“Oh, is your mother dead, too?”
He nodded.
“That’s a pity, isn’t it? My mother died when I was born, and I never knew her.”
“Me mam died two years ago this Michaelmas,” he said in a soft kind of burr.
“I’m sorry.”
He merely shrugged. “After me youngest sister was born. Eldest of ten, that’s me.”
She smiled up at him. “You don’t sound like the other servants.”
“That’s because I’m Irish, mum.” His green eyes seemed to twinkle at her.
“Then, why—”
But she was interrupted by her brother’s voice. “Are you ready to leave, Rebecca?”
She jumped and spun for the second time that night. Samuel stood three risers above her on the stairs.
“I wish you’d make some sort of noise when you move,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows, his gaze flicking to the footman. Rebecca followed his look and found that the black-haired footman stood against the wall again, his eyes straight ahead. It was as if he were a magical creature who’d turned back into wood.
“O’Hare, will you get the door?” Samuel asked, and for a moment Rebecca wondered to whom he spoke.
Then the black-haired footman jumped forward. “Sir.” He opened the door and held it as they walked outside.
Rebecca looked into his face as they passed, but his expression was perfectly blank, and the twinkle was gone from his green eyes. She sighed and laid her hand on Samuel’s arm as he led her down the steps to the carriage. If she didn’t know better, she’d think that she’d imagined her conversation with O’Hare the footman.
They settled into the carriage, and she noticed her brother’s attire for the first time. He wore a perfectly respectable dark green coat and breeches with a gold brocade waistcoat. Unfortunately, he’d chosen to wear his usual leggings and moccasins over his breeches.
“Lady Emeline will not approve of your leggings,” she remarked.
He glanced at his legs, and his lips quirked. “No doubt she’ll make her opinion known.”
She stared at his face, and a funny thought entered her head. Samuel smiled the same way O’Hare the footman did: with his eyes.
LADY EMELINE CONTAINED herself for fully a minute after entering the carriage, which was a minute longer than Sam had estimated.
“What are you thinking to wear such things?” She scowled at his feet and legs.
“I believe I’ve told you before that they’re comfortable.” Probably she would scowl harder if she knew that he thought the expression was adorable. She wore an elaborately embroidered pale red gown with a yellow underskirt. The colors were gentler than those she usually employed, and although they became her, he preferred the flame reds and bold oranges.
She was an elegant lady of the London ton tonight, far removed from the woman who had accompanied him to a warehouse to inspect pottery. What had she thought of their outing? She’d seemed interested in his business transaction, but was it merely the novelty? Or did she perhaps feel the same communion of mind as he did?
Lady Emeline shook her head at him now, oblivious to the direction of his thoughts. Maybe she was beginning to realize the futility of arguing over his leggings. She turned on Rebecca instead. “Now, remember that you must not dance with anyone I have not expressly approved. Nor may you talk to anyone that I have not introduced you to. There will be men—I do not call them gentlemen—who have been known to break these rules, but you must not let them.”
Sam wondered if she was thinking of himself. She turned a gimlet eye on him, and he was made certain. He grinned back at her, his little ruffled hen. Lady Emeline sat beside her aunt, both ladies ramrod straight, although the older woman was nearly a head taller than her niece. The carriage rattled around a corner, making everyone inside sway. Beside him, Rebecca had wrapped her arms about herself.
He leaned close. “You look splendid. I hardly recognized you when I came down the stairs.”
Rebecca bit her lip and peeked up at him, and he was suddenly reminded of her as a little girl. She had looked at him thus when he’d visit her at their uncle’s house in Boston. He remembered her in a white cap and apron, standing shyly in Uncle Thomas’s dark hallway, waiting to greet him. He’d never known what to say to her when he’d visited—he’d come to Boston once or twice a year. His little sister had seemed such a foreign creature, a girl child brought up in the prim civilization of Boston society. All the things he knew—the forest, hunting and trapping, and eventually the army—were completely strange to her.
He blinked now, realizing that Rebecca had spoken to him. “What?”
She leaned close, her brown eyes vulnerable. “Do you think anyone will dance with me?”