She looked up. “What?” she snapped.
She’d noted his scrutiny, then. Harris’s neck went hot. Unnerved by his inability to look away, he made a clearing sound with his throat. “It is my hope we might… start over,” he said, extending that olive branch.
“Why? Because you think it easier to butter me up so you might search out nefarious motives? Ones that I do not have, Lord Ruthven,” she said coolly.
My God, she was clever and very much on the mark. And here he’d never before believed there to be a person more cynical and distrustful than himself. “That is not it.” Not entirely. “It is my hope that we can start anew, because I was boorish last evening.” That wasn’t untrue. “Because it was not my intention to be rude. What do you say, Julia?” he pressed. “A new beginning?” He flashed a grin, the same, uneven one he donned when he was charming London’s most notorious widows. It was a smile that had never failed him.
“What are you doing with your eyes?” She leaned in and peered closely at his face. “Is that a smolder?”
“Is it perhaps improving your disposition towards me?” Dropping his elbow on the table, Harris matched her movements, bringing their faces so close her breath, tinged with the hint of mint, wafted over his lips, stirring that earlier awareness.
She snorted. “Decidedly not.”
This time, his neck heated for an altogether different reason—the lady’s complete lack of awareness where he was concerned.
Across the table, he caught the smiles of the footmen, grins they unsuccessfully attempted to control.
Holding his eye, Julia winked, softening her earlier blow, and then she resumed eating.
She did so with her usual gusto, again revealing a hint of how she was accustomed to living.
And through the haze of suspicion surrounding her and the determination to get to the bottom of whether or not she was who she claimed to be, he removed himself, stepping back to see her life had not been the comfortable one he and those of the peerage knew. He slipped his study lower to the fingers clutching her fork. Her hands were red, callused on the tops, chapped so badly there was the hint of blood within those cracks.
She followed his stare, daring him with fiery eyes to say something.
Harris sat back in his chair and took another sip of coffee. “You mentioned you sold flowers at Covent Garden,” he said. Oddly, it was the first time that this desire to learn about her had nothing to do with his suspicions, but rather, a very real desire to know her. For some ungodly reason he didn’t understand, her fiery nature only added to her charm.
My God, he must be going as mad as a hatter.
“I do.” She paused, staring down at her plate. “I did.”
What accounted for the trace of regret he heard in that correction?
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Did I enjoy it?” she echoed. Then Julia laughed, a full, almost musical sound different than the tittering practiced by ladies of the peerage. He found himself preferring the realness and richness of Julia’s amusement.
Dusting the mirth from her eyes, Julia shook her head. “My days began while it was still dark. I arose before even the cock crowed the day’s start so that I could pilfer hothouse waste to try to find suitable scraps to sell benevolent lords and ladies who’d passed the first time on those flowers.”
All enjoyment of her instantly vanished as her revelation knocked him square in the stomach, like a fist he’d taken to the belly at Gentleman Jackson’s the first time he’d stepped into that ring years earlier. But she wasn’t done with him.
“A flower seller’s day doesn’t end. You’ve got passersby to try and sell your goods to. But the real earnings come at night, when lords and ladies are milling outside the theaters, waiting to go in. And then you hang around and wait until they finish their fun and come out once more, and hopefully, if you still have anything left to sell, you reach some other gents and ladies on their way out.” With that matter-of-fact telling complete, Julia resumed eating, and this time, he didn’t interrupt with more questions.
He left her to her meal and sat in the discomfort of his own thoughts.
He’d been one of those gents she’d spoken so casually of. How many times had he entered a Covent Garden production or a Drury Lane theater, invariably to meet a mistress at the end of a performance, while failing to properly think of the flower sellers and beggars he’d passed on the way in? The extent of his consideration had been to press a purse or coin into their hands, but he’d not studied those fingers, as he did Julia’s, to see their life’s toil etched upon the palms they’d turned up. It was humbling to confront the reality of one’s self-absorption, to acknowledge how very
