A Yuletide Treasure by Cynthia Bailey Pratt Page A

coach. Then, he’d been someone to ignore or even to snub in accordance with her mother’s imperatives. Now, since fate or Providence had thrown them into acquaintanceship, she wished to further it.
    Not merely, she told herself, because he was both attractive and pleasantly spoken, but because he’d seen things that she wished to see, had been places that she would like to go, and, undoubtedly, had experienced many adventures that would thrill her as well. Since it was exceedingly unlikely that she’d have any future chance to leave her mother, let alone England, Camilla thought that achieving these ambitions secondhand would be better than not achieving them at all.
    Seeing that Dr. March had gone on to regale Tinarose with the tale of his attempts to ride, Camilla smiled encouragingly at Sir Philip. “You must have enjoyed your opportunities to travel, sir. Is it only restiveness that has taken you to these far corners of the world? Or do you have some end in view?”
    “I wish I could fascinate you with my noble reasons for undertaking my journeys,” he said, seating himself beside her. “My brother had the excuse of his duty. I, on the other hand, had only what the Germans call wanderlust. I simply set out one morning from this front door and walked away.”
    “Just like that?”
    He chuckled. “There was some little preparation involved, of course. I didn’t run down the drive without so much as a florin or a clean shirt. Perhaps next time I shall try that.”
    “What did your parents think of your leaving home? How old were you?” She stopped. “I don’t mean to be inquisitive.”
    “Why not? If you don’t ask questions, how will you learn?”
    “Socrates?”
    “Perhaps. It only makes sense, but I can’t prove it.” He observed her in silence for a moment. “You know Socrates?”
    “Not firsthand. Very little of my knowledge comes firsthand. I don’t read Greek or Latin, so I only know the ancient philosophers through what others have written about them. Several of my friends at home know them well, however.”
    “Female friends?” he asked.
    Camilla shook her head slightly. “Several gentlemen of my neighborhood have formed the habit of stopping by several times a month at my mother’s house. They discuss lofty subjects.”
    “Sounds like the Royal Society.”
    “With this exception—women are not even permitted to listen at the Royal Society.”
    “Nor to speak?” He raised one eyebrow loftily.
    Camilla was forced to laugh. “Not very often, perhaps. They would be distressed to discover how little of their discourse I... I understand.”
    “Now, why do I believe,” he began, sitting back against the cushion, “that you intended to say not how little you understand but how little you agree with them.”
    “Perhaps, but it isn’t very grammatical or polite to say so.” Camilla turned her face toward Dr. March and Tinarose. Sir Philip saw entirely too much with his parti-colored eyes.
    “You say these young men come to your mother’s house several times a month. Why? Haven’t they any of their own to go to?”
    “Several.”
    “Yet they come to your mother’s house. There must be some powerful inducement there.”
    “Oh, there is,” she said, turning her gaze upon him again. She smiled secretly to see him taken aback and was pleased to know that he had already a high enough opinion of her demureness to be surprised by her seeming immodesty. She let him hang upon his regret for a moment. “My mother bakes the most delicious beignet de pommes on earth. Not even you, widely traveled though you are, have ever tasted better.”
    “Can you make them?”
    “I haven’t her lightness of touch with the pastry.”
    “I think your touch is sufficiently light for anything.”
    The look that passed between them then was not measurable in anything but heartbeats, the oldest form of timekeeping and the most accurate when it came to gauging feelings. Sir Philip’s eyes were telling