“Why do you favor this restaurant?” she asked as she tugged off her gloves. “It’s far from Belgravia.”
“It serves the best rice and curry dishes,” he replied. “The head chef and co-owner is from Gujarat.”
She smiled. “Do you prefer your foods sweet or spicy?”
He looked her in the eye. “Sweet. Why?”
“Knowing your preferences would help me with the meal plan.”
“Meal plan,” he repeated, confounded.
She tilted her head. “For your cook? He keeps a tidy kitchen, but the pantry looked a little bare this morning.”
“Right.” In any regular household, wives were indeed in charge of the weekly meal planning. He felt oddly relieved when a waiter approached him with the menu.
“Want to take a look yourself?” he offered when he noticed Harriet peering at the menu across the table, and her eyes brightened.
“Yes, please.”
He hadn’t just offered to indulge her independent streak. In loftier London restaurants the menu was invariably written in French, which was the bane of his lunch experiences, for he didn’t speak French, nor had he the time to study it. It had made for some terrible surprises when he had chosen blindly in the past; best to stick to the dishes he knew he enjoyed.
“It seems that except for select Gujarati cuisine, all the dishes are French,” Harriet remarked.
“You’ve no trouble with foreign languages, then, or with reading?”
She glanced up, wariness shimmering in her eyes. “Reading poses no problem.”
“What is the problem?”
It was bad conduct to mention her impairment, but he did want to understand it.
“The trouble is the writing,” Harriet said. “Even if I were to copy the same lines I just read, I’ll likely make an error. The same applies to rows of figures.” She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t know why. Words that are spelled similarly apparently look the same to me. Some letters dance.”
“Dance?” he said, baffled.
“Yes. Some are more agile than others.” She slid the menu toward him. “The baked goat cheese with the pear chutney, please.”
Her smile was overbright, like the too-white brilliance of a false diamond. Her affliction troubled her.
“You’re up at Oxford,” he said, feeling an urge to make it better. “Your brain won you a place, unless that was bought and paid for.”
“You can’t buy a place at Oxford,” she said indignantly.
“So you convinced Ruskin. He’s no fool.”
Her false smile turned sarcastic.
“You think he’s a fool?” he asked.
The waiter returned to take their orders and pour some white wine.
Harriet enjoyed a few sips before returning to his question. “Ruskin is no fool,” she said. “He is a titan in the art world, and I idolized him long before I made his personal acquaintance. I first met him for my admission interview, in his office, and he rose from his chair and said, ‘Ah, but you look too lovely to be clever.’”
Even he could tell that this was a shite compliment. “Badly done,” he said.
“Men say such things frequently, so I’m quite inured,” Harriet said, her cheeks turning rosy from the wine. Her skin hid nothing, one of several things that intrigued him about her. “Except that in my family,” she continued, “I was the Lovely One. Flossie and Mina were the Bright Ones. I thought it was perfectly fine to be lovely, until Ruskin made me think it was a synonym for silly. …” She interrupted herself, just like she had earlier in the carriage. Remembering that she didn’t trust him yet. Perhaps she never would.
“The male students,” he asked. “How do they treat you?”
“Oh, they were rather excited about the female cohort,” came the vague reply.
His gaze narrowed. “They bother you?”
She shifted on her seat. “No.”
“Not at all? No comments, no staring?”
“Well, sometimes. When I visit one of their lecture halls. Or pass them by on the street. Or bump into them in Blackwell’s or the Bodleian. But the naughty comments, they usually say in Latin. Which, admittedly, I understand well enough.”
Floppy-haired, pompous little twats. “I see,” he muttered, feeling the tension in his face.
Harriet looked alarmed. “You said you wouldn’t object to my studies,” she said.
“I don’t,” he replied. “I’ll introduce you to Carson later today—your new protection officer.”