A Kiss For Midwinter (Brothers Sinister #1.5)(9)

“Clean this out?” his father echoed, looking about him. “I suppose I will, at that.”

Jonas looked up sharply. “You will?”

It was time—past time—to attempt to win her over, notwithstanding all the many defects in his personality. His father’s agreement on this score was all that he had been waiting for. If he succeeded, she’d make him happy. And if he failed…it was long past time for him to choose someone else.

“’Course I will,” his father said. “I told you, the only reason it’s piling up a little now is that I’m not on my feet. Once I’m well again, I’ll take care of it all.”

Jonas sighed, and judged that promise to be as worthless as the junk that spilled out of boxes around him. “Of course you will,” he said, looking upward. He’d been hearing that from his father every day for the last year, and every day, he could mark another sign of his increasing fragility. “Of course you will.”

“WELL, MISS CHARINGFORD,” JONAS SAID, “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here.”

Miss Charingford traced the edge of her scarf with her finger. It could no longer be called a morning sun, that brilliant light that spilled through the plate glass window in the front parlor of her parents’ home, but it was only just past noon. The light kissed the face of the eleventh prettiest woman in all of Leicester, and Jonas felt jealous.

But she didn’t look at him. She simply shrugged. “Not at all, Doctor Grantham,” she said. “I’m not wondering. Wonder requires thought; thought requires concern.” She looked over at him and raised one eyebrow. “And concern, Doctor Grantham, requires me to care about your motives in the first place.”

Which I do not. She left that implied, but unspoken.

“I am constantly amazed by you,” he said. “To say that you view the world through rose-colored glasses would be the greatest of understatements. You don’t just see things tinted in pink; you see a world that is pink all the way through.”

She gave him a tight, forced smile.

“When I push you on it, you don’t simper or fluster or make excuses. You defend what you see with a surprising capacity for logic.”

“A surprising capacity,” she said flatly. “My, the compliments you give a woman. Do say on.”

Jonas felt himself flush. He had, in fact, intended it as a compliment. “That came out poorly. I only meant that you see the entire world in glowing terms. The entire world, that is, except for me.”

Miss Charingford didn’t look at him. In fact, Jonas rather thought she was avoiding his eyes altogether. Her fingers flexed. “I don’t see the world in glowing terms, Doctor Grantham. I theorize, and not all my theories are positive.”

“I don’t believe that for one second.”

“Of course you don’t,” she said. “But I allow myself to consider both the good possibilities and the bad. I merely choose to focus on the good, when it’s there to be found.”

“Do you?”

“You, on the other hand, are only aware of the bad.” She looked away.

“I hardly think you know me well enough to judge that,” he replied mildly.

“Well enough. Take me, for instance.”

He would like to, actually. He would have liked to take her very much. But he turned to her and gestured attentively.

“You think that because I am optimistic, I am frivolous and foolish—a veritable lily of the field, unable to toil, spin, or read the London Quarterly when the opportunity arises.” She leaned in and whispered. “Let me tell you a secret. I’m not stupid.”

“Actually, Miss Charingford,” he said, inclining his head toward her, dropping his voice as low as he could. “I already knew that about you. I have never thought you stupid. Or foolish. Or ignorant.” He set his hand atop hers. “Just different.”

Her breath caught and her eyes widened. She glanced down at his fingers—he could feel her knuckles against the palm of his hand.

“You surprise me because you know precisely the same things that I know, and you come to the exact opposite conclusions,” he said. “Every time you open your mouth, I’m convinced that you must be the most naïve girl on the face of the planet. And yet…” He shook his head. “And yet every time you open your mouth, you demonstrate that you are not.”

He hadn’t moved his hand the entire time. She sat, looking up into his eyes, and he felt positively mesmerized. Her eyes were so dark, her skin so fair. Her hair was put up, with little ringlets escaping from the knot to fall at her cheek.

Miss Charingford always dressed well. There was a sleek attention to detail in her toilette that even his fashion-ignorant brain could identify. But today, dressed in a russet gown that highlighted the pink of her cheeks, she looked particularly adorable. Those light freckles dusting across her nose practically begged to be touched.

She pulled her hand from underneath his, balling it into a fist at her side. “That is because, as I said, I see both the good and the bad in everything that comes my way. That way, I am never unprepared.” She shot him a look, one that had him swallowing. “Around you, I need a great deal of preparation.”

“Ah. So you might not wonder about why I have come. But perhaps you’ve theorized about it.”