Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [35]
I was already established a quarter-hour on the settee by the fire when he threw open the door and, after a quick glance to observe that I was alone, strode purposefully into the room. I acknowledged his presence with an indifferent nod, and hoped that studied application to my needle, and a dearth of conversation, should drive him away in but a few moments. I bent, accordingly, to my work, and knew not where he went in the room, or how he intended to employ his time. My industry was rather to be reviled than rewarded, however. Setting down his book upon the sitting-room table with a bang, Lord Harold threw himself onto the settee at my side, and affected to scrutinise my effort from under his hooded eyes—as a fond lover might his dearest darling's. After some seconds, unable to bear so painful a burlesque, but wishing anything rather than to cede such a man the room, I cast aside my work and stared at him balefully. Any gentleman should have recognised his impropriety, and hastened to relieve my distress; but not Lord Harold.
“It is as I thought,” he declared, sitting back coolly and throwing his long legs across the hearth rug. “You secretly despise the insipidity of women's work, and abandon it when the first opportunity serves. Shall I shower you with contempt, Miss Austen, for failing in the accomplishment of your sisters, or admire you the more for exposing it as the tedium it truly is?”
“You may do me neither the honour nor the injustice, Lord Harold, of offending my sex and its pursuits,” I replied. “Say rather I was incommoded by the proximity of so much silent regard, and the invasion of my privacy, and I will find some means to agree with you.”
“You think it so unlikely we should see eye to eye, Miss Austen?”
“I should imagine, Lord Harold, that we two must always be looking in opposite directions—so dissimilar and incongenial are our concerns.”
“Your opinion of me is decidedly formed for so short an acquaintance!”
“Then we need not prolong it for the improvement of my views.” I gathered up my silks and needle, and exchanged the settee for a chair at some remove from Lord Harold—and thus, unfortunately, from the fire. Scargrave is a draughty place, and the expanse of sitting-room but poorly heated.
“Miss Austen! Did I not know you to be a woman of open and easy temper, I should imagine you wished me to be off.” To my dismay, he crossed the room in my wake, and hung over the back of my chair—of a purpose, I suppose, to disturb me further. There was nothing for it—I must either seek my chamber above, or use my purgatory to better purpose. Lord Harold remained at Scargrave for only one reason—to wrest Crosswinds from Isobel's shaken hands—and the rogue deserved no courtesy. A frontal assault, therefore, was in order.
“I do wonder at your being so good as to spend Christmas among the Scargrave family, Lord Harold,” I replied. “A man of your position must have so many obligations and competing claims among your acquaintance, that to devote so lengthy a period to one must be felt a singular honour.”
“That it is regarded as singular, I do not doubt,” he said, with a thin-lipped smile. “But in this we are very much of a piece, Miss Austen, for I observe you feel no more compelled to depart for home and family than dol.”
“I should have been gone already,” I replied, searching among my silks for a bit of red, the better to work a robin's breast, “but for the Countess.”
“How charming! And how amusing that I may justly say the same—but for the Countess, I should have been gone days ago. I would that our objectives