A Lady's Dream Come True - Grace Burrowes Page 0,17
been warmhearted and willing to bear censure in exchange for a place in the household of the man she loved.
When Catherine smiled like that, she exuded charm and good humor, and an attractiveness that was perilously adult. Fortunately, she had time to learn how and when to use that smile and what effect it could have on others.
Vera went first into the dining room, where—predictably—Jeremy was hovering by the sideboard, while Miss Diggory was sipping a glass of wine by the hearth. Mr. Dorning stood near her, suggesting Jeremy had handled the introductions.
“Let’s do sit down,” Vera said. “Mr. Dorning, I don’t believe you’ve met my step-daughter. Miss Catherine Channing, may I make known to you Mr. Oak Dorning. Mr. Dorning, Miss Channing.”
Vera had never formally introduced Catherine to anybody, much less to a gentleman of some station in life. Oak Dorning was an earl’s son, and while he was the proverbial younger son, well away from any pretensions to the title, men of even his standing were a rarity in rural Hampshire.
Miss Diggory’s eyes lit with veiled amusement, while at the sideboard, Jeremy looked ready to offer one of his signature humorous and not entirely kind quips.
Mr. Dorning, however, caught the hand Catherine had raised uncertainly toward her gold brooch.
“Miss Channing.” He bowed politely. “A pleasure and an honor. May I be so bold as to observe that you have your father’s keen blue eyes? Do you share his interest in art?”
“Mr. Dorning.” Catherine dipped an easy curtsey. “The pleasure is mine. I do like to draw, and I understand you are here to restore some of our older paintings.”
Oh, well done, Catherine. Well done, Mr. Dorning.
Mr. Dorning held Catherine’s chair for her, leaving an apparently flummoxed Jeremy to do the honors for Miss Diggory. Mr. Dorning assisted Vera when he’d seen Catherine seated halfway down the table.
“Thank you,” Vera murmured. “Thank you very much.”
He took his place at Vera’s right, which put Catherine to his right along the middle of the table. He and Catherine launched into a discussion of Spanish versus Italian Renaissance painters, during which Catherine showed herself to be surprisingly knowledgeable and witty. Miss Diggory offered an occasional opinion, while Jeremy remained mostly silent.
Vera held her peace as well, enjoying her wine and enjoying the sense that in Oak Dorning she had acquired an ally. Not in all regards, of course, and not for more than the short time he’d be with them at Merlin Hall.
But at this difficult moment, when being a step-mother to an orphaned girl on the verge of young womanhood could have gone terribly awry, Oak Dorning had proved to be an unlikely and perceptive ally.
Vera caught his eye and smiled, and he ever so subtly smiled back.
To Oak’s relief, the entire table withdrew to the family parlor. The men sipped port, and the ladies gathered around a pot of gunpowder. A book of fashion plates came out, and Oak sought refuge on the piano bench.
“Do you play?” Forester asked, draping himself over the piano, glass of port in his hand.
“Enough not to embarrass myself. You?”
“Haven’t for years. Suppose I ought to practice while I’m immured here in the shires, but that would require finding time away from the terror.”
Oak was increasingly offended by the nickname Jeremy insisted on using for his only pupil. “Why call the lad that?”
“You haven’t met him, though I will remedy that oversight tomorrow directly after luncheon, if that suits. He can’t draw worth a farthing, mostly because sitting still is beyond him. He seems to have inherited his papa’s mercurial temper, but none of the family talent.”
Oak began a little minuet in the key of G, a parlor piece, not grand enough for the dance floor. “In my experience,” he said, “children, boys especially, tend to live down to our expectations. If we berate them and criticize them at every turn, their attention wanders, they fidget, and their memory fails them. If we praise whatever constructive impulses they exhibit, they try harder.”
Forester took a sip of his port. “You’re an expert on naughty little boys now? Do we conclude you were one, or perhaps you’ve sired one or two?” He wiggled his eyebrows on the word sired.
“I easily could have been a naughty boy. I was not the oldest, nor the spare. I hadn’t my brother Hawthorne’s affinity for livestock and farming, nor my brother Willow’s genius with canines. I wasn’t clever with sums and legal whatnot like Ash, or naturally sociable like Valerian. I