“There is a name for this subject, is there not?” she asked. One of her feet was tapping nervously in her shoe. She wanted to know the name, because she wanted to try to look it up in her father’s encyclopedia at home, but she hated revealing her ignorance. It brought to mind all those times she’d been forced to smile politely when her mother described her as smart (but not too smart).

“You mean mapmaking?”

She nodded.

“It is called cartography. From the Greek chartis, for map, and graphein, to write.”

“I should have known that,” she muttered. “Not the Greek, I suppose, but at least the word. Did my parents think we would never have use for a map?”

“I imagine they thought you would have others to read them for you,” Thomas said gently.

She looked over at him in dismay. “You agree, then? That I have been educated appropriately?”

It was a terrible question to ask him. She’d put him in a dreadful spot, but she couldn’t help it.

“I think,” he said, his voice soft and deliberate, “that if you showed a desire for more knowledge, you should have been given the opportunity to acquire it.”

And that was the moment. She didn’t realize it right away, and in fact she wouldn’t realize it—or rather, she wouldn’t let herself realize it—for several weeks to come. But that was the moment she fell in love with him.

Chapter 11

An hour later, after pulling fourteen atlases from the shelves and explaining to Amelia the difference between Mercator, sinusoidal, and conical map projections, Thomas deposited her in one of the front drawing rooms and notified the butler that she was there to see Miss Eversleigh.

Grace would have to be informed of the morning’s activities, there was no getting around that. If a lie could not be made as close as possible to the truth, then Thomas was of the opinion that the truth ought to be made as close as possible to the lie. Everyone was far less likely to get confused that way. This meant, however, that Amelia needed to visit with Grace, and more important, that Grace understood that she was to have been shopping in Stamford that morning and invited Amelia back to Belgrave.

He, however, needed to speak with Grace first, without Amelia’s knowledge, and so he positioned himself in the doorway of another drawing room, closer to the stairs, where he might intercept her before she reached her destination.

After five minutes he heard footsteps coming softly down the stairs. Definitely a feminine footfall. He moved closer to the doorway, confirmed that it was indeed Grace, and, when the time came, reached out and yanked her inside.

“Thomas!” she exclaimed after her initial yelp of shock. Her eyes widened as she took in his disheveled appearance. “What happened to you?”