Married By Morning (The Hathaways #4)(24)

“How are your hands?” he asked, turning her scraped fingers to inspect them.

“Healing nicely, thank you.” She paused. “I am told you require companionship?”

“Yes,” he said promptly. “I’ll make do with you.”

Her lips curved. “Very well.”

Leo wanted to pull her against him and inhale her scent. She smelled light and clean, like tea and talcum and lavender.

“Shall I read to you?” she asked. “I brought a novel. Do you like Balzac?”

The day was improving rapidly. “Who doesn’t?”

Catherine occupied the chair by the bedside. “He meanders a bit too much for my taste. I prefer novels with more plot.”

“But with Balzac,” Leo said, “you have to give yourself over fully. You have to wallow and roll in the language…” Pausing, he looked more closely at her small oval face. She was pale, and there were shadows beneath her eyes, no doubt as a result of having visited him so many times in the night. “You look tired,” he said bluntly. “On my account. Forgive me.”

“Oh, not at all, it wasn’t you. I had nightmares.”

“What about?”

Her expression turned guarded. Forbidden territory. And yet Leo couldn’t help pressing. “Are the nightmares about your past? About whatever situation it was that Rutledge found you in?”

Drawing in a sharp breath, Catherine stood, looking stunned and slightly ill. “Perhaps I should go.”

“No,” Leo said quickly, making a staying gesture with his hand. “Don’t leave. I need company—I’m still suffering the aftereffects of the laudanum that you convinced me to take.” Seeing her continuing hesitation, he added, “And I have a fever.”

“A mild one.”

“Hang it, Marks, you’re a companion,” he said with a scowl. “Do your job, will you?”

She looked indignant for a moment, and then a laugh burst out despite her efforts to hold it in. “I’m Beatrix’s companion,” she said. “Not yours.”

“Today you’re mine. Sit and start reading.”

To Leo’s surprise, the masterful approach actually worked. Catherine resumed her seat and opened the book to the first page. She used the tip of a forefinger to push her spectacles into place—a meticulous little gesture that he adored. “Un Homme d’Affaires,” she read. “A Man of Business. Chapter one.”

“Wait.”

Catherine glanced at him expectantly.

Leo chose his words with care. “Is there any part of your past that you would be willing to discuss?”

“For what purpose?”

“I’m curious about you.”

“I don’t like to talk about myself.”

“You see, that’s proof of how interesting you are. There’s nothing more tedious than people who like to talk about themselves. I’m a perfect example.”

She looked down at the book as if she were trying very hard to concentrate on the page. But after just a few seconds, she looked up with a grin that seemed to dissolve his spine. “You are many things, my lord. But tedious is not one of them.”

As Leo gazed at her, he felt the same inexplicable flourish of warmth, of happiness, that he’d experienced yesterday, before their mishap at the ruins.

“What would you like to know?” Catherine asked.

“When did you first learn that you needed spectacles?”

“I was five or six. My parents and I lived in Holborn, in a tenement at Portpool Lane. Since girls couldn’t go to school at the time, a local woman tried to teach a few of us. She told my mother that I was very good at memorization, but I was slow-witted when it came to reading and writing. One day my mother sent me on an errand to fetch a parcel from the butcher. It was only two streets away, but I got lost. Everything was a blur. I was found wandering and crying a few streets away, until finally someone led me to the butcher’s shop.” A smile curved her lips. “What a kind man he was. When I told him I didn’t think I could find my way home, he said he had an idea. And he had me try on his wife’s spectacles. I couldn’t believe how the world looked. Magical. I could see the pattern of bricks on walls, and birds in the air, and even the weave of the butcher’s apron. That was my problem, he said. I just hadn’t been able to see. And ever since then I’ve worn spectacles.”

“Were your parents relieved to discover their daughter wasn’t slow-witted after all?”

“Quite the opposite. They argued for days about which side of the family my weak eyes had come from. My mother was quite distressed, as she said spectacles would mar my appearance.”

“What rot.”

She looked rueful. “My mother did not possess what one would call a great depth of character.”

“In light of her actions—abandoning a husband and son, running to England with her lover—I wouldn’t have expected a surfeit of principles.”

“I thought they were married, when I was a child,” she said.

“Was there love between them?”

Considering that, she chewed her lower lip, drawing his attention to the enticing softness of her mouth. “They were attracted to each other in a physical sense,” she admitted. “But that’s not love, is it?”