Her forefinger trailed along a long scar that ran across his abdomen, the line that ended in a hook. “How did this one come about?”
“We were testing the swinging weights of the broadswords in theweapons room. My brother was determined to swing the one I had just mastered, but Gilroy lost his balance for the weight of it—he was a scrawny whelp.”
She nodded to herself as her fingers moved outward to his arm and another scar. “How about this one?”
“Gilroy wanted to shoot an apple off my head.”
“Your brother what?” Her voice lifted into a squeak.
“Yes, an apple off my head. But I refused, because I’m not an idiot.” Evan looked down at his arm, struck at how her thin, elegant fingers juxtaposed over the rough of his skin. “I compromised and offered him an apple off my forearm. He missed. That one did skim me rather deep.”
Her head shook slowly back and forth as her blue eyes lifted to him.
He could see it there, at the tip of her tongue, wanting to say something about his brother.
He’d seen that look a thousand times over.
He didn’t want to see it from her.
So he gave her one nod and then smiled. “I am famished. You? I already ordered us three plates of food too many. It’s most likely waiting for us, getting cold.”
She chuckled. “Yes. Starving.” She dropped his arm and extracted herself from his lap.
Moving backward to sit on the bench across from him, she righted the ties on her stockings and then fixed her skirts in the dim light of dusk filtering past the edges of the coach’s curtains.
Evan buttoned his trousers and shrugged into his lawn shirt as he watched her movements. “What were you even doing down here at the carriage?”
Her look lifted to him. “Oh, my bonnet.” Her eyes squinted, her gaze searching the bench on either side of him.
“Your hat?”
She spied it half under his left leg and pointed to it. “I came down to retrieve it. I thought to work on reshaping it tonight.”
Evan looked down to his left. A corner of the blue bonnet stuck out from under his black trousers. He lifted his leg, plucking the hat off the bench. It had been in pitiful shape before, but now it was crushed beyond repair.
The edges of his lips pulled back in apology as he held it out to her. “I’m sorry, I’ve utterly squashed it.”
“That you have.” She took the limp mush of fabric into her hands, her fingers tugging free one of the ribbons. “I don’t think that reshaping it is a possibility now, but I can try to salvage it.”
“Why not just give it up as a lost cause?” Foregoing his waistcoat, he snaked his arms into his tailcoat.
“Because the other bonnet I brought ishundreds of milesbehind us now, sitting in a carriage with the rest of my luggage. And I cannot be presented to your grandfather without a hat.”
A chuckle flew up from his chest.
“Don’t laugh. I am already so wrinkled beyond repair that I look like the folds of a bloodhound. To forgo a hat would be disastrous.”
“Disastrous?” A smile on his face, he shook his head. “My grandfather won’t make the slightest blink on your lack of a hat. He does not notice such trivial things.”
“Trivial?”
“Aye.” His left arm straight out, he tugged long on the sleeves of his coat, straightening the wool. Deuced hard to properly get on a coat in this tight of a carriage. “We did have a conversation about how few females there are atWhetland Castle, did we not?”
“But your grandfather is an earl, surely there will be expectations?”
“My grandfather will be happy to see a charming lady in his library to compare to the portraits of past countesses. He wants nothing more than to commission the next countess’s portrait to hang alongside my grandmother’s painting.” He leaned forward and tugged down a fold of her skirt that was still caught high against the top of her boot. “Nessia, my brother’s wife, will be just as happy to see you, sans hat and all. Aside from her maid, I have gotten the sense that my sister-in-law is rather lonely at Whetland.”
After a quick up and down check of both their clothing, he opened the door of the carriage and hopped down to the ground. Rather than pulling the steps, he wrapped an arm about her waist and lifted her down to the ground.