Page 10 of A Scandal In July

She lifted her fingers toward an enormous turquoise-blue butterfly that had settled on a nearby leaf. It was almost the size of her hand, its wings tipped in black.

“This is one of my favorites. A blue morpho, Morpho peleides. From the family Nymphalidae. Isn’t he beautiful?”

“Yes. Very.”

Rhys’s voice was rough, almost raspy, and when she shot a look at him, she found him looking at her, not at the butterfly. Her skin heated even more, but the butterfly took off, breaking the moment, and they both watched it sail up toward the roof.

“See how he seems to float in the air? He hardly needs to flap its wings at all.”

Lenore started along the path again, keeping an eye out for a colored flag. But every flash of red or yellow turned out to be another butterfly. The Aunts had chosen an excellent place to hide the prize.

“How did you know that butterfly was a male?” Rhys asked suddenly. “You called it a he.”

“Only the male morphos are that lovely bright blue color. The females are well-camouflaged, a mottled brown and white. They’re very dull in comparison.”

“Like peacocks, then” Rhys said. “Do you think it’s nature’s way of letting the men show off? Or is it a clever ploy to put themore expendable males in danger by creating a distraction, so the predators attack them instead of the females?”

“I wouldn’t say you men were expendable,” Lenore said. “But that’s effectively what you soldiers did, when you were fighting Napoleon. You put yourselves in harm’s way to protect the rest of us. The country owes men like you an enormous debt. We’d all be speaking French right now if it wasn’t for you.”

“It was our duty. I’m just glad I lived through it, to tell you the truth.”

Rhys ran a hand through his hair and looked charmingly uncomfortable with her admiration, and she turned away with a smile. His modesty was just another aspect of him that she liked.

“Morpho caterpillars defend themselves by producing a repellent smell.” She said, mainly to lighten the mood.

It worked. Rhys chuckled. “I know a few members of thetonwho use the same principle. I swear Lord Ashwood doesn’t bathe more than once a year.”

She loved his humor, too.

“I helped collect most of these caterpillars.”

“You don’t have a disgust of them?”

“No. Some are rather sweet, actually. And they come in all shapes and sizes. My favorite ones are hairy, like little wooly bears. They’re very comical.” She pointed to another butterfly. “That’s a glass-wing, Haetera piera. Its wings are almost entirely transparent.”

Rhys snorted. “Like Lord Bollingbrook’s motivation for proposing to Violet Brand. He’s sixty-two, with a crumbling estate and debts up to his eyeballs, and she’s the beloved only child of a textile magnate. Unsurprisingly, Violet’s father doubted his insistence that it was ‘true love’.”

Lenore chuckled at his dry, cynical tone. “That’s thetonfor you. Violet might not have accepted him, but there are plenty of other society marriages that have been based on sucha principle. Rich merchants ally themselves with impoverished aristocrats all the time; a fortune in exchange for a noble title.”

“Alas, I have no noble title to tempt a lady,” Rhys grinned, his eyes sparkling. “I am but a lowly second son, with no hope of acceding to the title unless something dreadful befalls Gryff. And knowing what a stubborn, perverse sod he is, he’ll live to be a hundred, just to thwart me.”

Lenore laughed. The bond between the Davies siblings was as strong as that between herself and her sisters, and she knew he’d be devastated if anything really did happen to his brother.

He glanced over at her. “But perhaps a lofty title isn’t the most important criteria for a lady? You, for example, turned down the chance to be a duchess.”

He raised his brows in question, and she glanced away, flustered by his probing. She didn’t want to discuss her reasoning with the very man who’d brought about the decision. Not yet, anyway.

A flash of red in her peripheral vision provided a welcome distraction, and she let out a little shout of triumph. “There’s a flag! Up there. Look!”

Rhys followed the direction she indicated and let out a groan. The flag had been lodged high up in the fronds of a huge palm tree.

“That’s at least twenty feet up! How are we expected to get up there?”

“There was a butterfly net by the door. We could use that.”

Rhys dutifully went to retrieve it, but even when he stood on tiptoe, the flag was still out of reach. They both looked around for something they could use as a step, but there was none to be found.

“Could you climb the tree?” Lenore suggested.