Cynthia Pratt

an excerpt

Camilla smiled encouragingly at Sir Philip.“You must have enjoyed your opportunities to travel, sir. Is it only restiveness that has taken you to these far corners of the world? Or do you have some end in view?”

“I wish I could fascinate you with my noble reasons for undertaking my journeys,” he said, seating himself beside her. “My late brother had the excuse of his duty. I, on the other hand, had only what the Germans call wanderlust. I simply set out one morning from this front door and walked away.”

“Just like that?”

He chuckled. “There was some little preparation involved, of course. I didn’t run down the drive without so much as a florin or a clean shirt. Perhaps next time I shall try that.”

“What did your parents think of your leaving home? How old were you?” She stopped. “I don’t mean to be inquisitive.”

“Why not? If you don’t ask questions, how will you learn?”

“Socrates?”

He observed her in silence for a moment. “You know Socrates?”

“Not firsthand. Very little of my knowledge comes firsthand. I don’t read Greek or Latin. I only know the ancient philosophers through what others have written about them. Several of my friends at home know them well, however.”

“Female friends?”

Camilla shook her head slightly. “Several gentlemen of my neighborhood had formed the habit of stopping by several times a month at my mother’s house. They discuss loftly subjects.”

“Sounds like the Royal Society.”

”With this exception…women are not even permitted to listen at the Royal Society.”

“Nor to speak?” He raised one eyebrow loftily.

Camilla was forced to laugh. “Not very often, perhaps. They would be distressed to discover how little of their discourse I...I understand.”

“Now why do I believe,” he began sitting back against the cushion, “that you intended to say not how little you understand but how little you agree with them.”

The look that passed between them then was not measurable in anything but heartbeats, the oldest form of timekeeping and the most accurate when it came to gauging feelings. Sir Philip’s eyes were telling her that the physical admiration he’d known in the coach had already deepened into an acknowledgement of pleasure in her company and conversation. Camilla could not prevent a warmer feeling blossoming in her own breast. She felt that she’d met a friend.

For all that, a chilly feeling arose with the consciousness that she’d already cracked, if not broken, several of her mother’s most dearly held and most often reiterated rules.