The Seduction of Lady Charity: The Baxendale Sisters Book Four by Maggi Andersen Page B

evening?”
    “I hope so.” She looked up. “It’s very good of you to entertain my aunt. I believe she has been far too long without company.”
    “Lady Huddlestone believes she is launching you into Northumberland society,” he said with a grin.
    She grinned back. “I wish her to think so.”
    “I plan to ask you to stand up with me for the waltz.”
    She put down her pencil. “I wasn’t aware there’d be music. I doubt I shall dance.”
    “We have yet to dance together. Perhaps the waltz is new to you? No need to be nervous,” he added in a sympathetic tone.
    She narrowed her eyes, and a small smile lifted her lips. “I suspect you’re trying to goad me into accepting, Robin.”
    He would have her in his arms, by God. “Surely you’ll save your host a dance or two? It would be rude of you not to.”
    “Yes, you’re right it would.” She smiled and put down her pencil then stretched her neck, rolling her shoulders.
    “Would you like me to rub your back?”
    “No, thank you.” She dropped her gaze to the watch pinned to her bodice, a telltale flush on her cheeks. “The curricle will arrive shortly to take me home.”
    “May I see what you’ve done?”
    She tied the ribbons of her sketchpad. “Not yet.”
    “You are most disobliging.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said, wrinkling her brow. “I can’t work that way. When I feel it’s fit to be seen, you, of course, will be the first to view it.”
    “I’ve seen many of your paintings, your drawings too.”
    “But this is different.” She took up her sketchpad and stood. “Jed asked if he could wait with the curricle at your stables. One of your grooms is his cousin. Will you escort me?”
    “Seeing as you ask so nicely.”
    They left the house and walked through the gardens. It had rained earlier, and the pungent smell of earth and greenery rose in the moist air. “My sister and her husband arrive in the morning. Louise was of great assistance at my ball.”
    “I do look forward to seeing Louise again.”
    “I’m sure she feels the same. She is fond of you and your sisters.”
    They walked past the beds of rose bushes, where a few brownish blooms still hung determinedly amongst the leaves. “This garden will have a glorious display in spring,” Charity said.
    “There’s a standing invitation for you to view them.”
    “Thank you. Mama will be delighted. She loves roses.”
    “The Baxendale sisters are like roses,” he said. “Honor is a very deep pink, Faith the palest of pinks, Hope somewhere in between, and Mercy, ah…a sweet pink bud about to bloom.”
    She laughed. “You forgot me.”
    “I didn’t forget. You are a pure-white bloom.”
    She frowned. “White sounds puritanical. And boring.” She turned to him. “And it also represents conflict! During the fifteenth century, the white rose symbolized York in the War of the Roses.”
    “White is pure of spirit and honest.”
    She widened her blue eyes. “Is that how you see me?”
    “Amongst other things,” he said ambiguously.
    She shook her head. “You are a frightful tease, Robin.”
    He laughed. “In ancient Egypt, Cleopatra had her living quarters filled with the petals of roses so that after Marc Antony left her he would long remember her for such opulence and be reminded of her every time he smelt a rose.” Pleasure threaded through him when her eyes sparkled with laughter. “Apparently Cleopatra’s scheme worked. Such is the power of roses.”
    Charity nodded. “Cleopatra was an enchantress whose beauty cast a dangerous spell over men.”
    “Surely she was more than that. In Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra , Domitius Enobarbus says of her ‘Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love.’”
    “That was in reply to Marc Anthony, who had said, ‘She is cunning beyond thought.’ We must continue this discussion of Shakespeare at a later time.” Charity dropped his arm and hurried forward. “There’s Jed