“Then why pin your hair up at all?” he asked.
She glanced at him suspiciously, but his expression was innocently enquiring. Thrusting the pins back any which way, she said, “Little girls may leave their hair down, Mr. Langdon. A young lady who does so may be mistaken for a demi-rep. At least, so my Abigail repeatedly tells me. I have enough problems being mistaken for what I am not,” she found herself adding under his sober grey gaze.
He winced as though she had struck him. “Miss Desmond, no words can express my shame and sorrow regarding my behaviour last night,” he said hurriedly. “I should have realised—I should have tried to think first at least—it might have been obvious to an imbecile—”
“That I was only demonstrating the use of a pistol to his lordship?” Delilah smiled in spite of her discomfort. “Even I must admit the circumstances were most incriminating.”
“That hardly changes the fact that my behaviour was ungentlemanly, to say the least.”
How unhappy he was! That rather took the sting out of her own embarrassment. “Mine was unladylike,” she said. “That makes us quits, Mr. Langdon. Shall we forgive each other—and ourselves?” She held out her hand.
He hesitated a moment before accepting the handshake. His clasp lingered just an instant longer than pure sportsmanship required, but after the business with the hairpins this might be accounted a minor triumph, and Miss Desmond had never been one to quibble over instants.
“As long as you’ve given me your hand, may I have your arm as well?” she asked lightly. “Will you walk with me and talk amiable inanities, as though we’d only now met in these sedate circumstances?”
“With pleasure,” said her companion. He did not look pleased, however. He looked as though he’d much prefer to run away.
Though common sense told her he had good reason to avoid her, Miss Desmond had sufficient vanity to be piqued by this show of reluctance.
“If you think it a pleasure, oughtn’t you smile at least?” she chided as she took his arm and they began to walk. “You look so grim, as though I had asked you to commit treason—” She caught herself up, struck with a disconcerting possibility. “Or have I stepped wrong again? Was it forward of me to ask for your company?”
“Forward?” he asked, plainly bewildered.
“Fast. Bold. Vulgar. I don’t know. Was it wrong?”
He considered for a moment. “Not wrong certainly. I mean, it can’t be a hanging offence,” he said with a faint smile, “though there were over two hundred of them at last count. As to bold or forward or fast, I am the last man on earth who’d know. There are some subtleties of social behavior that utterly elude me. My friend Max always says any behaviour that’s pleasant can’t be correct. If I employ his measure, I must conclude,” he said, his smile broadening and lighting up the clean, straight lines of his profile, “that it is incorrect.”
He turned the smile full upon her then, and Miss Desmond felt a tad breathless, but she answered sturdily enough. “Of course it must be. I fear the subtleties elude me also, Mr. Langdon, but I assure you I mean to learn them. In future I will not make such unseemly requests. Lud, I hope I commit no faux pas at tea. As it isv her ladyship seems in constant expectation of some outrage. I daresay she’s certain that Papa and I will swing from the draperies or slide down banisters or, heaven help us, treat the servants like human beings.”
“You had better not say ‘lud’ then, Miss Desmond. I distinctly recall my mother ringing a peal over my sister Gwendolyn on that account.”
“Fast?”
“Vulgar.”
“How tiresome.”
“Then we shan’t speak of it,” said Mr. Langdon, and immediately turned the subject. “I understand you plan to visit your aunt?”
“My great aunt. Lady Potterby.”
Her companion started. “Lady Millicent Potterby?”
“Yes. Do you know her?” Delilah asked, wondering why he’d changed instantly from amiability to discomfiture. Was there some dreadful scandal about Mama’s Aunt Mimsy as well?”
“I know her very well. She is a near neighbour of my uncle. The properties adjoin, actually. What a small world it is,” he added uneasily. “I was on my way to visit him.”
They had reached the shrubbery, but instead of taking the narrow pathway between the tall hedges, he steered her along the outer border.
Miss Desmond did not at first notice the abrupt change in direction. She was too taken up with the unsettling news that Mr. Langdon would be her next door neighbour—if, that is, he persisted in his intention to visit with his uncle. Perhaps now he would change his mind—and why on earth were they circling the hedges instead of entering them?
“Oh, Mr. Langdon, is it not a maze? I should like ever so much—”
“Another time, perhaps,” he said stiffly.
She felt the warmth rising in her cheeks. “Lud— I mean, good heavens—I had not thought—but these tall hedges would screen one from view of the house, and we are obliged to keep in plain sight, are we not?”
“Miss Desmond—” He hesitated. Then he drew a long breath and said, “It is not a true maze, and we are indeed so obliged, particularly as your maid is not with you.”
“To protect me, you mean. But from what, sir?” she could not help asking. “Do wild animals lurk there? Or is the danger in your company?”
“No—at least—no.”
She felt the muscles of his arm tighten under her hand and wondered if he would bolt now. Instead, he bent a searching look upon her and after a moment’s hesitation asked, “Miss Desmond, are you ... flirting with me?”
“Yes,” she answered in some surprise. “I believe I am.”
“Then I am obliged to tell you that is a prodigious waste of time.”
“You are impervious to my charms, of course,” she said, as he steered he
r back to the rose garden.
His face instantly became shuttered. “You must be well aware no man can be that, so long as he is breathing.”
“Then perhaps you do not approve of flirtation,” she persisted, intrigued. “You consider it indecorous.”
“I am only a bookworm, Miss Desmond, not, I hope, a prig. I make an excellent bookworm, I’m told, but a most disappointing flirt.”
“Now who told you that, I wonder?”
“No one had to tell me. It’s perfectly obvious.”
Her pique gave way to curiosity. He meant what he said. What an odd man he was.
“Not to me, Mr. Langdon,” she answered, “and I assure you I am an excellent judge. Ah, now I have shocked you at last.”
She found that steady, studying look upon her again and once more felt rather short of breath.
“Miss Desmond, only your beauty shocks me,” he said as though the words were wrung from him. “A man could look upon your face for the next one hundred years and never grow tired of it. But you would soon grow tired of that, I think,” he added more briskly, “when he could not simultaneously amuse you with witty gallantries. Nor, surely, could you amuse yourself by fencing with an unarmed man.”
“Unarmed?” she repeated, bemused.
A voice called out then, and Delilah turned to see Lord Berne, his golden hair in damp ringlets about his head, sauntering up the pathway toward them. She simultaneously felt her companion gently disengage her hand from his arm. When the viscount drew near, Mr. Langdon, with some vague remark about “letters to write,” excused himself and quickly strode away.
Mr. Langdon must have had a great many letters to write—or perhaps only one very long and difficult one—because he did not emerge from the library again until it was time to dress for dinner.
He was there the next day as well, with even less prospect of completing his task, for he spent most of his time wandering aimlessly about the room or staring out the windows. At the moment, he was engaged in the latter occupation, and it was not an especially agreeable one.