He leaned back on the settee, enjoying the rare experience of a woman worrying after his health. It put him in charity with her as never before. “It is a simple schoolboy fight. They happen all the time.”
“You are both grown men.”
“Who sometimes wish to revisit their childhood glory.”
She sighed, and her attention turned back to the window. He settled in beside her, wishing he had his own glass of brandy, but loathe to leave her side. He didn’t spend much time thinking about his reasons for sitting there. Instead, he studied the strange position of the furniture, occupying his thoughts with the odd way she had arranged the room.
The settee, for example, was angled so she could curl up near enough to the fire to read, but facing the window rather than the door. In truth, just about every table and chair in this small room turned its back on the door in favor of viewing the dark vista outside.
“This is not a very welcoming room,” he mused aloud.
“Then you need not stay,” she returned.
He chuckled, not at all put out by her ill temper now that he knew it stemmed from concern. “I do not criticize,” he said honestly. “I simply note that this is a room that is not designed for company but solitary enjoyment of the view.” He frowned as he peered through the window. She looked out over grass and then wood. “The autumn leaves must be quite spectacular.”
“All the seasons are spectacular in some way or another,” she answered more quietly. He was pleased the bite had disappeared from her tone. “And this is not the visiting parlor, but my own sanctuary.”
“So you arranged things to please yourself. I quite understand. I recall trying to do that with my bedroom once as a boy.”
She tilted her head to look more closely at him. “What did you do?”
“Put my bed under the window, my toys within easy reach, and a chair to block the door.”
“Ah.”
“Yes, it was that last one that ended any wish to move furniture again.”
“Well, at least you got to move your bed to the window.”
“Oh no. It was all returned to proper order.”
“Proper?” She tilted her head as she looked at him, and another one of her curls escaped her pins. It bounced quite distractingly against her cheek. “Is there an improper way to set furniture?”
“Oh yes. And as my father’s heir I was to set everything in the darkest corner on a raised dais, and not have any toys at all to hand. Honestly, I didn’t care about the window. I just wanted my toys.”
“Did they belong in the nursery?”
“Naturally.”
“And little boys—”
“Were not allowed to barricade themselves in their bedrooms. I was set to eat gruel for a month as punishment.”
“Surely not.”
“Surely so. That was always the punishment in our home.” It was, in fact, his mother’s way of saving on the food bill, but it was some time before he realized the truth. “It worked, by the way. To this day, I cannot contemplate gruel without total horror.”
“And you never again rearranged the furniture?”
“Never.” He was silent a moment, running through what he wanted to say. Was it smart? Was it his best option? He had no answers for those questions—only a burning need to find a solution to his difficulties. If it also aided her, then why not give in to the unusual idea? But first he had to have an answer to one very specific question.
“Miss Smithson, I have a question for you. A truly impertinent one, I might add, but I pray you answer it honestly.”
She shifted in her seat, her gaze and her body disconcertingly direct. She faced him, she watched him, and she waited with an air of a scientific study. It most forcibly reminded him of her father when he dissected beetles in their various stages of development.
“Er,” he began, pulling his thoughts together as quickly as possible. “I wish to know…do you intend to marry your cousin?”
She blinked…once. “I already told you that I don’t love him. Most times I don’t evenlikehim.”