He chuckled at that. “Strange creatures? No, Miss Conley, there is nothing strange about you. You’re an angel. In fact, I believe you have delivered me.”
She hunched even nearer to her plate. “A man is allowed his peccadilloes. You shouldn’t feel remorse for doing only what is expected of you.”
He sat up straighter. “I’m sure you don’t mean to offend, but I don’t think I like that depiction. Is patent debauchery expected of me? Am I so despicable?”
She looked up. Her head cocked as if she were considering his question with her usual wholesomeness. “I didn’t expect it of you,” she admitted. “To be perfectly honest, it never occurred to me that you’d be…” She blushed deeper. “Experienced.”
The word sent fire through his loins. It shouldn’t have. Not when they were talking about what they were talking about.
He needed to turn the subject. “At any rate, you shouldn’t have been exposed to such vulgar people as my guests. I promise in the future to maintain an impeccable household.”
“Oh,” she said, wide-eyed. He was beginning to realize it was her version of speechlessness.
He couldn’t help teasing her. “You would, of course, find that to your liking? My reformation?”
She shrank away. “Please, my lord, don’t rehabilitate yourself for me. It certainly wasn’t your fault that I descended on Chelford at that particular time.” She swallowed thickly.
He couldn’t bear her taking any more blame upon herself. “Nor was it yours! Your brother’s equipment was in deplorable condition. You’re only lucky you survived. In fact, I’ve come to think of our meeting as something of a godsend.”
She blanched again. With one fell gulp, the last of her wine disappeared.
Pure thoughtlessness on his part; he shouldn’t have reminded her of that horrid ordeal. “The truth is,” he said, moving his chair so they were almost side by side, “I detest Christmastide. Your presence has made it survivable for the first time. But I’m embarrassed. My mother would be disappointed in me if she knew what I’ve been up to. And my sister…I’m sure I don’t have to explain that Hannah wouldn’t have known what to do with my poor manners.”
Miss Conley’s grip on her fork whitened her knuckles. “She would have loved you.”
“Of course she would have.” He gently pried Miss Conley’s fingers from the warm silver and set it beside her plate. Then he smoothed his hand over hers, savoring the silkiness of her skin and the race of her pulse beneath his thumb. “But would I have been deserving of such unconstrained adoration? She might have been a mother today. Instead, I failed her.” It was his turn to swallow past the lump in his throat. This was why he invited Lord Scotherby, Mariah and the lot of them to Chelford. Christmas was the time of year when he was sure to remember his sister in vivid detail. ’Twas the season of her death, when all the world returned home and he was left alone. If only he’d known she’d intended to climb into the hayloft. If only she’d better understood the nature of fire, and the danger of straw waiting to be turned to tinder beneath her feet. Only if he, Grantham, had realized just how determined a young girl could be when presented with the unreliable regard of a man several years older. If he had foreseen her decision to shadow the groom with a lit candle in her hand…
He might have saved her.
“Do you think often of Lady Hannah?” Miss Conley’s blue eyes were worried. She slipped her hand from his and her fingers danced across the white tablecloth, just out of his reach.
“It can’t be helped,” he admitted. “I adored her. She was my only surviving family, and I failed to save her. It all happened too fast.”
Miss Conley set her hands in her lap, then clasped them. Because she didn’t want him to touch her again? Or because he made her pulse race? “I still feel I owe you an apology,” she said.
He laughed outright. An apology? As if anything she could do could change the outcome of his life.
But perhaps there was one thing. He pushed away from the table and the buffet of memories being served upon it. “Don’t. I’m glad you’re here, for you make me remember there is one very nice thing about Christmastide. I believe I still have two berries left.”
ELINOR HAD never been left utterly alone with a man. Especially not a virile man, a licentious man. Certainly not with an earl determined to bare his innermost secrets to her. It did make her wonder what, exactly, her aunt had intended by drawing Lord de Winter out of doors.