Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

L ady Lavinia looked at the clock as she walked into the library, and then turned and looked back at Seth. It felt to Seth as if she was daring him to say something about how late she was—only five minutes again, but even so, they had talked about it. He had expected that she would take it more seriously this time.

He decided not to bring it up. Instead, he pointed to the chair by the fire. “We’d better get started,” he said. “There’s a lot for us to go over, and I don’t want to wear you out so that you’re too tired to apply any of these lessons tomorrow. Have a seat. I want to go over with you what a gentleman looks for in a wife.”

“Don’t they just look for the most beautiful young lady they can find?”

“No, it’s much more complex than that,” Seth said. He settled into the seat across from hers. “A gentleman wants someone retiring—someone obedient. He wants someone he can count on to obey his wishes, and to not make a spectacle of herself.”

“It sounds as if you’re saying gentlemen like wallflowers,” Lady Lavinia said.

“In a lot of ways, I think that’s true,” Seth agreed.

“But it can’t be true,” Lady Lavinia protested. “That exact tendency is what gentlemen haven’t liked about me. You said it yourself. I need to learn how to get their attention, not just wait for them to come to me. I need to find a way to show them the best things about myself, not just hope they see them on their own.”

“That’s right,” Seth said. “Thus far, what you have done is stand on the sidelines and wait to be approached, and that ends poorly for you for a number of reasons. For one, it means that you have no control over who you speak to—you must wait and see which gentlemen take an interest.

“That’s how you end up stuck in conversations like the one you had with that no-good lout at dinner tonight. What you need to learn is how to flirt with gentlemen without being too forward about it. You need to learn how to display your interest, to let them see it—but to also allow them to believe you are still a lady who will submit to their dominance when the time comes.”

“But how can I be both?” Lady Lavinia asked. “It sounds to me like you’re describing two things that are the opposite of one another. You’re saying I should be forward and flirtatious, but you’re also saying I should be subtle and retiring. If I try to be a flirtatious person, won’t I be like Lady Genevieve?”

“This is the very art I’m going to teach you,” Seth said. “There’s a way to be flirtatious—to express your interest to a gentleman—without being so aggressive that you make a show of yourself and frighten him away altogether, as Lady Genevieve did.

“It’s certainly a mistake to grab a gentleman by the arm and restrain him from walking away from you when he wants to do so. That’s a good way to show gentlemen that they ought to avoid you at all costs. But that doesn’t mean there’s no good way for you to express interest.”

“What should I do, then?” Lady Lavinia asked. “I’ve tried many times to engage gentlemen in conversation, but they never seem interested in the things I have to say. In fact, much of the time they seem to think there’s something strange and even foolish about the topics I bring up.”

“We’ll go into that more later,” Seth said. “Choosing an appropriate topic of conversation and being an engaging conversationalist is another matter altogether. But for today, I want to focus on how you can get a gentleman to approach you for conversation in the first place, not what you’ll say once he does.”

“All right,” Lady Lavinia agreed. “I’m willing to trust you on this. What should I do?”

“The first thing you must do is to practice showing gentlemen that you’re sure of yourself,” Seth said.

“Confidence again?”

“Yes, but perhaps not in the way you think. It doesn’t mean walking up to them and informing them that you know you’re worthy of their time.”

“I wasn’t going to be that blunt about it.” She couldn’t help laughing. “All right, but what should I do?”

“Let’s imagine you’re in the ballroom and you see a gentleman you find intriguing,” Seth said. “The first thing you ought to do is try to catch his eye. Try it now. Pretend I’m a gentleman you’re interested in and try to get my attention.”

“I still don’t understand how. What do you mean by catching your eye?”

“Look at me. No, don’t stare, that makes you look odd. Look at me, then look away—but keep looking back. You want to make it seem as if I’m the most interesting thing in the room, and even though you’re trying to turn your attention to other things, your eyes keep wandering back in my direction. As if you can’t help looking at me.” He watched as Lady Lavinia followed his instructions.

“That’s very good, actually. What you’re waiting for is a moment when you find me looking back at you. And when that happens, you don’t look away. Instead, I want you to give me a smile. Just a little one—perfect. You want it to be shy, as if to say you know you’ve been caught, but you also want it to say that you don’t mind being caught because you do want me to see you.”

“Am I doing it right?” Lady Lavinia asked him quietly.

Her gaze lingered on him, and Seth breathed in slowly, looking back at her.

She was a quick study. He found himself thinking what a pity it was that no one had ever told her these things before—she would have learned easily. She was every bit as bewitching as her sister, perhaps even more so.

But at the same time, he felt grateful that she hadn’t learned to fend for herself when it came to social interactions. If she had, she would have been married a long time ago. That much was almost certain. That would mean that he would probably never have met her, and they wouldn’t be sharing the moments they were sharing now. He wouldn’t be getting to know her in the way he was. Even though it would likely have been to her benefit, he found he couldn’t bring himself to wish away this opportunity.

“Your Grace?” she murmured.

Seth cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. Did you ask me something?”

“You’re staring at me.”

“That means it’s working. Your charm is working.” He found himself unable to break eye contact with her, even though she had pointed out the fact that he was staring. Even though he knew that he was the one being awkward and strange now. The sensible, responsible thing would have been to look away, and yet he couldn’t seem to make himself do it.

He cleared his throat again. “All right—pretend I’ve said something funny.”

“What?” Lady Lavinia frowned. “What kind of thing?”

“It doesn’t matter. Anything at all. Just imagine I’ve told a joke that you find humorous.”

“All right,” she said, but she showed no reaction.

“Laugh,” he urged.

“You’re trying to make me laugh? Why don’t you actually tell a joke?”

“I can’t think of a joke on command like that,” Seth said.

“Isn’t that a part of being socially skilled? Being able to make engaging conversation? To make people laugh? I would have thought you’d be very skilled at it. If you aren’t, why are you the right person to teach me anything? Why will having lessons with you make me better at something you’re not that good at?”

“I do fine,” Seth said, clearly nettled. “I don’t happen to have a joke ready for you right this moment, so I’m asking you to use your imagination and come up with one. Do you think you can handle it? I want you to look at me and show me how you would laugh if I had managed to amuse you. Can you handle it or not?”

Lady Lavinia let out a harsh bark of a laugh.

Seth shook his head. “That won’t do at all,” he said. “You sound like a braying donkey.”

“Don’t be so rude . I’m doing my best, here,” she said. “And by the way, you don’t exactly look like the picture of charm yourself, with your lips puckered up like that. You look like you’ve just swallowed something sour.”

“Perhaps it’s because you’re not doing as well as you could be,” he said. “If you were, I wouldn’t look as if I had tasted something sour. If you were charming me well enough, I would look as if I had tasted something sweet.”

“The way you did a moment ago?”

Seth stopped. “What?”

“When you stared at me. When you told me that what I was doing was working,” she said. “You said that my charm was working, and your face softened like it never has before. You looked as if you were enjoying something. It’s…” she stopped.

“What?”

“It’s the most handsome you’ve ever looked,” she murmured. “Are you saying you looked like that because of me, Your Grace?”

Back away. You need to walk away from this , Seth told himself, sensing danger.

She was right. Whatever he had looked like in that moment, it had been because of her. He had allowed himself to forget his responsibilities. He had allowed himself to forget almost everything, and he’d simply relaxed into the pleasure of being with her. Looking into her eyes, seeing what she was like when her guard was down—that had been because of her, and it was the closest to his true self he had been in a very long time.

Of course she had found that version of him appealing. It was real.

And he knew that he had to back away. He had to be very careful with this situation. He was teaching her how to be charming, and to an extent, at least, it had already begun to work—but he couldn’t afford to allow himself to become charmed by her. That wouldn’t serve either of them well. It wasn’t what either of them needed.

Even as all these thoughts played through his mind, she was gazing into his eyes—she certainly had learned that lesson quickly and well. The brown of her eyes was warm, but the green gave her sparks of mystery and excitement, and all he wanted was to take her in his arms.

Where had these feelings come from? He shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn’t be thinking like this. It was a mistake. And yet, he was already reaching out for her, unable to control his desire…

A floorboard creaked.

Someone was moving about the manor, and they were far too close.

Seth jerked away from Lady Lavinia. They couldn’t be caught. They couldn’t be discovered here. “You should go,” he whispered. “You should return to your room.”

“Your Grace?—”

“Quickly, before someone decides to come poking around.”

She nodded, holding his gaze for a moment longer. Then she turned and hurried toward the door. She was gone before he had a chance to rethink what had just happened, before he could process the fact that what he really wanted was to call her back to him.

And then Seth stood in the library, alone, staring at the shelves of books and wondering what had just happened to him.

He couldn’t be falling for Lady Lavinia. That had never been a part of the plan. And if it came to pass, it would create all sorts of trouble—for himself, and for her as well.

He was going to have to be more cautious moving forward. If he was going to teach her to be appealing, he would have to make sure he didn’t fall victim to her appeal.