company, I’d hesitate to describe myself as such.”
Too smooth by half, my fine fellow.
Her father bustled into the room, saving her from responding to their guest’s false modesty. “Lord Neville! An unexpected pleasure.” Then he turned and spoke with an unalloyed joy that set Lord Neville wincing. “And Mr. Evans! If I’d known you visited, I’d have put off my business. I so enjoyed our discussion last night. Have they given you tea? No? Goodness, what will you think of us? A bunch of country mice, begad.”
The vicar wasn’t a quiet presence. His voice bounced off the walls and set the dog twitching. Genevieve’s father strode across the room to wring Mr. Evans’s hand with a zeal that made Genevieve, inclined to disapprove of the newcomer, bristle with resentment. Her father was a man of international reputation, however ill-deserved. He didn’t need to toady to the quality.
She sighed, heartily wishing that Mr. Evans would slouch back to wherever he came from. Already she could foresee conflict between him and Lord Neville, and she didn’t feel up to dealing with another of her father’s crazes.
Fleetingly Genevieve observed her father as a stranger might. Tall, graying, distinguished, with a distracted air that indicated a mind fixed on higher things. Once she’d believed that. Now however much she loved him with a stubborn affection that never wavered, she couldn’t contain the coldness that crept into their relations. Her father looked like an Old Testament prophet, but at heart he was a selfish, weak man.
Dorcas chose that moment to bring in the tea tray. The small parlor became uncomfortably crowded. Advancing toward the table, the maid danced around the vicar. Genevieve blushed to see milk splash from the jug. Mr. Evans really would think they were bumpkins. Then she reminded herself that she didn’t give a groat what Mr. Evans thought.
Genevieve managed to serve tea without tripping over any of the room’s occupants, animal or human. Lord Neville drew her father into a discussion of some scholarly point. Her aunt engaged Mr. Evans in conversation about local amenities. Genevieve retired to the window seat and retrieved her embroidery.
She inhaled and struggled for calm. Absurd to let a handsome face affect her so. She’d always accounted herself immune to masculine attractions. Certainly none of the men in her father’s circle had set anything but intellect buzzing. Her reaction to Mr. Evans had nothing at all to do with intellect and it frightened her.
“How charming to see a lady at her sewing.”
Skeptically Genevieve glanced up. Mr. Evans leaned against the window frame, watching her. In his arms, that hussy Hecuba looked utterly enraptured.
“I like to keep busy, Mr. Evans.” She didn’t soften the edge in her voice. He needed to know that not every denizen of Little Derrick’s vicarage was ready to roll over and present a belly for scratching. However, the picture of lying before him begging for caresses was so vivid, her wayward color rose. She prayed he didn’t notice.
When he placed Hecuba on the floor, the cat regarded both humans with sulky displeasure before stalking away. He plucked the embroidery frame from Genevieve’s hold. She waited for some complimentary remark. For purposes that she hadn’t yet fathomed, the man seemed determined to charm.
A silence fell. Genevieve dared a glance. He maintained a scrupulously straight face.
“It’s a peony,” she said helpfully.
His mouth lengthened but, to give him credit, he didn’t laugh. “I … see that.”
“Really?” She retrieved her embroidery and inspected it closely. Even she, who knew what it was supposed to represent, had trouble discerning the subject.
Without invitation, Mr. Evans settled on the window seat. He crossed his arms over his chest and extended his long, booted legs across the faded rug. Surreptitiously she inched away.
“I believe you assist your father with his work.”
Unfortunately, he couldn’t have said anything more liable to annoy her. Her eyes narrowed and old grievances cramped her stomach. “I am most helpful, sir,” she said flatly.
The evening light through the window lay across his hair but caught no shine in the brown. Hecuba rubbed against his ankles, purring fit to explode. Catching Lord Neville’s glower from across the room, Genevieve bent over her sewing. Surely he didn’t imagine she encouraged this decorative interloper. And even if he thought that, he had no right to censure her behavior.
“At Leighton Court last night, the vicar praised your abilities.”
“Are you surprised to hear of a woman using her brains?” she asked with a sweetness that would warn anyone who knew her.
He sighed and leveled a surprisingly perceptive regard upon her. “I have a nasty feeling that somewhere I’ve taken a wrong step with you, Miss Barrett.”
For a bristling moment, she stared into his face and wondered why she was so certain that he had ulterior motives.
“It hardly matters.” She should turn his comment aside. After all, he wasn’t likely to become a fixture in her life. Even if he lingered in the neighborhood, the vicarage’s fusty medievalists would soon bore him.
“If I’ve inadvertently offended, please accept my apologies.”
Curse him, he’d shifted closer and his arm draped along the windowsill behind her. She stiffened and, abandoning pride, slid toward the corner. “Mr. Evans, you are presumptuous.”
His lips twitched. “Miss Barrett, you are correct.”
“Pray be presumptuous at a greater distance.”
His laugh was low and attractive. “How can I argue when you’re armed?”
She realized that she brandished the needle like a miniature sword. Despite her annoyance, the scene’s absurdity struck her and she choked back a laugh. She stabbed the needle into a full-blown peony that sadly resembled a sunburned chicken. “You waste your attentions, sir.”
“I hate to think so,” he said with a soft intensity that had her regarding him with little short of horror. Was that a challenge? And how on earth should she respond?
Luckily her father spoke. “Mr. Evans, Lord Neville wants to see that codex. Are you interested?”
The vicar’s question shattered the taut silence. Mr. Evans blinked as if emerging from a trance. She realized she’d been searching his face with as much attention as she gave a historical document.
He turned toward her father. “Of course, sir. Lead on.”
Without the gentlemen and Sirius, the parlor felt forlorn. As though Mr. Evans’s departure leached the light away. Genevieve glanced across to where her aunt stared into space, hands loose in her lap.
“What a lovely man,” she said dreamily.
Genevieve stifled a growl and stood to collect the teacups and place them onto the tray. “He thinks he is.”
Aunt Lucy’s stare was surprisingly acute. “Because he treated you like a woman and not some moldy book from your father’s library, you’ve taken against him.”
“Don’t be a henwit, Aunt. That kind of man flirts with any female in reach. Today that’s you, me, and Hecuba.” Hearing her name, Hecuba curled around Genevieve’s ankles. “It’s too late to make amends, you minx.”
“I hope he’ll be a regular visitor,” her aunt said. “I worry that you’ll never find a man to marry.”
Shocked, Genevieve nearly dropped the tray. “Aunt! Don’t be absurd. Even if I liked Mr. Evans—and I don’t, he’s too conceited—I don’t want a husband. I’ve got my work.”
It was a familiar argument. Her aunt was a conventional woman and couldn’t bear for her niece to die a spinster. In Aunt Lucy’s eyes, any halfway eligible man who wandered into Genevieve’s vicinity