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Not only comical. His eyes glinted. His lips curled. There was mockery in his face, but also appreciation.
She couldn’t tear her gaze from his. His teasing belief in her made her knees wobble. Almost instantly she locked them. Her stomach twisted. Mr. De’Ath had insinuated that she was a true artist! She. The finest falsifier in England. Discomfort prickled down her spine, making her want to squirm.
“A bit much, for pastry,” she murmured, and managed to avert her eyes. “There can’t be a Mozart of gooseberry tarts.”
“Why not?”
She glanced back in time to see the smile laze across his face.
“The material doesn’t matter. Flour. Gesso. Marble. Butter. Hammers and strings.” His smile widened. “A man—or a woman—can dignify anything. But people so rarely take the time to cultivate the necessary skill and intention.”
“Or have the time.” She looked pointedly at his gold watch fob.
A pause, and then:
“Touché.” His laugh rippled warmly. He swung up his cane, pointing at a copse of trees. “To the gate, then.”
—
Despite his height, she didn’t find herself hopping to keep up as they wound deeper into the gardens. He set a languorous pace. She had to hold back and fight the impulse to rush ahead toward freedom.
Almost there.
They’d walked half the length of the garden before he spoke.
“You deferred, before, on the subject of my brother.” His tone was light, conversational. “But I find myself remembering your colorful language. Face that curdles milk. Stingy crosspatch.”
She grimaced. Ranting and raving in a duke’s drawing room. She should have known she hadn’t heard the end of it.
“That was me being florid.” She shifted her valise from her right hand to her left. Her grip felt greasy on the handle. “I didn’t see much of his face, or anything really.”
“Your impression of the household owes something to gossip, then.” Now he sounded pensive. “Servants talk.”
Nearby, a gardener was kneeling in a tulip bed. He glanced up as they passed, eyes skipping from Mr. De’Ath to Nina. There’d be talk of this, no doubt.
She and Mr. De’Ath made improbable strolling companions.
She stared at the low hedges. “I suppose everyone talks, your lordship.”
“Lordship.” He snorted, slowed, stopped walking altogether. “It sets my teeth on edge. Call me De’Ath.”
She took a few more steps, hoping he’d follow, then turned. Would he tarry from now until doomsday? Looming in black velvet, wings of black hair across his brow.
Lord Death, indeed.
“De’Ath.” She nodded, stretching her lips in a smile to hide her agitation.
He smiled back. “You can talk to me. I won’t betray your confidence to his grace.”
She breathed an inaudible sigh of relief as he began again to saunter down the path. She fell into step with him.
“I want you to tell me what you heard of my nephew.” He paused. “I’d consider it a kindness.”
Kindness. The word sat with her strangely. Kindness might provide another explanation for the actions De’Ath had taken in regard to her.
Certainly no one described Alan De’Ath as kind. Or handsome, for that matter. Perhaps there were too many other things to say about him first.
She thought about the little boy. She’d only glimpsed him once, when she’d helped Clara change the curtains in his bedchamber. Eight or nine, she’d guess, overthin and unnaturally pale. But De’Ath didn’t need her to tell him that. What did he want to know?
