“Careful,” he said.

“Yes, thank you.” She was breathless, and sounded it. “I wasn’t paying proper attention.” His touch sent a pleasurable shiver through her veins. Was it possible to feel the warmth and weight of his hand all the way through the folds of her cloak and the sleeve of her woolen bodice? Or was she imagining it?

She suspected the latter.

Another incidence of romanticizing things, no doubt. And who wouldn’t succumb to such? She was alone with a handsome gentleman on a cliff top above the sea. A gentleman who had just saved her from falling. And who had been raised in a convent, of all places.

“Like Sir Galahad,” she blurted out.

A look of bewilderment passed over Mr. Cross’s face. “Who?”

Clara closed her eyes briefly against a swell of embarrassment. She wished she’d kept that particular thought to herself.

But there was no unsaying it.

“Sir Galahad.” Her arms tightened around Bertie. “A knight of King Arthur’s Round Table. The one who found the Holy Grail. He was raised in a convent, too.”

“I don’t read fairy stories.”

“Sir Galahad isn’t a fairy story. He’s part of Arthurian legend. Mr. Tennyson wrote a poem about him some years ago.” She recited the first lines from memory:

“My good blade carves the casques of men,

My tough lance thrusteth sure,

My strength is as the strength of ten,

Because my heart is pure.”

Mr. Cross stared at her, an emotion in his eyes that was hard to read.

Heat rose in her cheeks. “Forgive me. I used to be rather fond of that sort of poetry. It’s silly. And utterly irrelevant to the matter at hand.”

“You don’t like it anymore?”

“No. It was a girlish fancy of mine, and one best left in girlhood. Now I’ve grown up, I prefer to expend my energies on more practical matters. Science and natural history. That sort of thing.” She cleared her throat. “I believe we were discussing your letter. Your hesitation to visit Mrs. Atkyns.”

He exhaled heavily. “You see why it’s d-difficult.”

“It needn’t be. That is, I can appreciate that you’re self-conscious about talking, but—”

“It’s not only that. How can I… How would she understand?”

“I don’t have any difficulty understanding you.”

His eyes met hers. “You’re different.”

The butterflies in her stomach fluttered to life. She was acutely reminded that only yesterday he’d called her beautiful. It was a precious jewel of a compliment. One she’d immediately locked away in her heart. In the coming years, she could take it out again whenever she was feeling plain and invisible. She could remind herself that once a handsome gentleman had called her beautiful, and meant it.

No one had ever done so before.

“On the contrary,” she said. “I’m exceedingly ordinary. Ask anyone.”

“I don’t need to ask. I c-can judge for myself.”

His matter-of-fact words warmed Clara to her toes. “My point is, if I can understand you, then I don’t see why Mrs. Atkyns should have any trouble.”