Free The Indian Maiden by Edith Layton

visitors.
    “And,” Lord Deal paused at the top of the stairs to ask, with a show of uncertainty, “correct me if I’m wrong, sir, for you’re the classical scholar, but wasn’t there also some talk about that other lovely foreign lady, Lucretia Borgia?” And then, despite the lateness of the hour, their unbridled laughter drifted down the stair.

 
    FOUR
    Some of the young people wanted to play at lawn bowls, just as that amusing young American Miss Hamilton suggested. But several mamas frowned at the idea, and not a few of the young ladies who wished to be styled as “ fragile” resisted as well. No one wished to go riding, as the older gentlemen had done hours ago, since no one could come up with workable, amiable groupings for the venture. They had picnicked the day before, similarly, croquet had already been deemed a bore, and only three persons voted for an archery match. Everyone was growing irritable, and as one guest remarked, it didn’t even have the decency to rain and cancel all their options. No, it was a beautifully sunny day they had somehow to get through until night. The night would bring a dance party, but it was fully eight hours away no matter how you wound your watch, another guest grumped.
    Someone suggested that they get blankets and cushions and sit out on the lawns again, but the mere thought filled Faith with loathing. She couldn’t understand how it was that they all looked forward so to the dancing this evening, when most of the people who would be in attendance there were already sitting about in the same room together right now, obviously bored to pieces with each other already. She’d been told that several of the young persons had serious intentions toward several of the others in the room, but, she wondered, how could they contemplate a life together when they could scarcely pass a summer’s afternoon with each other without dozing?
    “It isn’t afternoons that they think about spending together when they think of marriage,” the earl said languidly after she’d whispered her query to him. Even as she flushed, he added, “It’s settlements and annuities, my dear—why, you’re blushing, you naughty thing.”
    She grinned at him. Lady Mary was unavailable, since as hostess she must not closet herself with any one guest. And as Will was desperately attempting to alter that circumstance and so hovered around her shoulder more closely than a shawl, Faith had been left to herself. She didn’t wish to make any further blunders and so this afternoon avoided dangerous chatter with the more flighty members of the party, since exhibitions of lack of wit sometimes goaded her to excess, while a companion with too high spirits might carry her away. But the earl, as always so cool, laconic, and entertaining, was the perfect gentleman to linger with.
    He stood beside her now, or lolled there, she corrected herself, smiling bemusedly and observing the follies of the company through half-closed eyes. He was as different from the rest of them as she was, although as an earl of the realm he had every reason to be precisely like them. But not only was he a head taller than any in the room, in his habitual night-black raiment there was no doubt he was paler and thinner and more elegant, and much older than any of the others, as well. Perhaps it was that which linked them, Faith thought. For where she was an outsider in an alien land, he appeared to be an alien within his own circle.
    There was nothing romantic in her friendship with the earl, the mere thought of that was absurd. Not only was she a girl who steadfastly resisted such nonsense, but even should she indulge in foolishness, she thought, this sardonic, elongated, and distant nobleman was not the sort of fellow to stir those sorts of notions. There was nothing in the least loverlike in either his attitude or his conversation. She thought of delicious quips when she watched those pale thin lips, not kisses, and no more considered the