Even more surprising, the cook had left the animal for her. Clutched in her other arm was a newspaper.
“Dear brother, have you seen this one?” his sister cried out with a choked laugh. “I daresay I’ve won our wager. Our Miss Danvers is beautiful.”
A quick jerk of his heart, a primal slither of interest. In one of his earlier ruminations, he’d imagined Miss Danvers was unattractive and unmarriageable, and this ruse was a desperate bid to make herself more appealing to suitors. He’d dismissed that assumption almost immediately, but he’d still wagered with his sister that Miss Danvers was unattractive.
“Is she?” he murmured.
“Oh yes,” Penny gushed, her eyes dancing with merriment and admiration.
With a grunt, Alexander took the paper, which showed a cartoon drawing of a small-boned lady, a hat with several plumes of decorative feathers perched rakishly atop her head, a gloved hand pressing to her lips in apparent delight. And a man who was supposedly him, lowered to one knee, holding up a bouquet of flowers and what appeared to be letters spilling from every conceivable pocket, looking every inch a besotted fool.
Alexander blinked; then he chuckled.
His sister sucked in a harsh breath and he glanced up.
“You laugh,” she said with wonderment.
A peculiar jolt went through his heart. “Do not act as if the action is strange for me.”
“I dare not wish such genuine amusement, or is your fascination growing for this strange creature?”
“Perhaps I should not have shared the newspaper mentions.”
His sister rolled her eyes. “You did not take me into your confidence. I fettered the truth.”
He’d been so engrossed in reading about Miss Danvers last week, he hadn’t heard Penny creep up on him. A voice to
o close had simply drawled, “I never knew you read the scandal sheets, Alexander. And how curious you read only the sections that mention Miss Danvers. How I wish to know her.”
He’d swiveled to meet Penny’s broad, heartwarming grin. Then a wager of sorts had started between them.
Was she comely with blond hair and a buxom figure as he had preferred women in the past? Or was she plain with hardly any rousing attributes? Was Miss Danvers plump or petite? He’d said it was neither here nor there in his estimation; Penny had said a woman with such a large and bold personality must have the body and attitude to match.
His gaze lowered again to the small-boned woman in the garish cartoon.
Another wager had been: Was she blond or dark haired?
He’d put up fair, Penny dark haired. The cartoon shed no light there.
When would she outrageously set a wedding date? Alexander had wagered never. Penny had said a December wedding.
“I just finished reading about the first time you met her,” Penny said, her eyes wide with amusement. “How I wish I could meet Miss Danvers! She must be so very brave and original. I wonder what outlandish tale we will read of next?”
Alexander grunted, trying to bury that flare of interest for a damnable stranger who was quite shameless and unorthodox in her manners.
“I am persuaded that when you have made her acquaintance, you shall love her!” Penny declared.
He smiled at his sister’s naïveté. Love? A notion he hadn’t thought or dreamed of in years.
And for this unusual creature? Unlikely.
But why was he humoring her wild and improper antics? He could hardly find the answer.
He had been reading all the mentions of her in the newspapers, his curiosity growing in leaps at her unchecked audacity. He could not help being intrigued by her daring. His haven of treasure and books that fed his intellect and entranced him so much could not push away the stark, raw loneliness of his existence. And this Miss Danvers served as a distraction from that disquieting awareness.
A part of him that had been dead and buried whispered through his soul. What would you do should I come for you, Miss Danvers? Retreat and hide? Or would you face me…challenge me…compel me?
And inexplicably, Alexander knew that before the season was over, he would find out.