Hecate finished her third sandwich, hearing criticism rather than praise. “What is money for, if not caring for loved ones and the less fortunate?”
“Who cares for you?” Phillip passed her two more raspberry tarts. Had they been peach or apple, she might have refused.
“I care for me.”
He propped a boot on the balustrade and tipped his chair back on two legs. “I haven’t your great self-sufficiency. I look after Lark’s Nest, which might be loosely analogous to a rackety family. Just when I think the irrigation system has finally been set up to manage all the right acres in the right manner, we get a wet spring and I have flooding.
“I choose a fine stud for my broodmares, and only half of them catch. I decide to put a field in mangel-wurzels—remind me to tell Tavistock about mangel-wurzel beer, which is very good for breeding females—and turnips become more fashionable. Managing a patch of ground is like playing chess with fate, but at least I can compare notes with my neighbors.”
He popped a raspberry tart into his mouth while Hecate cast around for yet another subject they might pursue besides her family. Did they truly think her so antediluvian that she could dine virtually in seclusion with an eligible bachelor?
“I have reinforcements, though,” Phillip went on. “The Crosspatch Committee for Outwitting Unkind Fate meets regularly in the common of the Crosspatch Arms. Fortified with our pints, we trade insights, share the latest pamphlets, and offer each other encouragement and ideas. The same committee meets in the churchyard and on market day. Occasional executive sessions pop up over Vicar’s chessboard. My neighbors aren’t related to me, but they took me on as family all the same.”
“And you took them on as family.” Amaryllis DeWitt had passed along that much. Phillip never entertained formally, but he was always available to assist with a difficult foaling or calving and never begrudged a neighbor the loan of a team or a plow.
“I didn’t know any better,” he said, finishing off a second tart. “Does nobody truly care that we are private as darkness falls?”
“My family trusts me.” To be able to say that should have satisfied some dictate of pride or loyalty. Hecate appropriated the last tart and wished Phillip had brought more.
“But on what basis,” Phillip said, “do they trust me? I’m Lord Bumpkin, unacquainted with Society’s finer manners. Why trust such a one with the family treasure?”
Because the treasure is my fortune, not me. To put matters that bluntly would offend those finer manners.
“Why did you kiss me?” Hecate asked, tapping her forehead. “Here.”
“Not done? Does nobody in the beau monde express affection? Does nobody touch? Nobody hug? I begin to think a lordly title more of a curse than a blessing if that’s the case.”
“They don’t touch me.” Heaven help her, she’d downed too much punch too quickly. Or she’d still been short of sleep after a three-hour nap. Some imbalance in the humors had to account for such an unseemly admission.
The owl hooted out another warning just as a burst of laughter drifted up from the main terrace. Hecate wanted more punch and more cakes and to be anywhere else.
No, on second thought, that was incorrect. She wanted her family to be anywhere else, but then she’d worry about the mischief they were getting up to.
“I was born with a deformity,” Lord Phillip said in the same tones he might have offered to fetch more food. “My right shoulder and the muscles around it didn’t work properly. Forceps were to blame, apparently, but the old marquess chose to see my weakness as more proof that I was not his get. I could not crawl properly, and the strength on my right side is still not the equal to my left.”
“What has this to do with…?” Hecate fell silent as her mind’s eye filled with the memory of couples whirling on the dance floor. Hands held high, hands forming an arch for other couples, ladies twirled with confident strength by their manly partners.
How could one dance without a stout right arm?
“My neighbors touch me,” Lord Phillip said. “A pat on the back, a hug, a handshake, but until recently, I shook with my left hand. Nobody remarked it—they were being kind—until Tavistock brandished his right in a manner I could not ignore. Like putting up his fives, though with the best of intentions.”
“I’m… sorry.” Nothing in Phillip’s bearing or appearance suggested any imperfection. What point was he making with this disclosure?
“I wanted to shake with my right, but what if somebody took a notion to squeeze my hand too hard? Would that affect my shoulder? What if, knowing of my malady, they found my right hand distasteful? The whole business put me off greeting anybody face-to-face. To shake with the right hand is normal and manly, and yet…”
“You were not normal,” Hecate said, grasping a thread of significance. “You wanted to be, but fate decreed otherwise.”
“I am not normal,” Phillip said, “but who is? I do believe, though, that it’s normal to long to kiss a lovely woman when she has become dear to me. When I esteem her and enjoy her company and hope she can—despite my many shortcomings—enjoy mine.”
He was saying he was… attracted to her? The notion was equally outlandish and intriguing. Lord Phillip Vincent was woefully inadequate at dissembling, and he was still self-conscious about his shoulder apparently, and he wasn’t at all impressed with the Brompton Horde.
Who were, after two cups of punch, more than a bit tiresome.
“Are you wishing I’d kiss you, my lord?”
“If we’re venturing onto that fraught ground, might you call me Phillip?”
“Answer the question, Phillip.”
He took her hand. “One doesn’t wish to presume, et cetera and so forth, but one is also compelled by honor to deal with a lady honestly, and therefore, I do admit to harboring—”
“Hecate!” Eglantine’s soprano warbled out from the conservatory. “Oh, Hec-a-teeeee! My dear, you simply must come. Charles is trying to get up a whist party, and whist was invented by the devil to steal my pin money.”
Eglantine emerged from the house, a pale form against the increasing darkness. “That is you? Who is your friend? Oh, Lord Phillip. Doing your bit for the family spinster? Too bad for you, I have need of her. Hecate, you must talk sense to Charles. Mr. DeGrange knows his way around a deck of cards, and Edna is encouraging this nonsense. My trunks haven’t been unpacked, and Charles is already imperiling his sons’ inheritance. Do excuse us, your lordship. Needs must.”
Phillip had dropped Hecate’s hand the instant Eglantine had called out, not that he need have bothered.
He rose and bowed. “I understand. Duty calls. Don’t spare the horses. The fate of England, we happy few, and so forth…”
Hecate rose and curtseyed, when she wanted to pitch Eglantine over the balustrade. “I’m coming, though whist for farthing points would pose no threat.”
Eglantine snorted. “You must set the stakes, Hecate. Charles won’t listen to me, and Edna will argue for pounds and pence, because she always hopes to win and seldom does.”
Hecate let herself be dragooned into the conservatory, though she paused to look over her shoulder. Phillip was lounging against the railing again, his glass in his hand.