The Historical Collection. Stephanie Laurens
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picnic is, usually,” she teased. “Have you never attended a picnic before?”
He didn’t answer, which was an answer itself. He had never attended a picnic before. Too busy ruining fortunes and seizing property, she supposed.
“Then you must come and join this one,” she said.
Penny made herself comfortable, tucking her ankles beneath her skirts as she sat on the ground. Hubert stretched out beside her, angling for a belly rub. She couldn’t possibly refuse.
As it happened, the sandwiches were only slightly smashed. Penny unpacked them from their brown paper wrapping and arranged them prettily on a wooden cheeseboard.
“I packed fizzy lemonade, as well.” She withdrew a corked jug. “Although considering our recent tumble, we might want to hold off on opening it.” She presented him with the platter of sandwiches. “Here.”
He took one from the tray and angled it for inspection. “What sort of sandwiches are these?”
“Just try them.”
Penny knew from experience that revealing her recipes in advance wasn’t a good idea. People tended to look askance at her unconventional ingredients. But once given a fair try, her sandwiches never failed to win over even the most choosy of palates.
“Go on,” she said. “I made them myself. Have a taste.”
Oh, God. The taste.
As his teeth sank through the sandwich, Gabe experienced a sensation that, for him, was exceedingly rare.
Regret.
The flavor hit him like a punch to the face. His jaw muscles ceased to function. They simply refused to chew. The mouthful of … whatever this was, as it clearly did not qualify as food … sat on his tongue, growing softer and slimier.
“What,” he said, finally choking it down, “was that?”
“It’s my latest recipe.” She beamed. “Roast leaf.”
“It’s gone off. That’s not like any roast beef sandwich I’ve ever tasted.”
“No, no. Not roast beef. Roast leaf.”
He stared at her.
“I’m a vegetarian,” she explained. “I don’t eat meat. So I create my own substitutions with vegetables. Roast leaf, for example. I start with whatever greens are in the market, boil and mash them with salt, then press them into a roast for the oven. According to the cookery book, it’s every bit as satisfying as the real thing.”
“Your cookery book is a book of lies.”
To her credit, she took it gamely. “I’m still perfecting the roast leaf. Perhaps it needs more work. Try the others. The ones on brown bread are tuna-ish—brined turnip flakes in place of fish—and the white bread is sham. Sham is everyone’s favorite. Doesn’t the color look just like ham? The secret is beetroot.”
Gabe tried them both. The tuna-ish was a dubious improvement over the roast leaf. As for the sham … it might very well be his favorite of the three. But considering the choices, that wasn’t saying much. He stuffed the remainder of the sandwich into his mouth and chewed.
“Well?” she prompted.
“Are you asking my honest opinion?”
“But of course.”
“They’re revolting.” He swallowed with reluctance. “All of them.”
“I like them. My friends like them.”
“No, they don’t. Your friends find your sandwiches revolting, too. They just don’t want to tell you so, because they’re afraid of hurting your feelings.” He shook his head as he reached for another triangle of white bread and sham.
“If the sandwiches are so revolting, why are you eating more of them?”
“Because I’m hungry, and I don’t waste food. Unlike you and your friends, I never had the luxury of being choosy.”
He tore off half the sandwich with a resentful bite. As a boy on the streets, he would have begged for the scraps she threw her dog. In the workhouse, on the two days a week they were given meat, he’d sucked the gristle and marrow from every last bone.
This woman—no, this lady—could fill her dinner table until it creaked beneath the weight of roasts, joints of mutton, game fowl, lobster.
Instead, she ate this. On purpose.
The thought made him viscerally, irrationally angry.
He pulled the shilling from his waistcoat pocket and tapped it against his thigh. “I don’t know why I’m bothering to explain. You wouldn’t understand. Can’t understand. You’ve never known true deprivation.”
“You’re right,” she agreed.
Gabe didn’t want her to agree. He wanted to stay angry.
“I haven’t known that kind of hunger. I choose not to eat animals, and I know it’s a luxury to have that choice. It’s a luxury to have any choice. And I also know people find me ridiculous.”
“Not ridiculous.” He flipped the shilling into the air and caught it one-handed, his fingers trapping the coin against his palm. “Sheltered. Trusting and naïve.”
“I’m not so sheltered and naïve as you imagine.”
He could only laugh.
“I’m being sincere.” She picked at a blade of grass. “My youth wasn’t idyllic, either.”
“Let me guess. Beau Brummell snubbed you at a party once. I can only imagine how the nightmares haunt you to this day.”
“You know nothing of my life.”
“So there were more trials, were there?” He flipped the shilling into the air again, catching it easily. “The milliner’s ran out of pink ribbon.”
“Stop being cruel.”
“The world is cruel. This world is, anyway. Tell me, Your Ladyship, what’s it like in your fairy-tale land?”
She snatched the shilling from his hand. As he looked on in irritation, she stood, cocked her arm, and winged the coin with all her strength.
He pushed to his feet. “You just tossed away a perfectly good shilling. I can’t imagine a better example of your pampered existence. That’s a day’s wages for a workingman.”
“You have millions of shillings, as you’re so fond of telling everyone.”
“Yes, but I never forget that I came from far less. I couldn’t forget that, even if I tried.”
“I have tried to forget. To forget where I came from, to deny the past. You don’t know how I’ve tried.” Her voice crumbled at the edges. “I may not have known poverty, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t known pain.”
Gabe pushed a hand through his hair. He recognized the ring of truth in her voice. She was being honest, and he was being an ass.
Her character was finally coming into focus. He didn’t know who or what had hurt her, but the blade had sunk deep. The world didn’t hold enough kittens to fill that wound—but that hadn’t stopped her from trying.
Gabe gentled his voice. “Listen …”
“Oh, no.” She wheeled around. “Hubert’s missing.”
“Who’s missing?”
“Hubert! The otter. The only reason we’re stranded here in Buckinghamshire, remember?”
Oh, yes. That Hubert.
“How could I have been so careless?” She shaded her eyes with one hand and searched the area.