by Julia Quinn
She felt rather like the Princess and the Pea.
Except she wasn’t a princess. Nor was she a lady or an honorable or anything other than the very ordinary Miss Beatrice Mary Heywood, orphaned daughter of the late Robert and Elizabeth Heywood, devoted and grateful niece to the Misses Calpurnia and Henrietta Heywood.
She lived in a very ordinary home, with three floors, two servants, and one garden. She liked to read. She liked to knit. All very ordinary pursuits. In fact, the only extraordinary thing about her (besides her circle of dear friends, which—rather improbably for a young lady of her station—included a duchess, a countess, and the daughter of an earl) was her passion for the skies. It wasn’t a terribly ladylike pursuit, but Bea had never been concerned by this. When she tipped her face to the heavens, she saw nothing but possibility. And it was so glorious it took her breath away.
Every single time.
At that very moment, in fact, the cumulus cloud at about one o’clock (assuming the church spire was twelve, and Bea always made the tallest structure twelve) looked rather like the Taj Mahal. Not that she had ever seen the Taj Mahal, or that she ever would, but she had seen a colored illustration of the magnificent Indian building, and surely that was enough to render judgment on a cloud.
Over at four o’clock she saw a teapot, and at six—
“Excuse me!”
Bea snapped back to attention just a moment too late to avoid barreling into a gentleman coming the other way down the pavement. Her body connected with his with a breath-sucking thud, and her reticule flew from her fingers, skittering a few inches along the cobbles when it hit the ground. Bea would have gone down, too, if a pair of large hands had not come to rest roughly on her shoulders, steadying her before she toppled over.
“I’m so sorry!” She snatched up her purse, thankful the clasp had remained fastened. “I was looking for a bench.”
“In the sky?” came the derisive response.
She felt her cheeks grow warm. He had her there. Still, he didn’t have to be quite so ungracious. “Of course not,” she muttered. “I was distracted, and, well . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence. What was the point? She cleared her throat and finally met the rude gentleman’s eyes. “Please accept my apologies. It was very careless of—”
Of . . .
My goodness. She blinked, so startled by his appearance that for a moment she could not speak. There was a patch over his right eye, but that was of little interest. Because the other one . . . his left eye . . .
It was the exact color of the sky. A little blue, a little gray.
More than a little stormy.
“I’m terribly sorry,” she said again, although honestly, who got that angry over a careless step? Had he never been jostled on the pavement before?
His lips pinched, and his brows—the same rich, dark brown as his hair—drew down. When he spoke, his tone was just as rigid as his expression. “Mind where you’re going next time.”
Bea felt her jaw grow stiff. “I shall.”
He stared at her for one last uncomfortable moment, then grunted, “Good day,” and stalked past.
“Good day to you, too,” Bea muttered to the empty space in front of her. Annoying man.
Then she turned. Because she couldn’t quite help herself. The insufferable man was striding down the street like he owned it, although maybe he did. She knew enough of men’s fashion to know that his boots and hat were exceedingly well made. And as for his coat—all fancy blue superfine and shiny gold buttons—of a certain that had been constructed by an exclusive London tailor. No one else could have cut and stitched the cloth to so elegantly cover his muscular frame.
Which brought her to another point.
“Annoying man with annoyingly broad shoulders,” she muttered. How could it possibly be fair that the worst examples of humankind so often were the loveliest to look at?
With a sigh and a shake of her head, she carried on her way, eager to complete the rest of her errands. As if to mock her, the sixpence shifted in her shoe and dug in hard under her big toe.
“Really?” she said to her foot. If this was the sort of man the lucky charm was going to bring her, she was going to chuck the bloody thing in the lake.
Lord Frederick Grey-Osbourne had three older brothers, two degrees from Oxford, and one working eye.
At present it was the eye that he found the most vexing, although his brothers generally ranked a very close second.
He supposed he should have been grateful that the wretched young lady had bumped into him, rather than the other way around. One had to take one’s pleasures where one could, and it was nice to be reminded that he wasn’t the only clumsy clod attempting to navigate the uneven cobbles of the Wallingford high street.
Funny how one never quite realized just how essential two eyes were to depth perception until one of them was rendered useless.
But instead, all he could remember was the look on her face when she’d finally raised her eyes to his (eye, that was, singular). She’d frozen, barely able to mask her disgust.
He had never been a rogue, never been the sort to steal kisses and catalogue conquests, but he’d been handsome; all the Grey-Osbourne boys were. He was used to seeing a tiny flare of appreciation in a woman’s eyes, hearing the ever so slight catch of her breath when they were introduced. He was tall, and he was strong, and he hadn’t thought he’d been vain, but clearly he’d been wrong, because the revulsion . . . the pity . . .
It was more than he could take.
No, he thought as he stepped into Plinkington’s Stationery Shop (Purveyors of Fine Paper since 1745), it was obviously not more than he could take, because he was still here, still walking and talking and, more than anything else, still thinking, but he could not make it through the day without some reminder that he was not the man he used to be. There was probably another, more Shakespearean way of saying it, with acid in the belly, or rage firing his soul, but the truth was more simple, and probably more profound.
It made him angry.
And it kept him angry.
“Lord Frederick, sir,” Mr. Plinkington said, his face lighting up at the sight of his finest customer. “A pleasure to see you. What can I help you with today, my lord?”
Frederick nodded in reply. He was relatively new to Wallingford, but he’d been in the shop many times since the accident. Mr. Plinkington was well used to his face, and if he noticed the eye patch—or the scar that escaped the edge of the fabric and snaked down his cheek to his ear—he no longer let it show.
“Three notebooks,” Frederick told him.
“Already?” The shopkeeper’s brows rose with his smile. “You bought some just last month.”
Frederick gave a friendly shrug. “I take a lot of notes.”
“’Tis a good business,” Mr. Plinkington said with a nod, “a stationery shop so close to a university. You academic types always seem to want to write things down.”
“One would think you’d fare even better were you in Oxford proper,” Frederick pointed out.
“Ah, but then the rents would be higher.”
“A fair point,” Frederick murmured. He wandered over to the far side of the shop while Mr. Plinkington ran his fingers along the spines of the many notebooks that filled his shelves, searching for the kind he knew Frederick preferred. Plinkington’s carried a good selection of writing paper as well. He supposed he ought to replenish his supply; he seemed to have a great deal more correspondence now that he’d purchased a small estate of his own. Close work usually left his good eye exhausted by the end of the day. He knew there was no shame in dictating his letters to someone else; this was what most of his contemporaries did, as a matter of fact.
But it still felt like a mark of failure, an acknowledgment that he was no longer as fully capable as before.
“Mr. Plinkington?” he called, intending to ask about the price of different sizes of laid paper, but before he could put words to his query, he heard the shop door open,
followed by the tinny chime of the bell.
“Can I help you, miss?” the shopkeeper asked.
“Yes, thank you,” replied a female voice.
Frederick stilled. He recognized that voice. It had assaulted his ears not two minutes earlier.
“I’m looking for a scientific notebook,” she said.
Mr. Plinkington, all helpful good cheer, said, “I can certainly help you with that.”
Frederick stepped slightly to his left, the better to both see her and partially obscure himself behind a freestanding shelf. It was the lady who had bumped into him on the street, of course. She was smiling pleasantly at the shopkeeper, her expression nothing like the one she’d directed toward him just moments before. Her eyes had been green, he recalled, or more properly, hazel. She was wearing one of those atrocious frilled bonnets ladies seemed to find necessary, but enough of her hair peeked out to reveal itself a rather ordinary light brown.
He had not been able to determine if it curled.
Not that he cared if it curled. But he was trained to observe. He couldn’t not do it. For example, he had noticed earlier that her eyelashes were a shade darker than her brows, and just now, as she joined Mr. Plinkington near the counter, he saw that the stitching in her fine kid gloves was not of uniform color.
She had repaired them. Probably more than once.
“Unlined, if you please,” she said, tipping her head toward the shelf behind her. “I frequently make illustrations alongside my notes.”
“We don’t get many ladies looking for scientific notebooks,” Mr. Plinkington said.
The lady’s smile tightened.
“Not that I’m making a judgment,” the shopkeeper assured her. “Just an observation.” His expression grew jolly as he pulled out several notebooks. “A scientific observation, if you will.”
The lady nodded graciously and reached out her hand.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Mr. Plinkington said. “These are for the gentleman.” He motioned with his head toward the back of the store. “I’ll get yours just as soon as I’m finished with his order.”
“Of course,” she replied, her head turning instinctively to follow his motion. “First come, first . . .”
Frederick acknowledged her presence with a nod.
“Sir,” she said, her tone making it quite clear that the syllable was born of polite manners and nothing else.
Frederick responded in kind. “Miss.”
“Ah, then you know each other!” Mr. Plinkington said jovially. “I suppose there’s no getting around it in a town of this size.”
“We have not been introduced,” the lady said, not quite turning her back on him. Frederick almost chuckled. There were those pesky good manners again. She could not bring herself to be rude, no matter how much she clearly wanted to.
“Lord Frederick Grey-Osbourne,” Frederick said with a bow. He could hardly do anything else, under the circumstances. And besides, there was something rather delicious about being scrupulously polite when the other person wished to have nothing to do with you.
“I am Miss Heywood,” she said somewhat primly. He wondered if she was a schoolteacher. Or a governess. She had that air about her.
“His Lordship’s new to Wallingford,” Mr. Plinkington said helpfully. “He’s a don up at the university.”
“Not precisely,” Frederick murmured. He didn’t actually teach at Oxford, but after a decade of study and a hefty donation to the school, he did have unfettered access to the libraries and laboratories. All in all, it was an excellent arrangement.
“What is your area of study?” Miss Heywood asked.
He couldn’t imagine she truly cared, but he did give her points for inquiring, and he knew from previous experience that the surest way to shut down a conversation was to launch into a description of his research, so he said, “Physics, mostly.”
She blinked three times. “Practical or theoretical?”
He stared. “I beg your pardon?”
“Do you study practical or theoretical physics?” she repeated.
Frederick cleared his throat. It was not a question he normally heard outside of academic circles. “Theoretical,” he told her. “Mostly.”
“That’s quite a lot of mostlys.”
Cheeky thing. He felt himself smile. “It’s a complicated subject.”
“I’m sure it is,” she said, glancing over at Mr. Plinkington. He was wrapping up Frederick’s purchase. Miss Heywood was clearly eager for him to move on to her request.
Her posture seemed to indicate that she’d had enough of the conversation, and Frederick had introduced the topic of theoretical physics for that very same reason, but when she’d asked him about his work, he could have sworn he’d seen a spark of actual interest in her eyes.
And something in him just couldn’t resist.
He stepped forward, inserting himself just far enough between her and the shopkeeper so as not to be completely obnoxious about it. “What do you study, Miss Heywood?”
She turned with surprise. “Nothing,” she said.
Frederick quickly realized the error of his question. This close to one of the world’s finest universities, “studying” was an official thing, and not something women were generally permitted to undertake.
“Are your notebooks a purchase for someone else, then?” he asked, even though he knew they were not. She’d said she liked to make illustrations alongside her notes. But she didn’t know that he’d heard her.
“No, they are mine,” she admitted, looking slightly discomfited by his attention. She cleared her throat. “I have an interest in astronomy.”
“Very commendable,” he said.
She smiled, but it was clearly not authentic, and it occurred to him that she probably thought he was humoring her.
“There is quite a bit of physics in the science of the skies,” he said. “Theoretically, we might one day visit the moon.”
She let out a choke of laughter. “Oh, you’re serious,” she said, once she’d contained her grin.
“Quite,” he replied, “although it’s not anything I expect to see in my lifetime.”
“Nor mine,” she agreed.
He raised a mischievous brow. “Do you expect your life to extend that much longer than mine?”
“What? No, I—” Her lips pressed together, then quirked at the corners when she realized she’d been teased.
“The moon,” Mr. Plinkington chortled. “Gor, now there’s a rich man’s dream.”
Frederick offered up a wry smile. “I suppose there is a reason I don’t pursue practical physics.”
“I don’t know,” Miss Heywood said thoughtfully. “The theoretical eventually becomes the practical, or so one hopes, yes?”
He found himself staring at her for quite a bit longer than was socially necessary. That spark of intelligence he’d seen in her eyes was clearly something more like a bonfire. How intriguing to find a female who was interested in this sort of thing. Scratch that, how intriguing to find a human who was interested. Frederick had long since given up trying to lure his brothers into scientific discussions. He’d quite given up on the topic with anyone outside his colleagues at the university.
“Here you are, my lord,” Mr. Plinkington said, handing over the notebooks. They’d been wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine, a neat little bundle of future research. “Shall I put it on your account?”
“Please.” Frederick took his purchase and weighed it lightly in his hands. He ought to go. He’d got what he had come in for. There was no reason to remain.
“Unlined notebooks for you,” Mr. Plinkington murmured, moving on to Miss Heywood.
“Just one,” she specified.
“Will this do?” he asked, plucking one off the shelf and holding it forward.
She took it, flipped through the pages, and nodded. “It’s perfect.”
“Shall I put this on your account, Miss Heywood?”
“No,” she said firmly, reaching into her
reticule, “I will pay now. Thank you.”
Frederick watched as she transferred some coins to her palm, then carefully plucked out a few to pay for her purchase. The rest she returned to her purse.
“There is no need to wrap it,” she said to Mr. Plinkington. “I don’t think it will rain before I get home.”
“I should think not,” he replied with a smile.
So she lived close by, Frederick thought. Or perhaps not. Mr. Plinkington could have been referring to the patches of blue that had been steadily pushing out the clouds. The weather was indisputably fine this afternoon. She could walk all the way to Oxford and be unlikely to encounter rain.
“Do come again soon, Miss Heywood,” Mr. Plinkington said, handing over her notebook.
“Thank you, and please give my and my aunts’ regards to Mrs. Plinkington.” She turned her head, her eyes settling on Frederick, who was still standing by the door. She looked at him with a somewhat flat expression, one that clearly said, You’re still here?
“Thank you, Mr. Plinkington,” he said with a formal nod of his head. There was every possibility that he would have felt the need to wait inside until he, too, could offer his thanks. “Good day.” He nodded to Miss Heywood and repeated his farewell. “Good day.”
“My lord,” she murmured, and then he had absolutely no more excuses to remain. He gave her one last nod, headed outside, and started walking toward his gig.
But first he glanced up. The clouds were astonishingly fluffy this afternoon. And that one—the one that was just starting to creep behind the church steeple—was particularly majestic. Almost like the Taj Mahal.
The Taj Mahal, eh? He’d like to go see that someday, one eye or not.
Chapter 2
Two days later Bea found herself back in town, walking briskly up the high street on her way to the butcher and baker, who were rather inconveniently located at opposite ends of the town. This was not in her normal roster of tasks, but Mrs. Wembley, the longtime cook and occasional lady’s maid to Bea’s two elderly aunts, was caring for her sick sister in Nottinghamshire, and Bea had neither the energy nor the funds to find a replacement for such a short time as a fortnight.
