Another glance at the paper she had given him with her list of times and instructions made his heart sink. “Suppose you have questions during the work, Miss Sharpe?”
“I will send a note.” She closed her book and bent down to pick up her basket. “I promise I will be as efficient as possible.”
Efficiency hadn’t been quite what he hoped for, but Rupert nodded in reluctant acceptance. “May I ask—” He cut himself off, realizing he had no way to politely inquire as to whether or not she disliked his company. Not now that he had her agreement to help him.
The governess tilted her head to the side, the brim of her bonnet shading her face. “Ask...?” She let the question hang between them, her expression curious.
He dropped his gaze to her hand. “What is in your basket?”
A ridiculous question, but the best he could come up with under the circumstances.
“Oh.” She removed the cloth covering. “Frogs. I think they must be ill. I found them in Lord James’s room, in a trunk. I do not think he meant them any harm but keeping them indoors has done harm. I thought to take them to the sunken pond.”
Rupert’s jaw had fallen slack at some point. Likely when she had first shown him at least six frogs lying still atop a folded cloth. They were all breathing but hadn’t made a single sound. They were likely lethargic from lack of food and water, as she had supposed.
He looked up at her. “Why—? How did—?” Then he shook his head, completely confused. Never had he spoken to a woman on the subject of insects without finding them bored or put off. But here was a woman, born and raised as a gentlewoman, who had rescued frogs from a little boy’s trunk.
“I realize it would be better for the boy to return them himself, but I found them after he went out riding with his father and I thought it prudent to act in haste. I will, of course, speak to him later about this.” She covered the frogs up again, and Rupert had the wild desire to swoop down and kiss her.
Instead, he gestured to the path leading down to the sunken fountain. “May I accompany you?”
Kissing a woman over her compassionate behavior toward frogs would be illogical. Especially given her rather frosty manner of a few moments before.
Although still put out with the demanding gentleman, Alice nodded her consent to his escort. The sunken fountain was not far. Enduring him for a few more minutes would not over-tax her.
They walked in silence at first, he with his arms tucked behind his back, still in his shirtsleeves. She kept her basket and notebook tucked tight against her stomach.
“I think I owe you another apology, Miss Sharpe.”
Alice darted a look at him from the corner of her eye, around the edge of her spectacles.
“Only one, Mr. Gardiner?” She bit her tongue the moment the words escaped her. A governess could not speak to people that way.
He cocked his head to one side, and she could have sworn he fought back a smile given the way his lips tightened, and his dark eyes danced. “Perhaps several.”
Alice pulled her gaze away from his, back to the path. The willow tree that acted as entrance to the sunken fountain’s garden was within sight. He could not know how much his notice had harmed her comfort. “What do you imagine yourself to be apologizing for, sir?”
“Taking up your valuable time, I think. Perhaps making you uncomfortable with my demands for your help? Or maybe inconveniencing you as a whole would be the best thing to categorize the rest of my offenses beneath.” He stopped walking and turned to face her, requiring her to do the same. “I am in earnest, Miss Sharpe. I did not realize until a moment ago how much my single-focus upon my task has become selfishness.”
Her mouth fell open, but she hastily snapped it shut again. She had nearly agreed with him.
“I have ambition, Miss Sharpe.” He tucked one arm behind his back and gestured to the garden with his other hand. “All of this might seem like no more than pretty greenery to most. Ornamental. Unimportant. But the plants and the insects living upon them are more than that. Recording them as they are now, noting how they interact with one another, might lead to remarkable discoveries one day. In my mind, I am compelled by the dizzying greatness of the future and frustrated by my own lack of understanding in the present. I am overzealous in my pursuit of discovery.”
He spoke with such an earnest expression, with a weight to his words that most men reserved for the weighty matters of war and faith. His eyes burned with purpose and a passion for all that he had said. Willing her, Alice thought, to understand him.
She considered his words and weighed them against her reluctance to help him. For all that he concerned himself with the future of the world and how his research might contribute to it, he had not comprehended her future. Or her present.
“You have been honest with me, sir. If you will permit me to speak freely?” She hesitated, waiting for his word.
“You do not need my permission,” he said instead, his brow furrowing. “A lady ought to be permitted to speak her mind.”
“But I am no longer a lady of consequence, Mr. Gardiner, and therein is the problem.” Alice hugged her basket closer. “Perhaps we might walk? These miserable creatures are so near the end of their suffering.”
“May I?” He gestured to the basket, and Alice handed it to him. Then they continued, stepping within the curtain of the willow tree. “Speak on, Miss Sharpe. I would have us understand one another.”
No one in her memory had ever treated her with such solicitude. It made her stomach twist and for a moment she forgot why she had ever been upset with him.
“I am only a woman,” she said, her voice quieter than she would have liked. “I am not an amateur botanist, or entomologist, or anything else of importance. I am without important connections. My own relatives do not want me in their homes, living upon their goodwill. The path I am on is all that is available to me—the path of work, sir. My position—even if it is in one of the finest houses for one of the finest families in England—is tenuous. With no more than a thought, they could send me packing.”
He appeared as though he wished to speak, to say something, but Alice hurried on. “I know the duke and duchess are honorable, good people. I have heard as much. But I should like to stay beneath their notice, and so beneath their displeasure. Taking the time away from my duties to assist you, and receiving permission from the duke in the first place to do so, has pulled me from the corner and into the center of the room.”
They came through the other side of the willow to the sunny clearing and pool of water. Lord James’s cobblestone faces still decorated the path beneath their feet. Dragonflies hummed along the top of the water, and a breeze mingling with distant birdsong kept the air from growing too quiet or too still.
Mr. Gardiner lowered the basket to the ground beside the sunken fountain. “It is not that you do not wish to help, then. But that you do not want the attention it brings upon you.”
Alice nodded tightly, not looking at him as she kneeled beside the basket. She began removing her gloves as she spoke. “I have always tried to make myself useful. I enjoy drawing, and painting, and flowers are a fine subject. But if being useful to your work puts my place as governess in peril—”