Chapter 7
Dorothy and Nathaniel made their way over to a bench by the edge of the water. “Would you like to sit?” Nathaniel asked.
She glanced at him. “People will remark on the two of us sitting here together,” she told him. “There will be things said about it.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he countered. “After all, without you to report on us to the gossips, I’m not sure anyone will take any notice of us.”
“You truly believe me to be the biggest source of gossip in all of London,” she exclaimed, taking a seat on the bench.
He couldn’t keep the smile off his face. “I’m only teasing,” he said. “You aren’t the one who writes those things, after all.”
“And I rarely send anything in,” she said. “I have no interest in scandal.”
He frowned. “Why did you send my list in, then, if it isn’t the kind of thing you usually do?” he asked. “What made you respond differently because it was me?”
“It wasn’t because it was you,” she said. “I wouldn’t have even known the list was yours if you hadn’t put your name at the top—that was a rather foolish thing to do, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps,” Nathaniel allowed grudgingly. “Still, I can’t see why you were so intent on damaging my reputation.”
She looked away. “There was no reason.”
Well, that certainly wasn’t true. It was clear by the look on her face that she was concealing something.
But she’d respected his privacy, and he knew the right thing to do now was to respect hers.
“If you say so,” he told her, hoping that she understood he was allowing her to get away with her little fib.
“Anyway, my point remains—I don’t think anyone is going to think too much about what you and I are doing on this bench, especially given that your sisters are just a few yards away from us. ”
And so saying, he sat down next to her.
She tensed a little, as though unsure whether this was something she wanted, but in the end she permitted him to stay. “Perhaps you’re right,” she told him. “Maybe nobody will think anything much about it.”
“To tell you the truth,” he told her, “I think you put more thought into the people around you than almost anyone I’ve ever met.”
Dorothy raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that it’s surprising to me just how much you seem to know about everyone,” he explained.
“Everyone we see, you’re able to tell me so many things about them.
Who they are. Who their family is. Why they’re looking for marriage, if they are at all.
And every time, I’m surprised, though I don’t know how I manage to remain surprised.
But what I really want to know is this—how do you know all these things?
Have you made a study of everyone in London? ”
“Of course I haven’t,” Dorothy said. “Nothing like that. I think everyone would know the things I do if they simply paid attention. It’s just that most people are far too wrapped up in their own affairs to notice what’s going on with everyone around them.”
“But you’re not,” Nathaniel said. “Is that it? Everyone else is distracted from the world around them, but you…you pay attention to things?”
“Well, yes, I do,” Dorothy agreed.
“How can you manage that, when nobody else does?”
Her cheeks were pink again. She was beautiful when she blushed like that, Nathaniel thought.
It made her impossible to look away from.
Not that he wanted to look away. For a moment, he wished she wasn’t Dorothy—that she wasn’t the best friend of his closest friends’ wives.
He couldn’t marry her, of course. She wasn’t at all what he was looking for.
She wasn’t a natural mother. But someone like her, perhaps.
Someone who blushed prettily like that. That would be a nice thing to have around.
“It’s because I’m a wallflower,” she explained. “Surely you’ve heard that said about me.”
He had, come to think of it. Gabriel and Jonathan had both made comments to that effect. “What does that have to do with this?”
“When you’re standing off to the side and not taking direct part in things,” she explained, “it frees you up to notice what’s going on around you much more than others do.
It allows you to see what people are doing and to recognize patterns in their behavior.
It lets you overhear conversations you might not have been meant to hear, because some people simply don’t trouble to keep their voices down.
The world is full of secrets—some secrets people aren’t trying that hard to keep.
It’s easy to learn all about people when they make no particular attempt to keep you from doing so, and when you learn to keep your eyes open and remain alert to what’s going on around you. ”
So, she knew all these things just because she paid attention to them.
It made Nathaniel feel slightly foolish.
He had told his friends, over and over, how difficult it was to differentiate between the ladies of the ton.
He had believed this struggle to be a real thing, something anyone would have a difficult time with.
But now he thought perhaps he had been creating problems for himself.
Maybe anyone could have learned the difference between all these ladies by simply paying attention to what was going on around him.
Maybe Nathaniel was ignorant by his own fault.
But could he really be expected to set aside the business of living his own life just so that he could learn everything about every young lady in London? It seemed a great deal to ask of anyone.
“Why do you do that?” he asked Dorothy.
She frowned in obvious confusion. “Why do I do what?”
“Remain on the sidelines of life,” he explained. “You call yourself a wallflower, but why do you choose to remain that way? I can’t believe that it is because you have no options.”
“You can’t?” She cocked her head at him.
“Well, you’re pretty enough,” he said. “You’re easy to talk to—even if you are a bit stubborn and self-righteous.”
“No, I’m not!” she said hotly, but then she saw that he was grinning. “You tease too much.”
“Perhaps. But I think there’s a part of you that enjoys it,” he told her.
“I think you like arguing with me. Perhaps you’ve never had anyone to argue with.
I think it must be rather dull, always being on the sidelines of life.
Maybe you’re glad that I asked you to help me with this, so that at last you’re able to be in the thick of things.
Maybe you’re eager to be a part of my journey to find marriage. ”
“Maybe you’re just looking for excuses to mock people who are doing nothing but trying to help you,” Dorothy fired back.
Nathaniel was hard pressed not to laugh.
He wouldn’t have been laughing at her, rather, with pleasure at how much he was enjoying himself.
It had been some time since he’d had banter like this with anybody, and he certainly hadn’t expected it from the quiet, retiring lady who had been at the dinner party he had attended at Gabriel’s home several months ago.
She had truly surprised him with how much fun she was to be around.
But if he had laughed, he had no doubt that she would have perceived it as mockery, and he didn’t want her to feel mocked by him. He wanted her to be at ease.
So, he suppressed the laugh. “Tell me, though,” he said. “I really want to know. You elected to spend your life as a wallflower. You could be out looking for your own marriage instead of seeing to my prospects, but you haven’t chosen to do that, and I wonder why that is.”
“No one has ever asked me that before,” she said.
“Or rather…I suppose I should say that everyone has asked me that, but when they do, they always sound certain that they already know they answer and are just trying to get me to admit to something. No one ever asks as though they simply want to know what I will say.”
“What do people want you to admit to?” Nathaniel asked, mystified.
Dorothy sighed. “People want me to tell them that I secretly long to marry,” she said. “They want me to say it’s all I want, and that I desperately need them to intercede and help me. They want me to ask them to save me from the dreadful plight of the spinster.”
“And I take it you don’t wish to be saved?”
She shook her head. “Love can be a very painful thing,” she said, her gaze suddenly very far away.
Nathaniel frowned. They had been laughing together, but she was very serious now that she was talking about the pain that could be brought about by love.
Had she loved before? And lost? Was that her reason for wanting to avoid love moving forward?
Maybe she thought there was no way it could end happily.
Maybe she didn’t want to risk her heart because she had been hurt before.
If that was what it was, he couldn’t blame her. She was right. Love could end in heartache and pain.
“I suppose you have a point there,” he said.
She stared out over the water. “Nobody thinks so,” she said. “When I say that to people, they tell me perhaps I should simply marry for something other than love. For security, or for the sake of my reputation.”
“And you don’t want to marry for those reasons?”
“No,” she said. “Not really. Not particularly. I can manage things on my own. I have no need to marry for fortune. My father provides for me very well. I don’t need to see to my reputation, because people already talk about me and I have already decided I don’t care about that.
If I were to fall in love, I might perhaps feel differently about what marriage has to offer, but that’s the very reason I don’t want to fall in love.
I don’t want to risk losing myself to emotions that fly in the face of common sense and reason.
I don’t want to allow myself to get hurt, and when you fall in love, you invariably do get hurt. ”
She looked at him, eyebrows lifted, as though daring him to try to talk her out of that opinion.
Nathaniel wasn’t going to do that.
She was right. Loving someone, in any form or context, meant allowing for the possibility that you might get hurt. Dorothy was wise to want to protect herself from pain, and he certainly wasn’t going to try to dissuade her.
He rose to his feet. “Perhaps we ought to get back to your sisters,” he suggested. “I wouldn’t want them to think you had fallen into the water.”
He noted the expression of deep relief on her face as she rose to her feet—she was ready to get back to her sisters as well. “I’m sorry we didn’t find the person you’re looking for today.”
“That’s all right,” he told her, and found that he meant it. “There are plenty of balls still ahead of us this season. There will be plenty of time to find the lady I’m looking for.”
And in the meantime, I’ll be able to spend more time with Dorothy.
Perhaps it was true that the two of them had not been friends before today. But he was so enjoying her company now that he was beginning to believe friendship just might lie ahead.