LITMIR.BIZ

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him, but he rose as she entered. She thought she detected a rush in the movements, as though he was caught off guard and took a moment to control his actions, before she noticed. ‘Your Grace?’

      He gestured her to the chair in front of the desk and then seated himself again. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ There was no trace of irony in his voice. There was no emotion of any kind.

      ‘Do I really need a reason to visit, after what we have known together?’

      He looked at her. ‘In a word, yes. It has taken me several weeks to recover from our last discussion, and I have no wish to be unnecessarily reminded of it.’ He was staring at her body. ‘Unless…’

      ‘I have come to say that I am sorry.’ She hung her head.

      He looked at her with concern. ‘Your Grace, you are white as a sheet. A drink, perhaps?’ He turned to the decanter on the desk and his glass next to it, and sighed. He finished the contents in a gulp. Then he wiped the rim and poured her a small brandy.

      She found it an oddly fastidious gesture, from one who had known her so intimately. She took the glass, sniffed at the brandy, and felt her stomach roll. She set it down untasted. ‘I was wrong to leave you with the impression that I viewed your visits as unwelcome, or that I felt them to be a duty or an obligation, or anything that might be construed as a repayment of debt.’

      ‘Thank you,’ he said softly. ‘That is something, at least.’

      ‘It was just that, with the threats and the stress of the debts, and not knowing how to go on, I was not myself.’

      His gaze was flat and sceptical.

      ‘I am normally a most proper and respectable person,’ she continued. ‘Although you would not know it by my behaviour when alone with you. Had it not been for circumstances, I am sure I would never have behaved as shamelessly as I had, or as abominably as I did in ending it.’

      He rose. ‘And now you have quite undone any good you did before. If you wish to discount your behaviour with me as an aberration, then it is better we remain apart to avoid disappointment. If we are together again, either you will be horrified by your continued deviance, or I will be crushed by the lack of it. Please leave me, now. Unless…’ he stared at her ‘…there is any other reason for you coming here.’

      She was afraid to meet his gaze. ‘There is another thing. I know that you made me promise to not trouble you on that account, but I cannot help it. While I am relieved to know that you do not steal for no reason, so much of your life is kept in secret. Have you never considered another career? I knew you would be angry, and that it is hardly a point of pride for me to intercede. But I have gone to my nephew, and enquired after a position for you. He needs a man of business to run his estates and prevent him from being as ninnyhammered as he was when he lost my house. And you are quite the smartest man I know.’ She laid the sheet of parchment in front of him.

      He glared up at her. ‘You were enquiring after honest employment for me?’

      ‘Yes, Tony.’

      ‘Was there anything in our brief interaction that led you to believe that I might welcome a change of career?’

      ‘Well, no, Tony.’

      ‘And did I not specifically request that you never trouble me on the subject, and tell you that I had no intention to change for you or any other?’

      She stared at the floor. She had promised. She had sworn to him that it would not matter, and, by asking, she was forswearing herself. She raised her chin to look into his eyes. ‘I understand. I am sorry. It was not my place.’

      He stared back at her and she felt her lip begin to tremble. She wished she could turn and run, and not say the rest of the words she would have to say, before this could be over. ‘Tony.’ She tried a small sip of the brandy, but it did nothing to improve her nerves.

      He held out a hand for the paperwork. ‘Do not look at me so. Give me the paper. I can at least read it, although I suspect you have heard my final answer on the subject.’

      He took the papers away from her and sat back down at the desk, feet flat on the floor. Then he removed a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of his coat, brushed them absently against his lapel to clean them, and put them on. He leaned forward, resting his chin on his elbows, tossing his head to get the hair out of his eyes. ‘No, no. This will never do. You’ll have me counting sheep in the country for your half-witted nephew, so that you can have the comfort of knowing I lead a poor but honest life. It is not going to happen, no matter what your motives.’

      And as she stared at him, the memory came flooding back to her. He had done the same in his house, and in hers, in chapel and in the library. She had always seen him thus, from the time he had learned to read, until she had left home and forgotten him. Anywhere that there was something to be read, she was liable to trip over him, polishing his spectacles and muttering over the paper. And some part of her mind assumed, should she go home, he would be there still, sitting under a tree in the garden, conjugating Latin and declaiming in Greek.

      The brandy glass slipped from her hand and shattered on the desk. ‘Eustace Smith.’

      Without looking up he said, ‘Connie, if you must insist on breaking the glassware, I’ll leave you to explain it to Patrick. And I can assure you that I do not need menial employment, so you can take your offer with you. Or better yet, leave it and I will pass it on to my niece’s new husband. Much more in his line, I think. He has a fine head on his shoulders, unlike your nephew the duke, and will soon have the estate put to right.’

      ‘Eustace? It is you, isn’t it?’ She stood and planted her hands on the desk in front of him. ‘Little Eustace Smith who used to live next door to me?’

      When he looked up into her eyes, he was smiling, the smile of her lover, Tony Smythe. ‘There was nothing little about me, even then.’

      She swallowed hard at the memory of him.

      ‘I have always been six months older than you, although you never noticed the fact. You were too busy dangling after my brothers, or the neighbours, or the duke.’

      The words wounded her, for it made her feel like a fortune hunter, or, worse yet, the foolish young girl she had been.

      ‘You were most interested in anyone else but me, as I remember it,’ he reminded her.

      Although the smile hid it, she could hear the pain in his voice, as though the wound was fresh. And perhaps it was, for she had been intimate with him, had loved him, and still not seen him for who he was.

      ‘Oh, Eustace…’ the name stuck on her tongue and she forced it out ‘…I am so sorry. So very sorry, not to have known it was you.’

      He looked at her sharply. ‘I have never favoured the name Eustace, nor has it favoured me.’

      ‘But…but it is you, isn’t it? To see you sitting there with your head in your hands, you are just as I remember you. Why didn’t you say something?’

      ‘So that I could listen to you dismiss me as “little Eustace”? Not a memory I needed to renew. Perhaps if you had recognised me. But there seemed to be no risk of that.’

      She stared into his face as he peered at her from over his glasses and wondered how she could not have seen it. He looked very like his handsome older brothers. She blushed to remember that she had been quite taken with the older Smiths. ‘You do not wear your glasses any more?’

      ‘I only ever needed them to read, and that was all I ever did, when you knew me last. Now I do so much of my work in the dark, glasses are really quite useless. It is easier to operate by touch.’

      She blushed, remembering how good he was in the dark, when operating by touch. ‘It was a very long time ago. And you are most different than you were.’

      He sighed. ‘And you are very much the same as I remember. Every bit as beautiful as when you left home. And still in search of a title. How goes the husband hunt?’

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