But in spite of the womanliness of her figure, she was slim and graceful; even her hands were slender. So was her neck. He noticed things like that. He noticed everything, looking for something to find fault with. The only fault he could find was her unseemly fascination with a man twice her age. As for her looks, her skin was clear, her eyelashes long, even her earlobes were shapely. Her hair wasn’t the fashionable brunette that was all the rage this Season. She wasn’t a classic beauty, even though she reminded him of a Venus on a seashell on a cresting wave in a painting he’d once seen. She was too small and piquant for that. But she was perfectly adorable.
So what was she doing hanging on the earl’s sleeve, watching his lips for the birth of his every new word, laughing at his slightest jest, looking sad if he said a somber thing, and expectant when he so much as cleared his throat? There was a limit to being a good audience. Sarah Siddons herself never held an audience as enraptured as Daisy Tanner seemed when the earl so much as spoke to a footman to ask for a new fork, Leland thought moodily.
Now, the Earl of Egremont was a good man and a kindly one, not unhandsome, and in fine condition for a man his age. But even so, he wasn’t the type to set any female’s heart beating faster. Leland knew to an inch what sent a woman into raptures, if only because he himself didn’t-until he got to talk with her awhile and made her forget what she had wanted in a man.
The earl, for all his virtues, wasn’t an irresistible male, either, or even a seductive one. His fortune definitely was both, though. Was that why the Tanner woman acted as though the earl was the only male at the table, in the room, and in the whole of England? She’d said she was rich now. That certainly bore investigating, Leland thought.
Leland glanced at Daffyd, to see if he noticed any of this.
But Daffyd was laughing at something Daisy had just said. Leland sighed. She had a bubbling personality and enough charm to fill three young ladies’ finishing academies. She was, in fact, too good to be true. Especially since she’d been a convict. Of course, the earl and Daffyd had been convicts, too. But they’d been innocent men.
Leland had doubts about Daisy’s infatuation with the earl. It seemed too complete. He himself wasn’t considered a dullard, yet his own most clever comments weren’t met with half the appreciation that the earl’s dullest ones were.
“And so, what are your plans now that you’re back in England, Mrs. Tanner?” Leland asked into a brief conversational silence.
They all stared; his voice had been unintentionally sharp. Daisy’s smile slipped as she looked across the table at him.
“That is to say,” he added in a fashionable drawl, so it would seem he wasn’t that interested in her reply, “one can understand the joy of coming home again. As for myself, when I’ve traveled abroad for any length of time, I’m so consumed with relief to be home, I can’t even think about what I’ll do the next day. But after a week or so, the old familiar tedium does set in again. So, what are your aims? How do you intend to stave off ennui?”
The earl answered for her. “We didn’t worry about ‘ennui’ back in Botany Bay, Lee. Or ‘the old familiar tedium.’ We worried about the next day. Being there to see it, that is.”
Daisy laughed. “There’s truth. Only after I married, I knew I’d be there, all right. But that wasn’t much better.” She saw Leland’s expression grow chillier, and added, “I know it sounds bad to say anything rude about my deceased husband, my lord, but everyone at this table knows it was no love match. It wasn’t a match at all, actually, just an unhappy circumstance, at least for me. So I didn’t worry about ennui, either, just escape. And now I’ve done that…” She paused, thought a moment, and then said, “I suppose what I want is something I’m not used to thinking about. Peace, I guess, and happiness, however I find it.”
Which was, Leland thought, a very good thing to say, except that she said it to the earl, and her sad smile was for him alone.
“You must make a list of things that will make you happy and bring you peace,” Helena Masters said unexpectedly.
“Why, so I will,” Daisy said with one of her sudden grins. “And the first thing on my list, I think, would be more of that lovely soup I just had.”
“You’re too easy to please,” the earl said, as he signaled to a footman. “Although my chef isn’t, and he’ll be in ecstasies to hear that his art made the top of your list.”
They all laughed, but there was no laughter in Leland’s eyes as he watched Daisy, only calculation and rising interest. Her answer had been a masterful parry to an excellent thrust, and he loved a good duel.
“No sense in the three of us gents having our port while you two ladies sit by yourselves,” the earl said when they’d finished dinner. “Let’s all remove to the salon together. Do you play, Daisy?”
“Cards?” she asked. “Yes, very well. My father taught me.”
“Then not very well,” Daffyd said dryly.
She grinned. “There’s that. But I learned things from him he didn’t teach me. I know how much it hurts to lose, so I don’t lose my head when I play.”
“I meant the piano, or the harp,” the earl said. “But we could play cards if you like.”
“Oh,” Daisy said sheepishly. “I used to play the pianoforte, and I did enjoy it, but it’s been years. That will be next on my list: learning to play music again.”
“I’d be happy to play for you now,” Helena said softly. “And teach you later, Mrs. Tanner, if you’d like.”
“Daisy!” Daisy exclaimed. “Please, call me that and forget the other; I’m trying to.”
“Even in company?” her companion asked.
“Everywhere,” Daisy said vehemently.
They left the table and walked down a long hall until they came to the salon. A fire was already blazing in the hearth, the draperies had been pulled across the long windows, and the lamps had been lit. The servants obviously listened to what their master said as much as to what he asked of them, because several lamps had already been brought to the ornate pianoforte that stood in one corner.
The earl saw Daisy comfortably settled on a couch and went to the piano. “This came with the house. It’s decorated with gods and goddesses,” he said, indicating the intricate gilded paintings on the ebony wood. “But I don’t know when it was last tuned, so I can’t say if it still sounds heavenly.”
Helena Masters strummed her fingers along the keys. “Some notes need adjustment, but I think something good can come out of it. It’s a fine piece.”
“Then let’s find a fine piece for it,” he said. He opened the top of the bench, took out some music sheets, and began to discuss them with her.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” Daffyd told Daisy. “I’m off to the necessary, not that I’m supposed to tell a lady that,” he added, lowering his voice. “But you know me, Daisy, and I didn’t want you thinking I’d deserted you.”
“And you know me, Daffy,” she said. “I’m no lady.”
“You are, and time you started thinking of yourself as one,” he said. “Here, Lee,” he told his half brother, standing nearby, “entertain the lass until I get back, will you?”
“My pleasure,” Leland said. He ambled over, sat next to Daisy, settled back, stretched out his long legs, put his arm across the top of the settee, and smiled down at her. “So,” he said. “Music is at the top of your list. After soup, I suppose. What comes next? I hope it’s me. Please don’t break my heart by saying no, at least not right away.”
He was smiling, such a snug, comfortable, friendly smile that Daisy could hardly believe it belonged on the face of the tall, cold nobleman she’d just passed the last hours with. It made him look years younger, and entirely approachable. This close she could see his teeth were even and white, his skin clear; the smile was wide enough to show a crease in the side of his left cheek, making that long, thin face look rakish and attractive. The smile spoke volumes. Without a word, it told her of his understanding and fellowship, and complete interest in her answer.