“He was looking directly at me.”
“He was…” Lewis paused for a beat before changing course. “The next caller will be here shortly.”
The next caller was Lord Ashby.
Lord Ashby was thirty-two, dark-haired, and in possession of a manner so studied in its graciousness that it had begun to calcify into something resembling performance. He was also, as it happened, the only man in the room who asked Caroline a question and then genuinely waited for the answer, which was such a departure from the previous forty minutes.
He had opinions about natural history. He had spent two seasons traveling along the Scottish coast and kept journals of the marine specimens he had encountered, and when she said, with more animation than she had managed all morning, that she had read extensively on the subject during her years abroad, his face did something entirely unrehearsed.
“Have you read Miller’s work on littoral fauna?” he asked. “The third volume in particular is extraordinary.”
“I have. Lady Hayward confiscated it at one point on the grounds of the illustrations.”
“The cephalopods,” he agreed gravely.
“The cephalopods,” she confirmed.
He laughed, and it was a real laugh, not the produced variety, and for a short and genuinely surprising interval, the morning call became something almost resembling a conversation.
Esther, at her desk, had set down her pen entirely and was following the exchange with a quiet, bright interest, the kind she wore when something had genuinely caught her attention rather than merely claimed it.
From across the room, Lewis was not paying attention to this. No, he was conducting a quiet, pointed conversation with his wife in lowered voices, and when Caroline caught the wordsAldburyandthe Shropshire property, she understood with perfect clarity what was happening, and the warmth of the last few minutes contracted somewhat.
“Your aunt,” Lord Ashby was saying, with the polite inclination of someone addressing the room, “has been remarkably quiet this past quarter hour. I confess I find that more alarming than the alternative.”
Lady Hayward looked up from her embroidery. “I have been listening, my lord. It is a faculty I recommend to all. One learns a great deal by it.” She paused. “For instance, I now know considerably more about Scottish sea creatures than I had previously thought necessary, which is to say, any amount whatsoever.”
“Aunt Judith,” Caroline said.
“I am being perfectly civil.” Lady Hayward returned to her needle. “I am also observing that you have excellent posture, Lord Ashby, which is more than I can say for the previous caller, who sat as though the cushions had personally offended him.”
Lord Ashby pressed his lips together in the manner of a man suppressing a smile that had arrived without permission. “I’m grateful for the commendation, my lady.”
“Don’t be grateful yet. I’m still forming my opinion.”
He departed at half past twelve, and the door had barely closed when Lewis moved from the fireplace with the directness of a man who had spent the preceding ninety minutes arranging his thoughts.
“Ashby is not a suitable prospect,” he said.
Caroline turned from the window. “I beg your pardon?”
“He’s a pleasant fellow. I have no quarrel with him personally.” His tone had the particular quality of measured certainty that preceded something she was not going to like. “His income is adequate, not substantial, and his interests are…” A brief pause. “… esoteric.”
“He is intelligent,” Caroline said. “He is curious. He asks questions and waits for the answers, which is not as common as it ought to be.”
“He collects sea creatures in jars, Caroline.”
“He is a naturalist, Brother,” Caroline drawled back, even though her insides were heating up.
“Lewis.” Esther’s voice was gentle. “Lord Ashby seemed genuinely interested in what Caroline had to say. That is something.”
Her brother looked at his wife with the expression of a man who loved her deeply and was, at this particular moment, but not especially grateful for her input.
“I’m not dismissing her comfort, wife.”
“I know,” Esther said, evenly. “I only mean that conversation is a reasonable thing to value, husband.”
“You liked Calloway,” Caroline said.