The Captive Read Online Free PDF Page B

sparing him the need to make any reply. Christian eventually figured out that this torrent of speech was a sign of nerves.
    Had Girard blathered like this, philosophizing, sermonizing, and threatening as a function of nerves? Christian rejected the very notion rather than attribute to Girard even a single human quality.
    “Helene was my cousin,” the lady said, recapturing Christian’s attention, because nobody had referred to the late duchess by name in his presence. “The family was planning to offer you me, but then Greendale started sniffing around me, and Helene was by far the prettier, so she went for a duchess while I am merely a countess. Shouldn’t the tea be here by now?”
    Now he did remember, the way the first few lines of a poem will reveal the entire stanza. He’d met this Lady Greendale. She had a prosaic, solidly English name he could not recall—perhaps she’d just told him what it was, perhaps he’d seen it somewhere—but she’d been an attendant at his wedding, his and Helene’s. Greendale’s gaze had followed his young wife with a kind of porcine possessiveness, and the wife had scurried about like a whipped dog.
    Christian had pitied her at the time. He didn’t pity her now.
    But then, he didn’t feel much of anything when his day was going well.
    “Here’s the thing…” She was mercifully interrupted by the arrival of the tea tray. Except it wasn’t simply a tray, as Christian had ordered. The trolley bore a silver tea service, a plate of cakes, a plate of finger sandwiches, and a bowl of oranges, because his smiling, hopeful, attentive staff was determined to put flesh on him.
    His digestion was determined to make it a slow process.
    “Shall I pour?” She had her gloves off and was rearranging the tray before Christian could respond. “One wonders what ladies do in countries not obsessed with their tea. Do they make such a ritual out of coffee? And you take yours plain, I believe. Helene told me that.”
    What odd conversations women must have, comparing how their husbands took tea. “I no longer drink tea. I drink…nursery tea.”
    A man whose every bodily function had been observed for months should not be embarrassed to admit such a thing, and Christian wasn’t. He was, rather, humiliated and enraged out of all proportion to the moment.
    “Hence the hot water,” she said, peering at the silver pot that held same. “Do you intend to loom over me up there, or will you come down here beside me for some tea?”
    He did not want to move a single inch.
    She chattered, and her hands fluttered over the tea service like mating songbirds, making visual noise to go with her blathering. She cut up his peace, such as it was, and he already knew she would put demands on him he didn’t care to meet.
    And yet, she hadn’t smiled, hadn’t pretended grown dukes drank nursery tea every night. Whatever else was true about the lady, she had an honesty about her Christian approved of.
    He sat on the sofa, several feet away from her.
    She made no remark on his choice of seat.
    “I suppose you’ve heard about that dreadful business involving Greendale. Had Mr. Stoneleigh not thought to produce the bottle of belladonna drops for the magistrate—the full, unopened bottle, still in its seal—you might have been spared my presence permanently. I can’t help but think old Greendale did it apurpose, gave me the drops just to put poison in my hands. Easterbrook probably sent them from the Continent all unsuspecting. Greendale wanted me buried with him, like some old pharaoh’s wife. Your tea.”
    She’d made him a cup of hot water, sugar, and cream—nursery tea, served to small children to spare them tea’s stimulant effects.
    “I’ll fix you a plate too, shall I?” A sandwich, then two, as well as two cakes were piled onto a plate by her busy, noisy hands.
    “An orange will do.”
    She looked at the full plate as if surprised to find all that food there, shrugged, and set it aside.