Captain Durant's Countess - By Maggie Robinson Page 0,93
comforting to say, but the truth was he was doomed and any child of his might be as well.
“You should have said something. If not to Henry, then to me.”
“I know. I was a coward. And you were so lovely I did not want to leave. If the child is afflicted, I can take it and spare you my parents’ misery.”
“You will not!” Maris was fairly thunderous, her brows every bit as frightening as a Durant’s. “There will be no way of knowing for years if the child has difficulties. Was your father—”
“Normal? Oh yes. Even if he was a gamester. He didn’t lose because he couldn’t read the numbers on his cards, he was just damned unlucky and didn’t have the wit to stop. I have no trouble there myself. Numbers are a bit easier for me to manage than letters. And the printed page is much clearer than someone’s handwriting.”
Her eyes widened. “You didn’t read all those desperate letters I wrote because you couldn’t.”
Reyn felt himself flush, “Guilty as charged. I hoped you’d stop writing once your husband informed you I’d changed my mind. And I had. I didn’t want to abandon a child, especially one who might need my help, what little I can provide.”
Maris sank onto his wooden desk chair. “Oh.”
“I’ve done a terrible, unforgiveable thing to you. The next Earl of Kelby may be as stupid as I am.”
“You truly are stupid.”
“I’ve told you I am sorry—”
“Do shut up, Reyn! No one knows what the future may hold for any of us. I could go blind tomorrow and then what would my ability to read matter? You have other skills, qualities that have served you well enough. You’ve made the best of a bad situation. To think you were beaten for what was not your fault. It is horrifying. Look here. See this d? Clearly you mean for it to be a b.”
Reyn stared at the line to which she pointed. “Isn’t it?”
“Is that how you see it?”
Reyn squinted, feeling the beginning of a headache take root. “Aye, I suppose.”
“Reading for you must be like looking into a fun house mirror. Nothing is as it appears to the rest of us.” She dropped the book and seized his hands, forcing his thumbs up and squeezing his fingers into the palm of his hand. “Look there. My governess Miss Holley taught me this trick when I was just a little girl. Jane had problems just as you do when she first learned to write, but she grew out of them. Your left hand makes a lower-case b.” She traced the curve of one letter, then the next. “The right is a d. Do you see it?”
Reyn examined his hands. He did! “How peculiar.”
“Isn’t it? There must be any number of tricks you can learn to help you. Miss Holley is still at a cottage on Kelby Hall’s grounds, retired of course. I bet she would love to help you. I can invite her to come and stay with me. No one would think it odd that I long for my old governess at this time.”
“Teach me at my age? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It’s never too late to learn. I admire you for coping as well as you have, but surely there’s room for improvement.”
Reyn had been expecting rejection. Contempt. Pity. He had never imagined the Countess of Kelby would be looking up at him with such earnest encouragement when he had done nothing but lie to her. “I—”
“Don’t you dare say you can’t. Or you won’t. What have you got to lose, but an hour or two a day with a sweet old woman who would love to feel useful again? I might even be able to help you as well.”
Dear God. He still had some pride left, and would never want Maris to know his shame and frustration. He would go mad sitting in his seat poring over a pile of children’s primers. They didn’t take the first time. Why should it be any different now? He was nine and twenty, halfway to being thirty, far beyond anyone’s help. Reyn had an absurd image of himself crammed into a child’s desk, his knees splintering the wood. “I’ll think about it.” He just had, and it would not suit.
“You’ll do more than that if you know what’s good for you.”
He looked up from his clenched hands. Well, there was the Countess of Kelby he’d met so many months ago at the Reining Monarchs Society. It was too