A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet #2)(49)

Chapter Thirteen


“Oh, my,” Anne said, allowing herself a little shiver as she sat down. She’d been wearing her coat, but the cuffs did not fit tightly, and the rain had slid down her sleeves. She was now drenched to her elbows and freezing to boot. “It’s difficult to imagine that it’s nearly May.”
“Tea?” Daniel asked, signaling to the innkeeper.
“Please. Or anything that is hot.” She pulled off her gloves, pausing to frown at a little hole that was growing at the tip of her right forefinger. That wouldn’t do. She needed all the dignity she could muster in that finger. Heaven knew she shook it at the girls often enough.
“Is something amiss?” Daniel inquired.
“What?” She looked up and blinked. Oh, he must have seen her glaring at her glove. “It’s just my glove.” She held it up. “A small hole in the seam. I shall have to mend it this evening.” She gave it a closer inspection before setting it down on the table beside her. There was only so much mending a glove could take, and she suspected hers were nearing the end of their tether.
Daniel asked the innkeeper for two mugs of tea, then turned back to her. “At the risk of revealing myself to be completely ignorant of the realities of life in service, I must say that I find it difficult to believe that my aunt does not pay you enough to purchase a new pair of gloves.”
Anne was quite sure that he was, indeed, completely ignorant of the realities of life in service, but she did appreciate that he at least acknowledged the deficit. She also suspected that he was completely ignorant of the cost of a pair of gloves, or just about anything else, for that matter. She had been shopping with the upper classes often enough to know that they never bothered to inquire the price of anything. If they liked it, they bought it and had the bill sent to their homes, where someone else would take care of making sure it was paid.
“She does,” she said to him. “Pay me enough, that is. But there is virtue in thrift, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not if it means your fingers are freezing.”
She smiled, perhaps a little patronizingly. “It will hardly come to that. These gloves have at least one or two more mendings left in them.”
He scowled. “How many times have you mended them already?”
“Oh, goodness, I don’t know. Five? Six?”
His expression turned to one of mild outrage. “That is entirely unacceptable. I will inform Aunt Charlotte that she must provide you with an adequate wardrobe.”
“You will do no such thing,” she said with haste. Good heavens, was he mad? One more show of undue interest from him, and Anne would be out on the street. It was bad enough that she was sitting with him in front of the entire village at the posting inn, but at least she had the excuse of the inclement weather. She could hardly be faulted for having taken refuge from the rain.
“I assure you,” she said, motioning to the gloves, “these are in better condition than most people’s.” Her eyes fell to the table, where his gloves, made of gloriously luxurious lined leather, sat in an untended heap. She cleared her throat. “Present company excluded.”
He shifted very slightly in his seat.
“Of course it is quite possible that your gloves have been mended and remended as well,” she added without thinking. “The only difference is that your valet whisks them from your sight before you even notice they require attention.”
He did not say anything, and she instantly felt ashamed of her comment. Reverse snobbery was not nearly so bad as the real thing, but still, she ought to be better than that. “I beg your pardon,” she said.
He stared at her for a moment longer, then asked, “Why are we talking about gloves?”
“I have absolutely no idea.” But that wasn’t quite true. He might have been the one to bring it up, but she had not needed to go on about it. She’d wanted to remind him of the difference in their stations, she realized. Or maybe she’d wanted to remind herself.
“Enough of that,” she said briskly, giving the overdiscussed handwear a pat. She looked up at him again, about to say something completely benign about the weather, but he was smiling at her in a way that made his eyes crinkle, and—
“I think you’re healing,” she heard herself say. She hadn’t realized how much swelling there had been along with the bruise that wrapped around his eye, but now that it was gone, his smile was different. Perhaps even more joyful.
He touched his face. “My cheek?”
“No, your eye. It’s still a bit discolored, but it doesn’t look swollen any longer.” She gave him a regretful sort of look. “Your cheek looks much the same.”
“Really?”
“Well, actually worse, I’m sorry to say, but that’s to be expected. These things usually look worse before they look better.”
His brows rose. “And how is it that you have come to be such an expert on scrapes and bruises?”
“I’m a governess,” she said. Because really, that ought to be explanation enough.
“Yes, but you teach three girls—”
She laughed at this, cutting him off rather neatly. “Do you think that girls never get into mischief?”
“Oh, I know that they do.” He tapped one hand against his heart. “Five sisters. Did you know that? Five.”
“Is that meant to invoke pity?”
“It certainly should,” he said. “But still, I don’t recall them ever coming to blows.”
“Half the time Frances thinks she’s a unicorn,” Anne said plainly. “Trust me when I tell you that she acquires more than her fair share of bumps and bruises. And besides that, I’ve taught little boys, too. Someone must give them instruction before they go off to school.”