“I wouldn’t know.” Unfolding the spectacles, he put them on.
As the midmorning light slanted through the carriage window, the gold wink of the spectacles’ frames softened the sternness of his features. Oh, how she wanted to trace the lines of his face, to see whether he had changed or whether she was only seeing him differently. When he began searching through his valise again, the gesture was so unconcerned, so domestic, that it clutched at something vulnerable within her. With an intensity almost painful, she wished . . . wished that this was real, and that he truly thought her dear and wasn’t only traveling with her out of obligation.
She wished that she were different too. More irresistible. More lovable. Or else more independent; so independent that she didn’t care what others thought of her, or whether they were around her at all.
“Oh, please,” she grumbled. “That’s all you are: perfect perfect perfect. Perfect carriage, perfect plans, perfectly prepared for whatever comes your way.”
“Clearly I have you completely fooled.” He drew forth a book. “I’m not going to argue with such a flattering perception. Here, if you’re ready, we’ll set off.”
She agreed, and he stretched up to knock at the ceiling of the carriage. Seckington chivvied his team into motion, and with a pleasant crunch of wheels over gravel, they turned north out of the courtyard.
“How much is the hire of this carriage going to cost?” Georgette asked. “I should have asked that earlier.”
“You needn’t have, and you shouldn’t ask it now.” He flipped open the book and held it up before him. The bit of her who’d lived in a bookshop all her life awoke, stretched, and took note. The volume was octavo-sized, bound in red calf. A diamond pattern was diced across the binding, the title tooled in gold on the spine. The Elements of Chemistry, III. A sturdy binding; elegant but not showy.
She would have preferred it had been levant morocco, polished to a sheen and plaque-stamped in gold all over. The people who liked books with that sort of binding were easy not to like: they bought their books for show, not for reading.
“What do I owe you, Hugo?” she tried again.
He lowered the book. The lenses of his spectacles magnified his eyes slightly. “Just your safety. Not another thing in the world.”
“But—”
“If you are determined to press for a total, then fine. Seckington is charging a shilling per mile.”
“Oh my God.” A shilling per mile? The journey to Doncaster would cost more than she earned in a year.
A flicker of a smile tugged at his lips. “Suffice to say I don’t owe you a coach ticket anymore.”
“I shall have to find the stolen gold, if only so I can pay back all that I owe you.”
He closed the book, holding his place with one finger, and looked out the window. “Please don’t trouble yourself about it. Your brother would do the same for me, without question.”
Would he? Would Benedict do the same for Georgette? Her brother meant well, but that didn’t mean he did well. Now here was Hugo, treating her with kindness and generosity, but for reasons she didn’t quite like.
“I don’t want you to think of me only as Benedict’s sister,” she ventured. As soon as she spoke the words, heat rose in her cheeks. “I don’t mean it like . . .” She cut herself off. Like what? Like a demand? Like a flirtation?
“Believe me, I don’t,” he replied. “I also think of you as Bone-box, as Miss Snow, as Mrs. Crowe, and as the cause of my favorite coat’s ruin.”
Well. That was something. “Should I be honored?”
“Probably not.” Without another word, he flipped open his book again and resumed reading.
Georgette looked out the window, watching yellow-green spring grass roll by. The land was gently swelling, dotted with trees here and there, sometimes divided by hedges or tidy fences. It was beautiful. Peaceful. Wholly unlike anything she’d seen in London.
With nothing to do but stare in silence, she was bored within five minutes.
That wouldn’t do. There must be so many things she’d not seen before. She would be more observant. “A flock of sheep,” she said. “How many of them there are.”
Hugo grunted an acknowledgment that she had spoken.
“I won’t count them or I’ll fall asleep. Ah, there’s a cow.”
Grunt.
“A stone cottage with a thatched roof. I haven’t seen one of those outside of a storybook.”
Grunt.
Not once did his gaze leave the page of his book. In the intensity of his focus, there was something dreadfully attractive. Georgette could not help but wonder what it would be like to have all that attention, all that interest, turned her way.
“Look, Hugo,” she said. “A witch shoving a child into an oven.”
His head snapped up. “What?”
“Ha. You were listening.”
“I heard every word you said, yes. But don’t you have anything to do to amuse yourself while we drive?”
“Yes. I’m doing it. This is the farthest I’ve ever been from London, and I like seeing the land for real. Not just in a book.”
“Could you see it for real without speaking?”
“I could. But I would prefer you not try to silence me all the time.”
Her arched brow made him pause before replying. “It is not gracious of me. I am sorry. I’m a grumpy old loon who is unaccustomed to traveling in company.”
She huffed. “See? Perfect perfect perfect. How am I to stay annoyed with you when you take blame upon yourself so readily?”
“I promise you, I don’t mind if you are not annoyed with me.”
This she ignored. “Sometimes I think everything I know of the world comes from a book rather than my own experience.”
“Surely not everything.”
“Not quite. No, not quite. Today I have managed an adventure of my own.” When she hesitated, he turned his attention back to his book.
“Did you bring any novels with you?” she asked.
With a sigh, Hugo looked up from his book. “Did I what?”
“Grumpy old loon. Did you bring novels? Or any type of story. Anything except scholarly books.”
“Certainly not.”
Unfortunate. She didn’t feel like paging through The Elements of Chemistry, I or II. “Did you never read fairy stories at all?”
“If I did, I had too much sense to credit them.”
“What is there of nonsense in such stories? They tell about the dark deeds that hide within human hearts. Widows who remarry men who wish to cook their children. Witches who prey on families in desperate need. They’re about people, only . . . more so.”
“If I want to read about people, I shall study history. Then I could learn something as I read.”
Ugh. Scholars. Years of experience with her parents’ dust-dry studies and uninterested care should have prepared her for an answer such as this.
But this journey would be far too long if Georgette and Hugo rode in silence. She could not allow him to abandon her for his book; not yet. “Fine.” She leaned back against the squabs, wiggling against the ham-mocked seat until she found a comfortable spot. “Tell me what you like reading about.”
He shut his book again, looking ruefully at the cover. “At the moment, the characteristics of vegetable acids.”
“You like reading about vegetable acids. Really.”
He adjusted one of the gold stems of his spectacles. “I don’t know that anyone feels strong enthusiasm for such things. But I don’t know much about vegetable acids, so I’m learning about them.”
“To what end?”
“To know something I didn’t know before.”
“So people will say how intelligent and well-read you are?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His brows knit. Then he cleared his throat and said, “No one minds hearing such things, certainly.”
“I wonder what else you might like to hear.”
“At the moment,
I would love to hear nothing at all so that I could concentrate on my book. But it would not be gracious to say so, so I never would.”
She snorted. “Would you not? Oh, what fun we’ll have traveling to Doncaster together. What will it take? Two full days?”
“More, since we didn’t set off from Northampton until midmorning.” Marking his place, he set aside his book and pressed at his temples. “You want a story, do you?”
“Um. Something about that question sounds foreboding.”
He extended his legs, bumping the opposite squab where Georgette sat. “Once upon a time”—he removed his spectacles—“there was a terrible maiden with hair lighter than flax and eyes paler than the morning sky.”
“Already I don’t like the direction of your story.”
“Please don’t interrupt. It is severe upon the creative temperament.” Folding the stems of his spectacles, he tucked them back into their case. “A handsome and intelligent prince came upon her once while she was carrying books. ‘I love books,’ he said. ‘I love to learn things I don’t know.’
“‘What about me?’ she asked.
“‘I have no idea what you love,’ he said. So she flew into an almighty rage and pushed him down the stairs, where he would have broken his neck had he not possessed magical healing abilities. The end.”
Hugo tucked his shagreen case back into his valise, then looked at Georgette expectantly.
That fiend. That ridiculous fiend. She tried to glare at him—but laughter seized her, bubbling forth like wine uncorked. “And here I thought you didn’t care for fiction.”
“Did you think that was fictional? I thought it was about real people. Only more so.” So soberly, he spoke these words, but in his eyes there was a wicked twinkle.
She nudged his foot with hers. “Tell me more about your magical healing abilities.”
“Another time. Don’t you have a book with you? Or letters to write?”
“I have no correspondents except my brother, and you already wrote to him. And I don’t own any books of my own. Everything I read belonged to the family bookshop.”
“You own no books?” He looked horrified.
“Correct,” she said. “And I don’t mind that. I like books, but sometimes I hate them too.”
“Hate books?” His expression of horror deepened.
“Sometimes. Yes. You see, they were my parents’ favorite. My parents chose acquiring more and more books over everything. Over allotting money to improve our living quarters, over expanding the shop, over spending time with their daughter.”
“That can’t be true.” He shot a guilty look at the book that lay beside him.
“It shouldn’t have been true. But it was.” Finding a loose thread in the stitching of the squabs, she picked at it with her fingernail. “I think that’s why Benedict went to sea so young. But girls cannot go to sea, so in the bookshop I stayed.”
The loose thread was as long as her thumb before he replied. “I am sorry for that.”
The quiet, simple words were a knife to her composure. Quickly, she whipped her face toward the window, blinking back tears. “Oh look,” she choked out. “A . . . something or another.”
“Georgette.”
“What?”
“Georgette.”
Reluctantly, she turned toward him. He had pulled back his feet and was leaning forward, elbows braced on his knees. Had she thought she wanted to be the object of his focus? It was unnerving in its intensity, as if by looking at her he might determine her true nature, her deepest secrets. She shied away, not wanting to be seen so clearly.
“Georgette, I came to the shop to buy books. But I bought them at your family’s shop because of you.”
Her heart paused. Her stomach gave a nervous twist. “I . . . I don’t understand.”
“I visited Frost’s Bookshop because I wanted to know whether you were all right.”
She swallowed. “How could you determine whether I was all right? I know you value evidence, as a man of science.”
Now it was his turn to lean back, to look away as if hunting an answer in the landscape through which they rolled. “Well . . . if you were there, and moving about, and—you know, clothed and clean—then you were all right.”
“Did it seem so?” God, she was tired of a sudden. “Did that mean you were all right after your brother died? Being dressed and walking around?”
His jaw tightened. “How can you compare?”
The loose thread in her seat beckoned her. She gave it another tug, another pick. Something to do to busy her hands. “I lost my parents. I lost my home—if it ever was such a thing. I have hardly seen my brother in years.” When she looked up, he was again regarding her with that curious focus. “I cannot fathom what it is like to lose a twin. But I do know what loss is like, nonetheless.”
Leaning forward, he took up one of her hands and gave it a quick squeeze. His touch made her fingers shake, and she pulled free at once.
He sat back again. “We both know a little more than what we’ve read in books. We merely read different books.”
“I have no doubt that we have,” she said drily. “You read to learn. I read to experience.” To see young women finding love. To know their finest qualities were appreciated. To feel, as she read, a flutter of hope that such things might one day be real for her too.
Such sentiments would mean nothing to Hugo.
“But you do learn, don’t you?” asked Hugo. “I have recently been informed that one can learn a great deal from contes de fée about the darkness of the human heart.”
She snorted.
“And I read to experience too, you know. Just now, I am experiencing an increased level of knowledge about the structure of vegetable acids.”
He didn’t understand. Scholars never did. Somehow it always came back to books and facts with them. That was even worse than the darkness of the human heart, sometimes: a heart that was, quite simply, indifferent.
She managed a smile. “You must go back to your reading, then,” she said. “I’m sorry I bothered you. I’ll look at the sheep.”
“So you shall.” He knocked at the carriage ceiling, signaling the driver to bring the vehicle to a halt.
As the carriage slowed, Georgette put her hands flat on the squabs. She felt as though she needed to brace for a sudden impact, but instead, they only rolled gently to a stop. “What are you doing? Why did you stop the carriage?”
“Go,” Hugo said. “Get out and pet a sheep. Obviously you are fascinated by sheep. Go indulge your curiosity.”
“Is any of that a euphemism?”
His nostrils flared. “Of course not. Go on, now.”
They had halted beside a fenced-in field dotted with Leicester sheep: rangy and long-legged, their curious heads lifted to regard the unexpected creature on four wheels.
It would be interesting to pet a sheep. “What are you planning to do?”
“I’m going to stay in here and read.”
“You’re going to drive away without me.”
“My dear Miss Frost, if I wished to drive away without you—no, let me rephrase. If I thought it right to drive away without you, I would never have come looking for you in London in the first place.”
Exasperated Hugo was a more familiar Hugo. Exasperated Hugo made her smile. “I don’t believe you,” she said, just to make him twitch. “Come with me, or I won’t go.”
“That’s not how favors work.”
“Is this a favor? I thought it was a bargain.”
He muttered something under his breath, then eased by her to open the carriage door. Jumping to the ground, he held up a hand to assist her down. “Happy now?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t petted a sheep yet.”
As soon as she walked up to the fence, some of the sheep came to investigate. They looked to be ewes, tall at the withers, and their spring lambs were already sturdy and well-grown. Their wool was long about the body, twisted like snipped-off yarn. With their bar
e heads and necks and legs, each sheep looked like it was wearing a hooked rug.
She laughed.
When more sheep collected at the fence, a sheepdog trotted over to see what was fascinating its flock. It was shaggy and auburn, with pricked ears and a lolling tongue. Georgette reached over the waist-high fence and extended her hand, back up, for the dog to sniff. For the ewes to bump. They were all warm creatures, strong and lively, soft-furred and friendly, nudging at her. The wool was oily and coarse to the touch, smelling of animal and earth.
Hugo stood at Georgette’s side, the image of patient tolerance.
“Thank you,” said Georgette. “Let us stop more often. And waste time in traveling.”
His brows lifted. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“We were in a desperate hurry at the time.” When they set off by mail coach, the number of days between the present and the first of July had seemed too short. Now Georgette wondered what fuller use might be made of them. “Do you truly think traveling a waste of time?”
He looked out over the green land, the yarn-wooled sheep. Then he breathed in deeply, pulling the crisp air into his lungs, and he smiled. A real smile this time, without hesitation. “No. It’s not if we enjoy it.”
“I think I enjoy it,” she said, and he turned his smile toward her. Her heart in her throat, she reached for his hand. When her fingers laced with his, he did not tug away.
Chapter Seven
Since they were now agreed that the process of travel need not be horrid, Georgette asked that they pause at every coaching inn along the road to Doncaster.
“I’ll collect gossip from the servants each time we stop,” she said. “And comb through newspapers, if they’re available. That way we’ll be sure of doing the right thing.”
“That’s not what will make me sure.” As the day wore on, Hugo had grown quiet. More than once, Georgette saw him reach for the pocket in which his watch had been, only to remember anew its loss.
She tried to distract him. “Would you care to propose an alternative means of collecting information?”
“Such as?” He had turned upon the squabs, leaning against the side of the carriage, his boots up along the seat. His hospital plans were on the floor, nudging the hamper.
Passion Favors the Bold Page 8