My Sweet Folly by Laura Kinsale Page B

see you.”
    “That does not mean that I have not thought of you every minute,” he said.
    Folie drew in her breath. She tried to remember the clever lines she had prepared as she had lain in her bed staring up at the darkness. But all she could feel was her nerves; all she could think to say was, “What did you mean? In that note?’’
    His eyebrow lifted. “Note?”
    “You wrote me a note, did you not?” She gestured toward the writing desk. “And left it there.”
    He looked down at her disapprovingly, as if she were an unruly servant. “I suppose that I did.”
    “What did you mean? To say that you are lost?”
    There was a long pause. He gave a cold smile. “No doubt I had taken too much wine. Kindly erase it from your memory.”
    She bit her lip and turned to the window.  
    “What shall I do to convince you?” he asked.  
    She turned back. “Convince me of what?”  
    “That I wish you and Miss Melinda to stay.” He gave a faint shrug. “I’ll come to dinner, if it pleases you.”  
    “That would be most kind!” Folie said. They stood in silence.
    “Shall I—” He seemed to come to an impasse with his sentence, and then said suddenly, with a gesture toward the door, “Shall I show you the garden?”
    “It is raining,” she murmured.
    “Then the picture gallery.”
    Folie moved restlessly away from the window. “I have seen the picture gallery.”
    “What a difficult princess you are!”
    “Well, I don’t mean to be difficult—” Folie said quickly. She stopped. “I am difficult?” She gave a huff. “That must make you impossible!”
    He gave a bare nod, as if to accede to the verdict. “I believe ladies always find gentlemen impossible, do they not?”
    “No doubt,” Folie said coolly.
    “That is what my sisters tell me.”
    “Oh yes. You have sisters.” She recalled that he did, although it seemed as if he must have sprung from no family at all, have walked one day fully grown from some cold mountain cavern.
    “Two,” he said. “Lady Ryman lives in London. Mrs. Coke is in Bombay, but I believe she is intending to return here with her children this year. The boy is six; he’ll enter Eton, I suppose.” He paused a moment, and then said, “I’m glad that Frances will come.”
    “You are close to her?”
    “Close?” His brow lifted again, as if the question were an impertinence. “No, I cannot say so. I am not close to either of my sisters, in truth.”
    Folie tilted her head. “But you are glad she will come to England?”
    “With her children.” He shrugged. “I think it a good thing, that their mother comes home with them. It is difficult for a child of six to travel so far and begin school alone.”
    “So I should suppose!” Folie exclaimed. “Surely that is not common practice?”
    “In some families,” he said briefly.  
    “Poor things!”
    “It is India. The boys must attend school, the girls must learn their English manners. If the wife prefers to remain with her husband, then the children must come alone, or with friends or some relative. Or as I did, with a hired bearleader.”
    “Cannot they go to school in India?”
    He smiled dryly. “No, they cannot.”
    “You are quite right, it is a great good that your sister comes.” Folie looked at the writing desk. “I did not even know my mother. And yet I missed her every day of my life.”
    “Yes,” he said.
    “I should like to be the best of mothers to Melinda. But it is so difficult sometimes.”
    “You are an excellent mother.”
    Folie lifted her head. “I should not suppose you had enough evidence to judge.”
    “One reveals a great deal of one’s character in letters.” One corner of his mouth turned up crookedly. “You do, at any rate.”
    She felt herself becoming flustered. It seemed as if the conversation had somehow reeled off into topics she had never meant to discuss with him. “I have spoiled her dreadfully. But she is very good, and hardly needs to be curbed.”
    “And