By the time the majordomo announced that dinner was served, the small party had agreed to dispense with the formality of titles, and it was a fairly merry group that sat down to bowls of hot, clear consommé.
“Chicken,” Nicole pointed out as Lucas lifted his spoon. “Feel free to wax nostalgic once more about your Spanish cook.”
Lucas looked at her inquiringly. “You didn’t enjoy our small story?”
“I did, yes,” she told him quietly, her attention seemingly on her dish. “But I could not help but wonder, for all the stories you and Rafe told, that Captain Fitzgerald played no part in them. You know, don’t you?”
“Your brother was kind enough to warn me off,”
Lucas said, chancing a look across the table to where Lady Lydia appeared to be listening with rapt attention as Fletcher spoke just as quietly, gesturing with his hands in that way his friend had about him. “He becomes excited enough about his subject,” he said, indicating Fletcher, “and someone might be prudent to move those wineglasses. Once, when he was describing a boxing match he’d been to in Epsom, he knocked a candlestick into Lady Hertford’s lap. She was not amused.”
“I’d have been highly amused, and it will do no good to attempt to change the subject. I think my brother is entirely too protective of my sister. How will she heal if everyone continues to coddle her, to hide their memories of Captain Fitzgerald from her? To elevate him to sainthood, put his memory on a pedestal where he is no longer human, no longer real, is a disservice to the captain as well as to Lydia. He was a flesh-and-blood man, very much so. She will always love him, always remember him, but it’s time she smiled when she said his name. It’s time she makes him more than the dream he was to her.”
Lucas looked at her in some astonishment. Clearly polite dinner conversation, safe and innocuous, was not going to be the rule of the evening. “You may be right, Lady Nicole. But do you want to chance upsetting your sister?”
“No, I suppose not. Not right now. But I would think we need not tiptoe around the subject when we all meet again. To constantly avoid the captain’s name is cheating Lydia, and difficult for those around her.”
“When we meet again? Ah, a glimmer of hope invades my being. Then you have permission to drive out to Richmond tomorrow?”
The dimple appeared in her cheek as she smiled at him. “Rafe considers you harmless, yes. How does it feel, my lord, to be considered harmless? I’m only curious because no one has ever applied that description to me.”
“I can’t imagine why not,” Lucas said tongue in cheek as the soup plates were removed and the second course served. He had no appetite, unless it was for the woman sitting beside him, deliberately goading him, testing the boundaries to see how far she could go before she shocked him.
He’d like to know that, too.
“Lucas,” Fletcher said, leaning his elbows on the table. “You won’t believe this. Lady Lydia here has read Thomas Paine. Isn’t that beyond anything you’ve ever heard?”
“Is that so, Lady Lydia,” he said, truly interested, if mildly surprised. “His most famous Common Sense is thought by some to be the major goad for the then American colonies to rise up against us in the last century, did you know that?”
Lydia’s cheeks had gone quite pink, but she looked directly at Lucas. “But there are things that must be said, don’t you agree, wrongs that must be righted? As Mr. Paine wrote, we cannot allow ourselves to be complacent, and to never question authority.”
“Yes, I remember. ‘A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.’”
“You’ve committed him to memory, Lucas?” Rafe remarked from the head of the table. “Don’t tell me you claim the man as family.”
“Not at all, although sharing a surname has caused my family to feel forced to defend his memory from time to time. I admire some of his writings, but I wish he’d stopped before he vented his spleen with The Rights of Man. For a time, it was a crime for an Englishman to possess a copy, did you know that?”
“Lydia possesses a copy,” Nicole said quietly. “I read some of it just this afternoon.”
Lucas raised an eyebrow. He’d known it would only be a matter of time before she’d shocked him, but he hadn’t expected that shock to come this soon. “Is that so? And have you read enough to form an opinion?”
Nicole bit her bottom lip for a moment and then nodded. “Truthfully? My sister may not agree with me, but for as much as I have so far read, I believe the man makes an incendiary argument consisting of a mixture of unpalatable truths and dangerous nonsense.”
Lucas threw back his head and laughed out loud. “Rafe! Did you hear that? I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“You have said it yourself,” Fletcher pointed out, looking at Nicole curiously. “It’s almost eerie.”
Lucas caught out Rafe and his lovely wife exchanging rather confused looks, as if they’d never expected to hear Nicole say anything like what she’d just said. Yet they hadn’t seemed shocked to hear that her sister had read Paine’s works. Or was there more to it than that?
He decided to find out.
“As you read Thomas Paine,” he asked Nicole as they ate, “I would imagine you’ve also read some of the works of Wieland, Gibbon, Burke?”
“You most certainly can imagine that. You can imagine that all you wish,” she answered brightly, and he knew he had just been put very firmly in his place. By a young girl clearly not easily put out of countenance by clumsy buffoons like himself.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, only to have her place her hand on his forearm and lean closer to him.
“And I should not have pretended to be someone I am not. Lydia stole all the brains, I believe, leaving me nothing but an only ordinary intelligence. But I did sound convincing, didn’t I? The use of incendiary was very nearly inspired, I think.”
And that was that. Beauty such as Nicole’s was not to be sneezed at and certainly he enjoyed looking at her, would like to possess her because of that beauty. But as he looked into those remarkable eyes, and saw what could only be a small imp of the devil looking back at him, Lucas was in serious danger of becoming completely and utterly lost. And he knew it.
CHAPTER THREE
AS IF TO PUNISH NICOLE for what she knew to be her outrageous behavior the night of the dinner party, there was such a downpour for the next two days that no sane person in London ventured outdoors, let alone took drives to Richmond or anywhere else.
In desperation, she had picked up Lydia’s copy of Jane Austen’s Emma, and hidden herself away in her room until all of the characters were nicely settled with their soul mates and Emma had finally opened her eyes to the charms of Mr. Knightley.
She hadn’t enjoyed the story very much. All this upset about matching this one to that one and keeping another one from making a mistake by bracketing herself to a clearly unsuitable person seemed silly.
Was
