“It’s so beautiful here,” she said softly.
He wanted to tell Miss Trim that she was beautiful. He resisted the urge and surveyed the miles of rough moorland with displeasure. “Really?”
“Don’t you think so?” She turned and he found himself lost in cinnamon eyes. For once, they contained no suspicion. Just curiosity and interest.
With a frown, he returned to contemplating the inhospitable landscape. Gray. Stony. Unforgiving. Dangerous. “It’s useless for anything except raising grouse.”
“Do you enjoy shooting?”
He shrugged. “I’m not much of a hunting man.”
“Unless you’re chasing down members of the opposition.” Her gaze was searching. “I always thought you loved the moors.”
Uncanny that she read him so easily. Most people couldn’t. “Of course I do, but I was brought up here.”
“When I first arrived, I was terrified.”
“The moors are terrifying. Bogs that will swallow a cow. Crevasses where you can fall and break a leg and nobody will ever find you. The weather crashes down cold and misty from a perfectly blue sky.” Like today’s, although instincts honed through a lifetime told him that the sunshine would hold, at least until tonight.
“Now I see magnificence. It’s so big. Nothing petty or unworthy can survive under this sky.”
Surprised, he stared at her. “I always feel free out here,” he admitted, before he recalled that sharing confidences with Miss Trim was a bad idea.
“Do you miss it when you’re in London?”
A month ago, he’d have laughed at the thought. Missing the wilds of Yorkshire when he was in the hurly-burly of power? Stagnating in this backwater instead of deciding his nation’s destiny? Living quietly with his mother instead of exploring the amusements that the capital offered a bachelor with endless wealth and no domestic ties?
He surveyed this uncivilized landscape that had taught him so much when he’d been a restless boy. “Yes, I do.”
“So why stay away?”
His smile was grim. “I can’t become prime minister from an obscure hamlet thirty miles outside York.”
“You can, however, lead a useful, satisfying life caring for your estates and your people.”
“Miss Trim…” Eleanor. “This is a mere interlude while the world forgets the Fairbrother scandals.”
“Lady Sophie’s courtship had a respectable conclusion.”
“How innocent that sounds when she set every tongue in London wagging. An heiress eloping with a disreputable member of a family known to be at odds with the Fairbrothers? It’s the stuff of those sensational novels you read to my mother.”
“At least Lady Sophie’s happy.”
“Oh, she’s that. The worst is that Sophie’s rebellion came hot on the heels of my uncle’s exposure as a thief and murderer.” He faced Miss Trim directly. Perhaps he mistook the situation, but he needed to clarify the issues between them. For her sake and his. “I can’t risk further scandal.”
She had such fine skin, fluctuating color betrayed her faintest emotion. “You needn’t warn me off, my lord.” Her response was curt. “I have no wish to become a rich man’s plaything.”
Bitterness tainted his laugh. “Then stay out of rich men’s bedrooms.”
“I learned my lesson.” Her color flared hotter, making her eyes flash caramel fire. In her lap, her hands tightened around each other. “I know my place and I’m willing to keep to it. I hope you’ll do the same.”
“I’ll do my best, Miss Trim,” he said flatly and set the horses to a fast canter that precluded further discussion.
Chapter Twelve
Nell was reading one of the new books to Lady Leath when his lordship arrived the next afternoon. After the abrupt ending to yesterday’s strangely intimate conversation, he’d reverted to Business Leath.
Business Leath had an impressive grasp of agricultural and industrial matters. Business Leath never fumbled to recall a name or date. Business Leath bit out his words with a crispness that made her want to salute the way some raw recruit had once saluted her soldier father.