He came fully into the room. “I have never read anything by that author. But I believe she is quite well-known, is she not?”
“I don’t think you would like it,” Iris said.
He smiled—that warm, languid smile that seemed to melt across his face. “Try me.”
Iris blinked and looked down at the book in her hands before holding it out toward him.
He laughed merrily. “I could not take it away from you.”
She glanced up at him with surprise. “You wish for me to read to you?”
“Why not?”
Her brows rose into doubtful arches. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she murmured, and she scooted over a little on the sofa, trying to quash the sting of disappointment when he instead sat in a chair across from her.
“Did you find it in the library?” he asked. “I imagine it was Fleur’s purchase.”
Iris nodded as she took note of her place before turning back to the beginning. “You have the entire Gorely oeuvre.”
“Really? I had no idea my sister was such a devotee.”
“You did say she likes to read,” Iris remarked. “And Mrs. Gorely is a very popular author.”
“So I’m told,” he murmured.
Iris looked over at him, and he regally inclined his head, signaling for her to begin. “Chapter One,” she read. “Miss Ivory Truesdale was orphaned on—” She looked back up. “Are you sure you want me to read this? I cannot imagine you will enjoy it.”
He regarded her with a deeply amused expression. “You realize you must read it now, after all your protestations.”
Iris shook her head. “Very well.” She cleared her throat. “Miss Ivory Truesdale was orphaned on a Wednesday afternoon, when her father was struck through the heart by a poison-tipped arrow, shot from the quiver of a Hungarian master archer, brought to England for the sole purpose of bringing about his gruesome and untimely demise.”
She looked up.
“Grim,” Richard said.
Iris nodded. “It gets worse.”
“How can it possibly?”
“The Hungarian archer meets his demise in a few chapters.”
“Let me guess. A carriage accident.”
“Far too pedestrian,” Iris scoffed. “This is the author who pecked a character to death with pigeons in another book.”
Richard’s mouth opened, then closed. “Pigeons,” he finally said, blinking several times in rapid succession. “Remarkable.”
Iris held up the book. “Shall I continue?”
“Please,” he said, with the particular expression of a man who is not at all certain he is treading the right path.
Iris cleared her throat. “For the next six years, Ivory was unable to face a Wednesday afternoon without remembering the silent swish of the arrow as it swept by her face on its way to her father’s doomed heart.”
Richard muttered something under his breath. Iris could not make out the exact words, but she was fairly certain crapulence was among them.
“Each Wednesday was torture. To rise from her meager bed required energy she rarely possessed. Food was unpalatable, and sleep, when she found it, was her only escape.”
Richard snorted.
Iris looked up. “Yes?”
“Nothing.”
She turned back to the book.
“But really,” he said with indignance, “Wednesdays?”
She looked back up.
“The woman is afraid of Wednesdays?”
“Apparently.”
“Only Wednesdays.”
Iris shrugged.
“What happens on Thursdays?”
“I was about to say.”
Richard rolled his eyes at her impertinence and motioned for her to continue.
Iris gave him a deliberately patient stare, signaling her preparation for another interruption. He returned the expression with equal irony, and she turned back to the text.
“Thursdays brought hope and renewal, although one could not say that Ivory had reason to hope, nor could one say that her soul was renewed. Her life in Miss Winchell’s Home for Orphaned Children was tedious at best and wretched at worst.”
“Tedious might be the first apt word of the novel,” Richard scoffed.
Iris raised her brows. “Shall I stop?”
“Please. I do not think I can bear to go on.”
Iris bit back a smile, feeling just a little bit wicked for enjoying his distress.
“But I still want to know how the Hungarian archer dies,” Richard added.
“That will spoil the story for you,” Iris countered, adopting a prim expression.