“Ah now.” Recalling how he’d just mangled the sound, he took a slow breath before continuing. “Makes…total sense. And the reason for your visit?”
He was curious what would bring her out in such weather. Not that he wasn’t pleased to see her. The one member of his immediate family who still drew breath. More than that, the one member who’d never betrayed him—either in fact or by dying too damn soon.
With her customary composure, his sister took possession of the leather chair flanking his desk and evaluated him as one might a captured butterfly. Her brows drew into a frown. “Why is half your face a veritable bevy of purple and green?”
“Half?” He barely refrained from fingering his lip. The new scab over the old scar had dropped off two days ago. “Ellie, surely you em…bellish.”
“Not by much,” she muttered. “Covered in whiskers, it still shines through.” She rose and approached him. “I fear ’tis becoming unseemly, Daniel, this fascination you have for sporting rainbows.” Elizabeth turned his head with gentle fingers to inspect the worst of it. Lips pursed, she released him to rummage in the reticule dangling from her wrist. “When will you realize you no longer need to prove yourself?”
When I stop hiding in here every time it rains.
Hiding in his study, where his mechanical pursuits provided the solace nature denied him. He glanced over at one apparatus in particular and felt a grimace tighten his cheeks. When they worked, that was.
“Silence. I should have known. Your answer to everything unpleasant.”
Daniel glanced back at Elizabeth. His bad memories weren’t to be laid at her doorstep. Neither was his sour mood. “If I recite p-p-po-etry, will you smile?”
That got a laugh from her. “The day you recite poetry is the day I juggle torches standing on my head.”
“Unlit ones, I hope.” Relieved he could still smile, he suffered through the application of the lotion she’d pulled from her bag. She was always slathering him with some concoction or other “to help with the bruising and aid healing”.
He should be grateful, but the stuff put him in mind of an apothecary. Nose wrinkling by the time she finished, Daniel jerked his head back. “What’s in there? Smells like a harem.”
Elizabeth stumbled in her efforts to screw the lid on. “A harem? My, where your mind veers…” Jar sealed, she slid it across his desk in between stacks of yet-to-be-crumbled-and-discarded pitiful poetry.
“I tried a different blend this time,” she admitted without meeting his gaze.
What else had she chopped and crushed and stirred in there? “Ellie?”
“I think it smells rather lovely.”
He sniffed again and frowned. There was more to it than that, over and above the smell. “Out with it.”
“Oh, very well.” A tiny huff and she finally met his gaze. “If you must know, I added a wee bit of honeysuckle. For hope.”
“And?” Although, by now, he was almost past caring. His face felt better than it had since the practice round that landed such a fierce chop to his jaw. He was even starting to like the scent—a little light and fluffy for his tastes to be sure, but it did have a spicy undercurrent, a bit of zest.
“Clovesforlove,” she said in one breath.
“Huh?”
“Cloves. To attract love.”
“Ellie.” His sister and her potions. Romantic whimsy, her and her “spells” for happiness—usually his. But she stood there, looking at him so earnestly, so drippingly—and his face felt so damn comfortable—that all he did was tuck the jar into his newly cleared desk drawer. “Thank you.”
Her witchy rescue cream accepted, she resumed her seat and fixed him with one of her sunny smiles. “Surely you can cultivate an interest in something other than smashing your face into your friends’ fists?”
Daniel’s eyes again veered toward the orrery collection occupying the bulk of his study. Nothing gave him greater satisfaction than tinkering with the mechanics of the planetarium models he’d collected. But his satisfaction had dimmed considerably since resurrecting and repairing (or attempting to) the pinnacle of all the models he’d amassed: the one originally owned by his grandfather. The one, despite his every effort, he couldn’t get to operate properly. Not on his own.
He had an interest other than boxing, dammit—he just didn’t know how to pursue it. Not without branding himself a simpleton.
“Daniel,” Elizabeth called his attention back to her. “Why can you not find a hobby that doesn’t involve being at daggers drawn or going at loggerheads several times a week?”
Feeling instantly defensive, and uncertain why, he sputtered, “I like to bu-bu—” Blast it! He couldn’t even get out a simple three letter word: box. A fast exhalation and he spit out, “Like sparring.”
“You like beating things to a pulp and proving how strong you are.”
A pulp? Talk about embellishing!
So he enjoyed a few rounds of pugilistic endeavors every week. Could he help it if he was adept at fighting? If the exhilaration he got from firing off punches and having onlookers cheer him on helped sustain him through the silent—and solitary—hours of his life?
He didn’t have to talk in the ring. Wasn’t expected to wax eloquent at the boxing academy. Didn’t have to jabber over inane comments that in reality meant nothing. All he had to do was strip off his shirt, strap on his gloves—when he and his sparring partners agreed to them—and let his fists talk for him.
It was the one place he could be around his peers without fearing coming across as weak.
“Men!” A decidedly feminine lift of one shoulder accompanied that pronouncement. “Why you cannot all find tamer amusements closer to home that satisfy your manly urges, I’ll never comprehend.”
What? Had she been reading his mind?
“What’s this?” She noticed the advertisement he’d cut out announcing Mr. Taft’s visit to London and presentation on orreries.
Something Daniel had been debating whether or not to attend. “A lecture I’d like t-to hear.”
“On what?” She turned the page toward her, then
