My Fair Lord by Wilma Counts

Author:Wilma Counts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2017-07-05T17:18:25+00:00

Chapter 12

Retta lay in her bed, once again robbed of sleep as she wrestled with her inappropriate attraction to Mr. Bolton; she could not deny the qualities of the man that were at the core of that attraction. Nor could she ignore the contradictions: a farmer’s son, a sailor on a cargo vessel, a London dockworker. But he played the piano with a degree of expertise that was simply inconsistent with the level of training to which he admitted. Had he lied? Dissembled? If so, why?

He claimed a local vicar had allowed him to join lessons the churchman had conducted for paid pupils. Retta knew this was not an uncommon practice, nor did she discount a person’s ability to educate himself beyond any level of formal education he might have had. And then there was the vicar’s incredibly talented wife who had taught him music.

Retta was sure that casual reference to Shakespeare’s famous line about music came from something other than seeing a single performance of a play performed by traveling players in a country village. Come to think of it, Mr. Bolton had let other such references slip in their conversations. She recalled their once discussing the self-indulgent behavior of the Prince Regent. She had said something about how the Prince and his royal siblings had been reared. Mr. Bolton had replied, “Well there is some truth in that line that ‘the child is father of the man.’” She had been impressed by his cleverness at the time, but now she wondered how much more of Wordsworth’s work he had committed to memory?

And, finally, there was that display of incredible horsemanship. Such skill had not come from working with draft animals on a tenant farm! She recalled other details he had shared of his life in their prolonged lessons. Details about the make-up of his family, for instance. How much of it was even remotely true? And how could she possibly challenge him at this stage when so much depended on his winning that infernal wager for her?

Concerned that he might be uncomfortable in such exalted company, she had been nervous when he came into the drawing room to receive the accolades of Lord and Lady Davenport—parents of the child he had saved. She need not have worried. He carried on as though he had been born to such company.

He rarely lapsed into the country dialect anymore. She was proud of his progress in that area. He had learned proper speaking very easily. Too easily? She dismissed this idea when she recalled the ease with which she herself had learned German. When she was thirteen, Retta had taken it into her head to learn the native language of England’s Hanoverian king and queen. Her father had indulged her in this and hired a tutor for her. The countess had dismissed the whole thing as a waste of time; when, pray tell, was Henrietta likely to hold a dinner table conversation with the royal family? It had taken Retta a mere three months to become reasonably fluent.

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