“Yes, you should,” he said.
Every sentence sent a little pulse of excitement through her.
She made herself look up at him with a smile on her face. “Maybe I could help you. Put in a good word for you, that sort of thing.”
He smiled faintly. “When you figure it out,” he said, “I’d be much obliged. Tell her that I may be difficult, but I am remarkably constant in my affections, that I have thought of her every day for these last sixteen months. Even when it made no sense.”
And that left her with the biggest thrill of all, her whole body vibrating with an unexplainable urgency.
Chapter Nine
FOR THE SECOND NIGHT IN A ROW, Doctor Grantham had left Lydia in a state of bewilderment. After he’d returned her to her doorstep, her confusion had refused to untangle. She’d thought of what he’d said as she entered the house, throughout dinner. She was still thinking about it when she joined her parents in the back parlor.
He’d admitted that he’d been taken with a woman for more than a year. It was such a romantic thing to say. Which was why she could hardly countenance it from him.
If someone had asked her before today, she would have imagined that he was the sort to say that all women were alike. He’d use medical terms. One vagina, he might say, was much like another. Both provided the same stimulation to the pleasure centers. She bit her lip, imagining him saying that in his dark, gravelly voice.
But he hadn’t said that. And today, behind the tree…
She would never be able to explain how much it had meant to have his arms around her. He’d made her feel that all would be well, even though she had never cried like that before. Even though that scent of pine had reminded her of that long-ago hurt. He’d helped her, at the cost of his personal embarrassment. It was only fair that she try to advance his cause.
As she sat next to her mother, embroidering her tablecloth, her mind kept shying back to Grantham.
“Mother,” she said, finally, “what do you know of Grantham?”
“You’re going on a few house calls with him, aren’t you? Is there any interest there?”
Lydia colored. “No, no. Of course not.” She wasn’t so foolish as to become interested in a man who wanted another. Even if she did want to know who it was.
Her mother looked at her for a long while, until Lydia dropped her eyes. There wasn’t any interest on her part. Just…curiosity, that was all. She wanted to know what sort of woman would capture the imagination of that sort of man.
He was singularly straightforward. His regard would be a compliment in a way that another man’s would not. He wouldn’t be the sort to imagine a girl perfect because he was confused by his physical desire. He would see her—all her faults—and would decide that he wanted her anyway. Lydia simply wanted to know who this paragon was who had earned his affection.
Whoever it was, she had to be pretty. He wouldn’t have made a list of pretty women if he didn’t value the characteristic. Maybe it was Joanna Perkins. She was absolutely lovely, with that bright golden hair and that brilliant laugh. He’d like a woman who laughed—they could laugh together.
But he’d said he’d paid her marked attention, and she could not recall Grantham once walking with Miss Perkins and courting that laugh of hers. She tried to remember seeing him talking to another woman. He was so tall that he would have to bend to murmur sweet nothings.
That mental image—the idea of Grantham leaning over another woman the way he had with Lydia today, giving her that dark, wicked smile that seemed meant for her alone—that made her fists clench in a way that she didn’t care to examine. She would have remembered seeing him talk to another woman that way. She couldn’t have helped but remember it.
Maybe he was more circumspect than she’d imagined. She’d tell him that tomorrow that he needed to be more marked in his affections.
Her father had joined her mother today. They sat next to each other, she embroidering, he reading through a list of reports, his spectacles perched on the end of his nose.
“What do you think of Grantham?” Her heart raced as she spoke.
Her father looked over the rims of his spectacles at her. “Am I going to have to have another talk with him?”
“No. No. I’m just accompanying him on a few house calls.” And hitting him, and bursting into tears, and letting him hold her. And then there were the topics of their conversation. Safe to say that she wouldn’t tell her father that Grantham was instructing her on the use of French letters. He might take that amiss.
Lydia looked up at the ceiling. “He’s an interesting man. I only want to figure him out.”