Marquesses at the Masquerade(19)

Still, anyone, male or female, would have said that Rosamund was pretty, and he would have to be made of stone not to be a little charmed by the way her eyes danced when she was talking to his dog.

“I really think you might prefer choosing one place and staying there for a bit,” she counseled Socrates, who had adopted a vexing pattern of pacing in circles on the floor, followed by looking imploringly at his two companions in turn, apparently seeking to be picked up again since he was too small to jump onto the seats.

Socrates whimpered.

“You were just in my lap a moment ago,” she pointed out to him patiently.

“I suspect Socrates’s concept of time is not the same as ours. But then, his command of the English language is perhaps not very deep either.”

“I’m sure you’re right. I was mostly thinking of trying to distract him, because he doesn’t seem quite content.”

“Mostly?” He chuckled. Really, there was something so refreshingly amusing about Rosamund. Refreshing... That was a funny way to describe a person, but fresh actually seemed to work because she was different. She had an open quality, as though ready to be delighted by life, which was surprising in a woman who’d surely been spending most of her waking hours in drudgery, sewing for little pay.

Or maybe it was the way she made him feel—wait, no. He frowned. She didn’t make him feel any way. She was only a nice young woman who was good with dogs and happened to be pretty and have a sense of humor.

“Does that mean that in some respects you think he understands you when you address him comments about his behavior?” he couldn’t resist asking.

“I suppose it does,” she said. “Something about his eyes—don’t you find that when you look into his eyes, you sense understanding?”

He snorted and found himself thinking that his sister Kate, who had a sense of humor that was attuned to life’s absurdities, would like Rosamund. Not because Rosamund was absurd, but because—blast, there he went again. He tamped his wandering mind down firmly.

“His eyes? I don’t think I’ve spent even a second gazing into Socrates’s eyes.”

“That’s a shame,” she said with a perfectly straight expression, though mirth tweaked the corners of her mouth. “You can tell a lot about someone by looking into their eyes.”

He believed this, though he’d never thought of extending the idea to include dogs. But he could remember how it had felt to look into Poppy’s eyes, how from the first moments, he’d felt that something special was meant to be between them.

He was vexed that he couldn’t entirely recall the color of her eyes, but it had been night, and most of the time they’d spent together had been on the terrace, which had been fairly shadowy. He remembered only that her eyes were brown. At least, he was nearly certain they were brown.

Rosamund had brown eyes with gold flecks. They were lovely eyes, and though he’d put aside that sense of familiarity he’d experienced when he first encountered her, he did wonder about her and how it seemed likely that she had been gently bred. Was it possible she was from some family perhaps distantly known to his family? The idea was not comfortable.

“I was thinking again about that sense that I’ve met you before,” he said. “Even your voice, now that I think of it, seems familiar. Do I look at all familiar to you?”

She coughed. “You? Familiar?”

“Yes. This feeling that I know you—it’s like a puzzle I can’t solve.”

“You must have me confused with someone else.”

“I agree that’s likely, but still, there’s this sense of familiarity.” He cocked his head. “Do you ever go to Gunter’s?”

“I have never been there.”

He nodded. Gunter’s was probably too costly for a seamstress. And yet... “But you haven’t always been a seamstress, have you? I mean, you have clearly been educated.”

“I was fortunate as a girl. Our vicar allowed me to sit in on lessons with his daughter.”

He nodded. “And your father?”

“He was a working man,” she said.

“And your last name? You didn’t give it earlier.”

At that moment, she leaned down and plucked Socrates from the floor and simply handed him to Marcus. “I’m certain you did not know my family, my lord, unless you’ve spent a great deal of time in Liverpool.”

“No, I can’t say that I have,” he said, distracted by the way Socrates was fidgeting in his lap.

“There, you see?” she said. “Nothing to puzzle about.”

Why was he pressing her anyway? Did he think she had met him before and was hiding that information for some mysterious reason? But he couldn’t seem to let this go.

He gave up on trying to get Socrates to sit still and put him back on the floor. “Why did you come to London to work?”

“Because there is work in London.”

“But might you not have done something else with your education, been a governess perhaps?”

“So many questions, my lord. But I’m afraid my history is quite dull and that all I have to say for myself is that I’ve done a great deal of sewing.”

He had the sense that Rosamund’s history was far from dull. A person so engaging as she was bound at least to have an amusing perspective on her experiences. But it would be ridiculous to press her further.