The Lady Most Willing

“Power of deduction,” he answered, shrugging. “I suspect that you have always given Marilla what she wants, because I doubt there are many material objects you hold dear. I could think of only one thing that you wouldn’t give up. She would want it all the more because it was important to you.”

She stole another look at him, and realized that there was one other thing that she would never willingly give to Marilla . . . but he wasn’t hers to keep. It was a horrifying thought. It was hard enough to recover from the emotional morass caused by Dugald’s death. She didn’t need to fall in love with an improbably beautiful and thorny lord as well.

“It was a very, very pretty frame,” she said, realizing she had adopted Marilla’s favorite phrase only as she said it. “Silver worked with pearl, and of course my sister was quite young when she first saw it.”

Byron stood and moved to the fire, onto which he carefully placed two more logs. As she watched him, it occurred to Fiona that he probably did everything carefully. He returned to the sofa, but somehow ended up seated not at one end, but in the middle.

His hip touched her slippers, in fact. Once again, he slung his arm along the sofa and picked up a lock of her hair. Unsure how to react to this, Fiona pretended not to notice.

“What happened to the frame?” he asked.

“She began stealing the portrait and hiding it, after which I would tear apart her bedchamber looking for it. Eventually, my father heard of our battles, and he sent off to London to have a precise duplicate made, but with a portrait of Marilla’s mother rather than mine. She was, you understand, very beautiful.”

“Your mother must have been extraordinarily lovely as well. What was your father’s secret?” His eyes held an expression she recognized, though it wasn’t often directed at her. She’d seen it too often in the eyes of men looking at her sister to mistake it. He must be drunk to feel lust for her. Quite drunk.

“In fact, my mother was an ordinary woman,” she said, hugging her knees.

“I doubt that.” He paused, then: “How did she die?”

“She caught pneumonia one particularly cold winter. I was quite young, so I haven’t many memories of her, but she was motherly, if you know what I mean.”

“Dark red hair like yours?”

She nodded.

“Your hair has all the colors of the fire in it, like banked logs that might burst into flame any moment. And it curls around my finger like a molten wire.” Without stopping, he asked: “What happened when the portrait arrived?”

“Nothing,” Fiona said, rather sadly. Her sister had tossed the portrait—painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence from an earlier likeness—to the side as if it had cost mere pennies. She could still picture her father’s crushed expression. “Pearls are old fashioned, Papa,” Marilla had snapped. “Don’t you know anything? I swear I don’t belong in this mud hole. I belong in London.”

The earl tugged the lock of her hair that he held, rather as she had tugged Marilla’s that morning. “Lord Oak—”

He tugged harder.

“Byron,” she said, reluctantly. “This conversation isn’t at all proper. Not at all. I don’t wish to call you by your given name.”

“And why is that?”

“Because this is some strange fairy-tale moment, and tomorrow, or possibly the next day, the snow will stop and then the pass will open, and you will return to your life. And I will return to mine.”

“Will you come to London for the season this March?”

“No,” she said swiftly, knowing instantly that she would rather die than sit on the edge of a ballroom and watch the Earl of Oakley waltz with another woman as everyone attempted to decipher his haughty expression. “I didn’t like you very much when I saw you there.”

He nodded, seeming to understand. “You wouldn’t like me this time, either. But couldn’t we pretend that I’m someone different? Likable? After all, we’re buried.” He gestured toward the windows. They were encrusted with snow and ice.

“I’m not very imaginative,” she said apologetically. “All I can see is an earl who is well-known as a most punctilious man, but has apparently lost his head. It would be one thing if I were Marilla. But you’re not struck mad by my nonexistent beauty, so the only way I can explain your flirtation is to believe that you do so in order to avoid my sister. And that doesn’t make me feel very flattered.”

“Why couldn’t I be enthralled by your face? Because, as it happens, I am.” He reached over and poured more cider into both of their cups.

She frowned at him. “How strong is that cider?”

“You are very beautiful, in a quiet way. You’re like a flower that one sees only after wandering away from the coach into a field. And then, behind a rock, one finds a tiny blue flower, like a drop of the ocean in the midst of a brown field.”

“Goodness,” she said, startled by this flight of lyricism. “Perhaps you do have something in common with Lord Byron.”