Page 40 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
“But—”
“Now.” Still, there was a chuckle in his voice. “I’m not bathing until I hear your door close. And I know damned well that the wood is warped, so I’ll hear it if you open it again.” He lifted one hand, pointing imperiously toward the stairs. “Go on.”
Well,really! “Ungrateful,” she chided, turning up her nose.
Another short laugh, and at least she had become convinced that she had amused him more than irritated him. “Oh, I’m grateful,” he said. “But I also have a care for my continuing good health. Have you the slightest idea ofwhat your brothers would do to me if they learned that I had kissed you, much less that I had been unclothed in your presence?” Another waggle of his finger toward the stairs, toward which she had made little progress. “You’re a lady.Oneof us has got to respect that.”
Perhaps, but why did it have to be him? She braced one hand on the door frame and turned for one last look. Once she would have agreed with him, based upon the vague recollections she had had of the scrawny little bookish boy he had been.
But time and circumstances had changed him. Neither Rafe nor Marcus were particularly small men, but Ben had put in years of hard labor, something with which both of her brothers were unfamiliar. He hadn’t just grown taller; he’d packed on muscle that was anathema to the men in her social set, muscle that had been honestly earned in hard manual labor rather than in more genteel pursuits like fencing or horseback riding.
She said, “Do you know, Ben, I think you could take them.” And she retreated up the stairs before he could respond.
Chapter Fifteen
The storm that had rolled in during the night had overstayed its welcome by some hours already, and showed no signs of passing. Rain beat down in torrents outside the house, and a corner of the ceiling in the kitchen had begun a steady drip, suggesting a leak somewhere.
Despite the dreary weather, Hannah proved herself to be in fine spirits as she bounced down the stairs and into the kitchen at last. “Papa is staying home today!” she announced, with no small amount of satisfaction.
Diana glanced up over the rim of her cup, her gaze shearing to Ben, who worked over a pan upon the stove, coaxing forth the sizzle of bacon with every turn of the tongs held in his hand. “Oh?”
“He always stays home when it rains like this.” Cheerily, Hannah skipped toward the window to peer out into the rain, as if to reassure herself that it wasn’t going to let up anytime soon. “You’re going to stay home, right, Papa?”
“I’m afraid I must,” Ben said, though the tone of his voice was distinctly less than pleased. “I’ll get nothing at all done in this weather.” Though, with a shrug of his shoulders, he conceded, “Probably the rain will soften up the earth a bit. Might make tomorrow a bit easier going.”
Easier. The thought that tomorrow could be the day that he opened a vein at last provoked a strange anxiety in her gut. Any day could be the last, really. It seemed somehow strange that she had counted down the days of one unbearable Season after another, and now,here, buried in the hills of the Lake District with little to do but to educate and entertain a young girl, time seemed to fly by far too swiftly for her comfort.
Pitching her voice to a blasé, unconcerned tenor, Diana cast her gaze down into her teacup and asked, “Have you…had any luck there, lately?”
“In fact, I have.” Ben rolled his shoulders as he pulled thick strips of bacon out of the pan and laid them onto a plate. “Do you want to see what raw graphite looks like?”
“You’ve found some?”
“Chunks, here and there. Miners call themwad,” he said, “I suppose because that’s what it looks like when you pull it from the rock and dirt surrounding it. It’s no great amount thus far—probably a value of ten or twenty pounds—but they’re occurring with greater frequency, so—”
“So you’re getting closer.” Each chunk of wad was a harbinger of greater things to come. A reward for the work he’d put in already, and a sign that he was headed in the right direction.
“Yes.” Ben laid the plate of bacon upon the table and headed for the little cabinet set against the wall. He pulled open the drawer there and retrieved a chunk of what looked to be stone, with a strange, slightly shiny sheen to it. “Here,” he said, extending it to her.
She was surprised by the feel of it in her hand, the lightness of it—a bit larger than her palm, it should have had a weight more substantial than this, she thought.
“How strange. I had thought—”
“That it would be heavier?” Ben’s lips quirked into a half smile. “In fact, it’s quite light, and rather soft. You can scratch it with only a fingernail,” he said. Rifling around in the drawer, he removed a spare sheet of paper, which he laid before her. “Here,” he said. “Make a mark.”
“With this?” She held the chunk aloft, feeling faintly foolish.
“Yes.” He tapped the page.
Dutifully she gripped the chunk in her hand and placed a corner upon the paper, pressing—oh. It slid smoothly across the page, leaving a thick black mark in its wake.
“The purest graphite to be had in the world,” Ben said.
Hannah pulled a pout as she folded her arms over the table. “Papa won’t letmewrite with it,” she said irritably.
“That’s because you’d sketch it all away in an afternoon,” Ben said, ruffling her hair. He turned away to toss thick slices of bread into the pan to toast them. “There was a time,” he said, “that graphite was nearly so precious as gold. It was so simple a thing to mine, so lightweight, and so valuable that the miners would be searched after their shifts just to make sure they hadn’t slipped even the tiniest bits into their pockets as they worked.”
“And now?”