the pianoforte at cards when I was five. There was money then. I had lessons. It was the only thing he ever gave me that didn’t end up under the auctioneer’s hammer. Do you like music?”
“Very much,” he said, but with the air of one closing a subject. “Miss Cosy, shall we speak plainly?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Are we not speaking plainly now, Ben?”
“I have enjoyed our conversation very much,” he began, looking at her directly. “You know, of course, that I’m an amputee. Tell me now if it disgusts you. I will not be offended.”
For a moment she was too startled to answer, but her gaze did not falter. She said firmly, in a voice that rang true, “It does not disgust me, Ben. Why would you think so?”
“Some females do find it rather off-putting. I don’t blame them.”
“Then they don’t deserve the pleasure of your company,” she said indignantly.
“I’m a single man,” he went on, encouraged, “and, like all single men of property, I must marry. I’ve come to Bath to find a wife, in fact.”
“Then it’s London you want, not Bath,” she said knowledgeably. “From what I hear, all the English girls go to London on purpose to find husbands. So they’re halfway to the altar already, right? And you, with your good looks, and your fine, dry wit, you’d slay them.”
“I’ve tried London,” he said, a little disconcerted by this advice. “My plan in coming to Bath was to find some plain, dull, respectable woman to be my wife. She needn’t even be pretty. She could have a hump for all I care. All I ask is that she be young enough to give me a son, and sensible enough to leave me alone after that.”
Cosy burst out laughing. “Plain, dull, respectable, with a hump! Where exactly do you plan on finding this dream girl?”
“It is no laughing matter,” he said coldly, which only made her laugh more. “For myself, I wouldn’t marry at all, but there’s the baronetcy to consider, and the electorate. They will expect me to marry an unexceptional woman. The moment I saw you, Miss Cosy, I knew that all my carefully laid plans were in jeopardy. To put it bluntly,