most efficient way of determining if she is a professor’s wife.”
“It is unlikely that Gorely is her real name,” Mrs. Carruthers explained officiously. “I cannot think of a lady who would allow her name to be put on a novel.”
“If it’s not her real name,” Annabel wondered, “does the autograph even have value?”
This was met with silence.
“Furthermore,” Annabel continued, “how do you even know it’s her signature?I could have signed her name on the title page.”
Mrs. Carruthers stared at her. Annabel could not tell if she was aghast at her questions or merely annoyed. After a moment the older woman turned determinedly back to Mr. Grey and said, “Should you ever come across another autographed set, or even a single book, please purchase it and know that I will reimburse you.”
“It would be my pleasure,” he murmured.
Mrs. Carruthers nodded and walked away. Annabel watched her depart, then said, “I don’t think I endeared myself to her.”
“No,” he agreed.
“I thought my question about the value of the signature was pertinent,” she said with a shrug.
He smiled. “I am beginning to understand your obsession with people saying what they actually mean.”
“It is not an obsession,” she protested.
He quirked a brow. The movement was obscured by his eye patch, but that somehow made it all the more provoking.
“It’s not,” Annabel insisted. “It is common sense. Just think of all the misunderstandings that could be avoided if people merely spoke to one another instead of telling one person who might tell another who might tell another, who might—”
“You are confusing two issues,” he cut in. “One is convoluted prose, the other is merely gossip.”
“Both are equally insidious.”
He looked down at her with a vaguely condescending air. “You’re very hard on your fellow man, Miss Winslow.”
She bristled. “I don’t think it is too much to ask.”
He nodded slowly. “All the same, I think I might have rather my unclehadn’t said what he meant Wednesday night.”
Annabel swallowed, feeling a bit queasy. And certainly guilty.
“I suppose I appreciate his honesty. On a purely philosophical level, of course.” He gave her precisely half a smile. “Practically speaking, however, I do think I’m prettier without the eye patch.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. It wasn’t quite the right thing to say, but it was the best she could think of. And at least it wasn’t wrong.
He waved off her apology. “All new experiences are good for the soul. Now I know exactly what it is like to be punched in the face.”
“This is good for your soul?” she asked dubiously.
He shrugged, looking out over the crowd. “One never knows when one will need to know how to describe something.”
Annabel found this to be an extremely odd statement, but she didn’t say anything.
“Besides,” he said breezily, “were it not for misunderstandings, we would be sadly lacking in great literature.”
She looked at him questioningly.
“Where would Romeo and Juliet be?”
“Alive.”
“True, but think of the hours of entertainment the rest of us would have lost.”
Annabel smiled. She couldn’t help it. “I prefer comedies myself.”
“Do you? I suppose they are more entertaining. But then one would never experience the heightened
sense of drama afforded by tragedies.” He turned to her with that expression of his she was growing so accustomed to—the polite mask he wore for society, the one that labeled him a boredbon vivant , oxymoron though it was. And indeed, he let out a slightly affected sigh before saying, “What would life be without bleak moments?”
“Rather lovely, I think.” Annabel considered her recent bleak moment, at the hands—or rather, paws—of Lord Newbury. She’d have been quite happy to have done without.
“Hmmm.” That was all he said, or rather, hmmmed. Annabel felt a strange need to fill the silence, and she blurted out, “I was voted Winslow Most Likely to Speak Her Mind.”
That caught his attention. “Really?” His lips twitched. “And who might we count among the electorate?”
“Er, the other Winslows.”
He chuckled.
“There are eight of us,” she explained. “Ten with my parents, well, nine now that my father has passed, but still, more than enough for a decent vote.”
“I’m sorry about your father,” he said.
She nodded, waiting for the familiar lump to form in her throat. But it didn’t. “He was a good man,” she said.
He nodded in acknowledgment, then asked, “What other titles have you won?”
She gave a guilty grimace. “Winslow Most Likely to Fall Asleep in Church.”
He laughed loudly at that.
“Everyone’s looking,” she whispered urgently.
“Don’t mind it. It’s all to your benefit in the end.”
Right. Annabel smiled awkwardly. This was all about their performance, wasn’t it?
“Anything else?” he asked. “Not that anything could possibly be better than the last.”
“I came in third for Winslow Most Likely to Outrun a Turkey.”
He did not laugh this time, but this appeared to require a valiant effort on his part. “Youare a country girl,” he said.
She nodded.
“Is it so very difficult to outrun a turkey?”
“Not for me.”
“Go on,” he urged. “I find this fascinating.”
“That’s right,” she said. “You have no siblings.”
“A lack for which I have never been so bereft as tonight. Just think of the titles I might have won.”
“Grey Most Likely to Join a Pirate Ship?” she suggested, with a nod toward his patch.
“Privateer, if you please. I’m much too refined for piracy.”
She rolled her eyes a bit, then offered: “Grey Most Likely to Get Lost on a Heath?”
