Page 3 of Set in Stone

Twenty was the top score she had ever given. That was to a man who was already betrothed to a friend of hers, and most of the points had been awarded for his clear adulation of his beloved. More commonly, gentlemen left an encounter with her unknowingly wearing a negative score.

She had not thought of the points game at all in the past ten minutes, but now she wanted to give him fifteen points immediately, five for treating her like an intelligent human being, five for saying things that were interesting, and five for saying “someone.” Also, another two points for his looks and at least two for his voice, which was a lovely rumble that seemed to vibrate right through her.

Gracious! He had earned nineteen points already, and she did not even know his name!

They were walking past a memorial plaque on which some ancient craftsman had depicted the lord and lady whose blessed repose was the topic of the words incised into the stone. Arianna, in a sudden fit of whimsy, addressed herself to the lady. “My dear Lady Huddlestone, I am Miss Arianna Westbrook. May I request your indulgence in presenting this gentleman to me?”

The gentleman did not disappoint her. He bowed to the figure carved into the plaque. “Thomas Medlock, at your service, Lady Huddlestone.”

Arianna pretended to listen to the lady. “Why yes, Lady Huddlestone, I would be delighted.” Then she curtseyed to Mr. Medlock, offering him her hand. “Mr. Medlock, I am pleased to meet you.”

“I am charmed to make your acquaintance, Miss Westbrook,” said Mr. Medlock, bowing over her gloved hand but, very properly, not touching it except with his own gloved hand.

“It is wonderful to meet someone who can converse intelligently about architecture,” Arianna said. Her honesty and bluntness, according to her mother, were disastrous in social settings, but Arianna did not much care what a lot of social gadflies thought about her, and she did care what she thought about herself.

In this case, though, as soon as the words had left her mouth, she was worried that Mr. Medlock might think her too candid. Yet had he not said something similar?

“I feel the same way,” said Mr. Medlock. “The friends with whom I am travelling mock my interest. As do the rest of my friends, come to that.”

“My mother thinks I must have been swapped in the cradle,” Arianna said. Her mother was her biggest trial. Which meant, come to think of it, that she was blessed compared to many.

Mr. Medlock chuckled. “My sister swears I was put on earth to bedevil her into an early grave. She takes my lack of interest in the life of a London dandy as a personal insult.”

So, he was a gentleman! And wealthy enough to be a London dandy if he were fool enough to see that as an attractive pursuit.

She sighed. “Relatives can be a trial!”

“Neither of them is here, however,” said Mr. Medlock. “We can enjoy the architecture to our hearts’ content. May I say, Miss Westbrook, how nice it is to have congenial company while doing so?”

“You may.” Congenial company! Arianna had been called many things, but never congenial company. She pointed up at the painting above where they stood. “What do you think that one is?”

Mr. Medlock peered at it, his head tilted back. Arianna could make out a human figure with—was it a bowl?

“Is it the sower?” Mr. Medlock asked.

“Oh yes,” said Arianna. “And those dots scattered across the ceiling are not water spots. They are seeds. Well done, Mr. Medlock.”

They continued strolling around the church, commenting on a carving here, a painting there, a memorial plaque somewhere else. Arianna was certain she had never before been so comfortable with a man. Any man.

Somewhere in their conversation, she discovered he was here on business. He did not say what sort of business, but it was something that required fine weather. What a pity. Her mother would never tolerate a son-in-law who was in business, though Arianna’s own father had been a highly successful merchant.

And look at her getting so far ahead of herself. Mr. Medlock was being polite to someone he met when he was whiling away the rainy hours, and she had already built a castle in the air in which to wed the poor man. Such a waste of time, when she had no idea whether he was married, and every indication from past experience suggested that she was not the sort of girl to prompt romantic feelings in a man!

She was behaving like the silly girls she so despised, fancying herself in love on the basis of a finely shaped calf and pleasant conversation. How ridiculous!

Three

It would be wrong to say, though Thom was tempted to do so, that he’d never met a lady as intelligent as Miss Westbrook. He had met many intelligent women, including his sister, who was twelve years his senior and as clever, in her own way, as any man he knew.

What he had not met was a lady who spoke intelligently about the same things that interested him. She knew about the golden number, for example—the mathematical ratio that, in architecture, was believed to give a building balance, harmony, and interest.

And she recognized that the thick walls of this church had been made by building two parallel walls of stone and filling the gap with smaller stones, rubble and lime mortar. Thom was able to tell her why—that the kind of walls found in cathedrals and the like required master stone masons, whereas this church would have been built by unskilled peasants, ordered to the work by the local bishop or landowner. She accepted his information with a delighted smile, which further entranced him. It was so rare to meet anyone, male or female, so enthusiastic about abstruse historical facts.

It didn’t hurt that she was strikingly attractive. Not pretty in a china fashion doll sort of a way, but magnificent in the manner of a warrior queen, with auburn hair that seemed to have a mind of its own, a determined nose and chin, creamy skin dusted with a few pale freckles, and curves that he, as a gentleman, was honor-bound to ignore, even while his mouth watered and an ungentlemanly part of him reacted with unseemly enthusiasm.

They must have been talking for half an hour when a maid hurried into the church, looked at him in alarm, and inserted herself between him and Miss Westbrook. “Miss, your mama is awake and looking for you. If she finds out you came here to meet a man?—”

“If you tell her that, Brownlee, you will be lying. I came here to look at the paintings, as did this gentleman. We were introduced by a lady who resides hereabouts, and we have been talking.”