Miss Dower's Paragon Read Online Free Page B

nonsense!”
    Mr. Hawkins brushed a nonexistent speck of lint from his coat sleeve. “I thought the lady’s reasoning quite sound.”
    “Do you indeed!” Lady Pomerancy said irascibly. “The girl sounds a perfect nodcock to me. Indeed, if she is anything at all like the mother, she undoubtedly has more hair than wit. She could not do better than to accept an offer from you.”
    Mr. Hawkins smiled at that. He regarded his grandmother with fondness, saying gently, “You are biased, ma’am. Admit it. You grudge me nothing in this world, and it annoys you when others do not do the same.”
    After a moment, Lady Pomerancy’s fierce expression reluctantly lightened. She reached over a gnarled hand and briefly caught his fingers. “Aye, you are the light of my life. Of course I wish you to possess all that you desire.” She let go of his hand and pounded the arm of her chair. “Drat the girl! Does she not realize that you are besotted with her?”
    Mr. Hawkins was fairly certain that Miss Dower did indeed lack that perception. He said slowly, “I do not think the fact has any bearing at all on the matter. It is more a question of where Miss Dower’s sensibilities may or may not lie.”
    Lady Pomerancy snorted. “Pah! What has that to say to anything! In my day, a young girl’s future was arranged for her by her family and she was properly grateful to have it to be so. There was none of this misguided emphasis placed upon love matches that we see in these days.”
    Mr. Hawkins knew better than to remind his grandmother that her daughter, the lady who had been his mother, had been just so fortunate to have enjoyed such a love match. “I bow to your superior wisdom, ma’am.”
    Quick to catch his neutral tone, Lady Pomerancy regarded her grandson with a shade of suspicion. She smiled suddenly. “You are discretion itself, my dear. I know quite well what you are thinking, never assume that I do not. You are thinking of your own mother.”
    Mr. Hawkins bowed from the waist. A smile lurked in his eyes as he said, “I am an open book to you, I perceive.”
    “Oh, aye, as though I have not learned through the years to allow you the privacy of your thoughts.” Lady Pomerancy snorted in derision.
    Mr. Hawkins raised his brows in query. “I hope that I am not so rag-mannered as to refuse any reasonable question from yourself, my lady.”
    “Oh, you are never rag-mannered, my dear! I would not have borne that, you may be sure,” said Lady Pomerancy, a glint in her eyes. “Only, there comes a certain expression into your eyes that warns off any intrusion. Even as a boy, you regarded any attempt to extract your reasonings as a violation, to be endured but resisted with a stubborn reserve that upon occasion I found to be most annoying.”
    Her ladyship’s scowl was so ferocious that Mr. Hawkins laughed outright. “I see that I was a positive trial to you, ma’am.”
    “Aye, and you still are,” retorted Lady Pomerancy, trying unsuccessfully to maintain her severity. Her voice softened. “The day you came to my care, I had little inkling then of the troubles that would thereafter beset me. Childish diseases and scraped knees and positive agonies of suspense until you had mastered the Latin verbs. Once you had the Latin, and the Greek, I breathed freer. I knew then that you had the proper turn of mind to match your physical prowess and that you had the potential to become the perfect gentleman.”
    Mr. Hawkins’s mouth quirked in a lopsided smile as he regarded his grandmother. “I fear that I do not yet meet up to your high expectations for me, my lady.”
    “On the contrary. You have met and surpassed all my expectations for you, Peter. The years of tutors and fencing and dancing masters were a sound investment. The education at Oxford that you received deepened an already well-informed understanding, while the grand tour which you undertook smoothed the last rough edges of your character to a pleasing, yet sober,