She might have said more, but he was out of the room and on his way into the vestibule before he heard the click of the puppy’s nails on the floor behind him.
“Wait!” she hissed, her voice sounding far too loud in the cavernous vestibule. “Mr. Mostyn!”
He swung around, finger to his lips.
“I am trying to be quiet,” she whispered. “Come back into the library and explain to me.”
“Go to bed.” He started for the stairs again.
“If you go to your room, I will only follow you.” Her voice was low but not a whisper. He could hear the threat in the tone of her voice.
Bloody woman. She’d do it too, and as bad as being discovered in the library together might be, being discovered together in his bedchamber was worse. He could lock the door, but then she might resort to waking the entire house by pounding on it.
Or she might do worse.
His thoughts flashed back to her descent from the tree outside her window. And damn him to hell if he hadn’t left his father’s account books in the library. He had to go back to retrieve them. Ewan marched back to the library and took his seat like an errant schoolboy. When she sat across from him, he pointed to the books, lifted one at random—not the dreaded book of his childhood—and handed it to her. “Teach me.”
“Shouldn’t we discuss what just occurred?”
He lifted one brow. Now that she had him here, she wanted to delay? He would never understand women.
“You are right.” She opened the book to the first page. “Let us begin with the alphabet.”
He raised his opposite brow.
“I know.” She held up a hand. “This might be too basic, but it is the way the teachers I have observed always begin with the lit—with the new readers.” She pointed to the open page filled with letters. Ewan kept his gaze on her face.
“You see, every letter has a sound. You can use the sound to help you read new words. A has the sounds ah and ay. B has a buh sound. C can sound hard or soft—”
“I know the alphabet and the letter sounds. I can read. I…” What to say without saying too much? She might not want to laugh, but if he told her the letters moved, then she might smile or think he was funning her. “I have trouble,” he said finally.
“Very well. Then why don’t we start with the first page of text and see where the trouble lies.” She turned several pages until she reached a page with large letters printed on it. She slid the book toward Ewan, and he pulled it close, hunching over it.
He sat in a chair across from her—large, high-backed, and softly upholstered. He put his thick finger on the page to hold it down, and possibly to hold the words in place as well. The letters blurred and then came into focus.
“The.” He moved his finger to the next word. This one was more difficult. First the word seemed to begin with a T but then the C came into focus. He could make no sense of it and his head started to pound. He guessed. “Tac.” Next word. “Sat.”
“Wait.”
At her correction, Ewan wanted to hurl the book across the room. He hated this already. He felt big and stupid, as he always had.
She’d risen from her chair and moved to peer over his shoulder. Her small, delicate finger tapped the word he’d had so much difficulty with. “This word is ‘cat,’ not ‘tac.’ You see, it begins with the letter C.”
Ewan didn’t see that at all. Sometimes it began with a C and sometimes a T and sometimes he didn’t know what the hell it began with.
“You’re doing well,” she said, and he looked at her as though she was daft. He was doing as poorly as ever. His childhood tutor would have smacked his hands with the book by now.
“Begin again.”
He sighed deeply. “The cat sat.” He knew that part. Now the next word. He tapped it with his finger. “No.” He shook his head. “On.” He looked up at her for confirmation. She smiled and nodded.
“Good.”
Ewan shoved the book aside. “This is pointless. I can’t do it.”
Lorrie pulled the book back in front of him. “But you are doing it. You must have a little patience. It takes time.”
“I am nine and twenty, my lady.” Ewan stood. “A child reads better than I do. You are wasting your time.”
“It is my time to waste.”
“Waste it on someone else.” He might have walked away from her, but he paused at the hard glint that came into her eyes. He didn’t think he’d like what she had to say next.
“You would give up? This easily? I did not think you such a coward.”
Ewan moved toward her, checking himself before he might put his hands around her neck.
“If you were a man, you’d be on your arse right now.”
“It wouldn’t be any less true if a man said it than when I say it. You are afraid to try.”
Ewan moved toward her until he had her backed against her father’s desk. “You have no idea what I have seen and what I have done. I am not af-f-f—” Abruptly, Ewan closed his mouth. He hadn’t had trouble speaking since he was a young child.
“I wondered if you had stuttered as a child.”
How the hell had she known that?
“Is that why you are so laconic?”
Ewan didn’t answer, not trusting his tongue. His throat felt as though someone had wound a rope around it, his tongue sat like a limp trout in his mouth.
“You aren’t the only one who has this problem, you know. When I am in Bedfordshire, I like to go to the village school and help the teacher. He has too many students to focus on any one or two, and the girls are always ignored in favor of the boys. A few years ago, there was a boy who had a stutter and also what Mr. Fletcher said he thought of as some sort of word blindness.”
Ewan tried to swallow past the tightness in his throat. Word blindness. He had never heard the phrase before, but as soon as she uttered it, he felt strangely relieved. Somewhere inside him the boy he had been raised his dejected head. Ewan had not known he was lost, but with two words, he had been found.
“I worked with the boy for months, and we had made progress, but then he had to help on his father’s farm, and I had to come to Town. The next time I saw him, he was doing better, but I cannot help but think how far he might have come if we had not been interrupted at such a crucial time.”
Her green eyes had been fixed on his chest, not really seeing him, but with a faraway look. Now they sharpened and met his gaze. “If you will allow me, perhaps I can help you as well. If nothing else, it is worth a try.”
For a moment, he began to hope. Perhaps there was a chance his future did not have to mirror his past. He could stop standing on the outside. He could finally be part of the world everyone else inhabited—a world that, to him, was full of jumbled letters and confusion.
But he’d tried before and failed, and he had vowed never to allow himself to hope again. He had been disappointed for the last time. He did not need it proven, yet again, what a stupid brute of a man he was. He would risk life and limb for this woman because he was duty-bound to do so. What was more, he’d come to care for her, and he would have done it even if no one had paid him.
But Ewan would not risk his pride.
No woman, no experiment, was worth the tattered remains of the little vanity he had left.
Twelve