“No.” His expression lightened, his shoulders seemed to relax. “I am to ensure your safety. And view your drawings.”

  “My drawings?” Emily felt her cheeks warm. Why had Juniper mentioned her drawings to Mr. Eastwood? That seemed a betrayal of some kind. Which was certainly an irrational thought. “Most of them need a great deal of improvement. I have never had any training, you see. It is only something I used to do for my own amusement, and I am trying to take it up again.” Sketching had been a way to favorite way to fill her time before their elevation in Society. And she had been told by the tutor in London not to mention her family’s past in genteel company. Botheration.

  “M-may I?” He pointed to the book peeking out of her canvas bag, a relic from her days living in a farmhouse, his eyes still sparkling at her with good humor.

  “Yes. If you promise not to tease me.”

  “T-tease you? Me?” His eyebrows shot up all the way to the brim of his hat. “Never.”

  Emily took the book from her satchel. “I have older brothers, Mr. Eastwood. I know how men like to tease young ladies.”

  He chuckled as he accepted the book, head tilted to the side as he examined her. “How brothers tease sisters, perhaps. I am not one of your brothers.”

  How thankful she was for that! He was one of the few gentlemen she had found herself comfortable with since her father’s became an earl. She wasn’t even certain why, given their comparatively short time in each other’s company, but Lyness Eastwood did not make her feel small. Not the way some of the other men had.

  He did not look at her as though her conversation was somehow amusing, while other gentlemen had remarked on her “quaint” and “country” charm. A thing that felt like a criticism veiled in spun sugar.

  Emily turned her attention back to the bird, shaking slightly and ruffling its feathers until it was quite puffy. Then it hopped closer and turned its head, looking at her from one eye, then the other, perhaps waiting for more food.

  “Do you sketch plants more often than people?”

  The question startled her; she had been so intent on the trembling creature that she had not expected it. Most who looked at her work made some minor compliment of it and moved on. He was the first in some time to ask anything. Emily glanced up briefly to see him studying the pages of the book rather than her, then turned back to the bird.

  “When I can. It is easier to draw plants and stones than people. They keep still. Or animals. They are more forgiving if you do not get their noses quite right.”

  “I should like to see more of your drawings sometime,” he said. His tone was even, not merely polite, as though he meant it sincerely. “Some of the flowers look as though I could lift them from the pages.”

  She shook her head slightly. “You are too kind, sir. Though I admit to laying a flower on one page and drawing its likeness on the other. I know I do not do them justice. Still. I thank you for the compliment.”

  “There is an honesty in the way you draw—” He stopped, cleared his throat, and shifted his weight. “It shows the world as you see it, I think. Instead of what the masters would call proper technique. What many of them really do is train individuality out of artists, reducing everything to a…a simple parlor trick.” His voice trailed away as he spoke, but it was one of the longest speeches she had heard him make.

  Emily blinked at him, surprised into stillness. Few people paid much mind to her sketches. Her brothers had sometimes teased about her fascination with weeds, and even Juniper smiled at her pages as though they were pleasant trifles. Juniper had even offered to find a drawing tutor for Emily. But Mr. Eastwood spoke as though the drawings mattered, precisely as they were.

  The bird gave a sudden flutter, jumping from the grass and vanishing into the folds of her skirts. Emily gasped, fumbling to gather her gown, fearful she would crush the little thing. “Oh—oh, goodness!”

  “Hold still.” Mr. Eastwood crouched at once, careful not to touch her, his gloved hands hovering above where the bird hopped about in the net she had made with her skirt. “There—do not move.”

  The bird’s golden head poked from a fold of muslin, its small claws tangled in a ribbon tied around Emily’s waist. “It seems I have been claimed.”

  His mouth quirked, though his eyes stayed on the bird. “Then we must find you a way to carry home so bold a creature.” He glanced at her bag. “That will not do. The poor thing could be crushed.”

  “My bonnet?” She put one hand to the top of her head.

  “Too shallow a cap, I think. It could hop out again. Here.” He straightened and removed his hat. “If you will allow me, this may serve.”

  “Oh, but it could scratch up the inside. Or soil it.” She hesitated, looking down at the tired, frightened little creature.

  He took out a linen handkerchief from his coat and put it in the bottom of the hat. “That will serve well enough.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. Together they coaxed the canary from her skirts, his hands steady as he guided it toward the dark hollow of the hat. The bird hopped inside with surprising meekness, settling on the linen with no objection to such lodgings.

  Emily gathered the brim against her, holding the makeshift carrier close. “Thank you. I had not the least idea how I meant to carry it home.”

  “You would have found a way,” he said simply. “But I am glad to be of use.”

  Emily tilted the hat barely enough to peer inside. The bird stared up at her, feathers puffed and eyes blinking slowly. As though it might sleep there. She laughed quietly, unable to help herself.

  “I truly did not think how I would manage if it let me catch it,” she admitted. “It seems my impulses often outrun my good sense.” At least since leaving the countryside, where her impulses had been praised rather than censured.

  “Then they are admirable impulses,” he said quietly. “Not many would trouble themselves for a creature so small.”

  Her cheeks warmed, and she was glad to keep her eyes on the hat. “I think there is beauty, even in small things. Animals, plants, the odd mossy stone wall. Perhaps that is another reason I draw them.”

  “You sketch well,” he said at once, then hesitated as though he had spoken too directly. “Forgive me. You have already heard my opinion.”

  In that moment, she realized she had not heard him stutter much after his initial greeting. Had she missed it, or did his lack of hesitation upon his words mean something? She thought of asking, but would that stand as yet another breech in etiquette?

  The bird gave a soft chirp inside the hat, and Emily adjusted her grip carefully. “Do you draw?” she asked, hoping to turn the attention from herself and her too-personal thoughts.

  He drew a breath, the corners of his mouth turning slightly. “Not often. Not as you do. My work is with letters. I copy poems, passages of literature, sometimes only words I find beautiful. I try to shape them so the lines of the ink carry the meaning themselves. That is as close to drawing as I come.”

  Emily’s brows lifted, her eyes still on the canary though her interest sharpened. “Calligraphy, then. That is art, surely.”

  “It is deliberate, if not entirely artistic,” he answered. “Every stroke considered. Every curve of the pen chosen.” His gaze lowered, as though embarrassed. “Some call it wasted effort, for a gentleman to dabble in such things.”

  It sounded as though he had a particular someone in mind, and she instantly disagreed with the unnamed person.

  “Unnecessary?” She shook her head quickly. “How can beauty be unnecessary? If words are worth reading, are they not worth beautifying as well?”

  “I always thought so.” For the first time in their conversation, his smile came without hesitation. “I am glad you share my opinion, Lady Emily.”

  Emily tilted the hat a little, the golden head peeking up at her from the folds of linen. “Then perhaps we are both right to keep at our work,” she said softly. “Even if others fail to see the use in it.”

  The bird settled down, wings tucked in close, as though satisfied it had found safety.

  Lyness hadn’t any regrets over handing Lady Emily his hat. Each time she peered down to ensure the canary still rested at the bottom, he had to hold back a smile. The wrinkle that appeared at the bridge of her nose when she furrowed her brow distracted him. So when she looked up at him as though awaiting a reply he had to say, “Forgive me. I am afraid my thoughts were elsewhere, Lady Emily. What was that you said?”

  “I asked what brought you to the ruins this day,” she said, not the least put out by repeating herself. “This is the second time we have run into each other this week, after going several months without crossing paths.” Her steps slowed on the walk. They had only one corner to turn, and then they would be within sight of her brother and sister-in-law once more.

  “My brother and I often come here in the afternoons. I had a meeting nearby, and he brings the dogs out with a groom this time of day. They need to be out of doors or they grow agitated.”

  Her lips turned upward in a smile, even as she looked down at the bird again. “They have my sympathies. I often feel the same when kept inside too long.” She sighed and wrapped her arms around his hat, shifting to cradle it against her rather than hold it by the brim.

  He wondered if any man had been jealous of a hat before.

  Then winced at the impropriety of that thought. He barely knew the woman. Thinking of being held by her was far out of bounds of gentlemanlike behavior. Wasn’t it?

  The afternoon breeze stirred his hair, with his hat no longer keeping it in place. He brushed it from his eyes and made a mental note to have Hobson trim it soon.

  “So you happened upon my family and they sent you off to search for me?” she said with a raise of her eyebrows. “How terribly convenient for Jack that he need not give up the company of his wife, and yet he manages to herd his sister back to him.”

  That made Lyness chuckle. “He seemed concerned that you were out of sight. A common thing for a brother, I would think, when tasked with watching over a sister.”

  “He worries too much,” she said quietly. “I used to walk miles every day, all on my own, before this inheritance business.”

  That both alarmed and amused him. A woman like her, wandering about without protector or chaperone? It hardly seemed safe. Yet he could understand the craving for such independence. “I cannot imagine if my own steps were shadowed everywhere I went,” he admitted. “But I understand the necessity of it for young ladies.”

  “Indeed. The world in which we live must be a singularly terrible place if a woman cannot walk about as freely as a man, without fear of harm. Or even rumor stirred by the mere act of it.” Lady Emily gave him so direct a look, as though waiting for him to challenge her opinion. “It is most unfair.”

  Lyness would have solicited her thoughts on all manner of things pertaining to that matter, and others, had he not heard Apollo bark. Roman had arrived at the ruins, and he had likely asked the dog to perform that particular trick for someone else’s amusement.

  He cleared his throat and gestured to the abbey wall. “I have kept you long enough, my lady. I fear your brother will send out a second search party if we do not appear soon.”

  They were approaching her family’s picnic blanket when Lyness finally looked that direction and realized his brother had joined the Sterlings. Roman stood near their picnic blanket, stance relaxed, speaking to Jack Sterling. All three of them watched as Lyness and Emily approached, and with a word Roman dismissed Apollo to come bounding over to Lyness with tongue lolling out and a happy bark of greeting.

  Emily wrapped her arms more securely around the hat when the bird emitted a startled peep. Lyness raised his hand and spoke the command for Apollo to come to heel. He gave the lady at his side an apologetic glance.

  “He would never jump on you, Lady Emily.”

  “One cannot know that about a dog without knowing the dog well,” she pointed out with a frown. “If I feared dogs, truly, that would have sent me into a…a… Well. I do not know the genteel way to word it. Into hysterics, perhaps.”

  His lips quirked upward. “How would you prefer to word it?” He bent and scratched Apollo’s large head behind one erect ear. “What would you say, even if not genteel?”

  Her cheeks flushed. “I haven’t the f-faintest,” she stammered, apparently flustered.

  He raised his eyebrows, smiling—waiting.

  “Oh. Fine. I would have jumped right out of my skin and into the next county,” she said with a hint of a more countrified tongue.

  He covered his lips with his fist, coughing once to keep from laughing at that vivid description. Her lips twitched upward, but she didn’t say another word as Apollo fell in beside Lyness. They arrived at the blanket with the others, and her brother and sister-in-law stood.

  “Lady Emily,” Roman—Lord Hartwell to most—greeted her with a gallant bow. “I see my brother has fared well, being so fortunate as to have your company. Even if it seems to have cost him his hat.”

  “I have only temporarily borrowed it, I assure you,” she said, stepping closer to show him the contents of the hat. “I found a distressed canary in need of conveyance. Or a nest.”

  Roman stepped forward to look inside the hat, and he laughed. “What a fortunate creature to have you for its rescuer, Lady Emily. And now, thanks to my brother, it will travel in grand style wherever you may wish to take it.”

  Sterling moved forward and looked into the hat, too, and Lady Juniper Sterling. Sterling frowned, while the other lady crooned softly.

  “Poor little thing. Did someone lose it in the park? Or do you think it escaped?”

  “It is unlikely it escaped from a house. Even the nearest are too far for the creature to have made it here without a cat or dog catching it,” Roman said with a shrug. “An ill-attempt at setting the thing free, I should think.” He glanced at Lyness. “Or perhaps someone irritated with its song thought to rid themselves of the bird without getting their hands dirty.”

  “A true conspiracy,” Sterling said with a shake of his head. “And now, I shall be the one to learn if excessive singing was the cause of abandonmen. As it seems the bird will live within my home from this point onward.”

  Color rose again in Lady Emily’s cheeks, though she narrowed her eyes at her elder brother with more fondness than irritation. “Oh, you like animals as much as I do. I heard you asking our neighbor’s steward about their next litter of pups.” Their ease with one another was unmistakable, and it extended to Lady Juniper as she laughed.

  “You have caught him out. He also personally selected a trio of kittens for the stables not long before your arrival, Emily. He will dote on your little rescue, for certain.”

  “The whole family makes a habit of collecting strays, then,” Roman said with the slightest upturn of his lips, which was more emotion than he generally showed when in public. That gave Lyness pause. Was his brother enjoying this encounter? “It seems your canary is fortunate in his rescuer, though must admit that I am torn as to whether to envy the bird for being taken in with such ease, or my brother for being the one to lend what was required.”

  Merciful heavens. Was Roman flirting?

  Lady Emily’s eyes flicked up to Roman’s, her brows raised. “Surely envy suits neither.”

  Roman tipped his head forward, mirroring her expression. “Perhaps not. But admiration, at least, cannot be helped. So we will settle there. You have mine for your kind rescue.”

  The lady glanced at Lyness, but he looked away before he could read her expression. Because he did not want to see what she made of Roman’s admiration, so directly stated that it surprised Lyness into complete silence. He gave his attention to the ruins. Tracing the fallen stone on the ground with his gaze.

  “You are too kind, my lord,” she murmured.

  Lady Juniper spoke next, quickly and with a determined brightness that made Lyness cut her a curious glance. “We are so fortunate to meet you both here today. Last time we saw Mr. Eastwood, we had the pleasure of an introduction to your mother. I hope Lady Hartwell is in good health and spirits?”

  “The very best of both,” Roman answered, voice sincere. “In fact, last evening she asked about all of you. She is curious to know the ladies of the family better. A formal invitation will likely arrive at your home today or tomorrow, but my mother hopes all of you will dine with us in two days’ time. I believe our other guests that evening will be valuable acquaintances here in York.”

  “Oh, that sounds lovely.” Lady Juniper threaded her arm through her husband’s. “We will be delighted to accept the invitation when it arrives.”

  “Excellent. I look forward to welcoming all of you into my home.” Roman bowed once more to take his leave, and Lyness did the same. As he straightened, and prepared to turn, he realized Roman had not finished.

  Roman’s attention returned to Lady Emily, his expression more friendly than polite. “Until we meet again, Lady Emily. I find myself already anticipating our next conversation.”

  This time, Lyness could not help looking for her reaction to what was—for his brother—a bold statement. Which meant Lyness didn’t miss a flicker of surprise in her eyes before she dipped into a graceful curtsy. “Then I shall endeavor to think of interesting topics upon which to converse, my lord.”

  The response was light. Perhaps too light. Flirtatious, even. Was she flirting with Roman? And what was Roman doing? And why?

  And why did Lyness feel as though the sun had dimmed, though not one cloud occupied the sky above?

  Roman finally started walking, commanding Apollo to trot along beside him, but Lyness remained frozen a moment more.

  Lady Emily noticed. “Are you all right, Mr. Eastwood?” She took a half step closer. “I look forward to seeing you at the dinner, too.”

  Lyness looked away—to the ruins, the grass, anywhere but Lady Emily—and wondered when a simple afternoon had grown so complicated. “Yes. Of c-c-course. Until then, Lady Emily.” And he followed after Roman at a quick step, needing to get away before he said anything he regretted.

 

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