CHAPTER 10
Vix was having a good day. It was hard not to when she had awakened with a smile on her face and her brother’s voice booming through the apartments.
“Why are you on my sofa?!” he had cried.
She tittered to herself, shaking her head and remembering it now as she pushed the final pin into her hair and twirled out of her room toward breakfast, listening to her brother’s grumbles through the walls.
He was evidently still not pleased about the state of things.
“Is this just how it will be now?” he muttered, only to be soothed over immediately by incomprehensible murmurs from his wife as Vix entered the dining room and found her rumpled fiancé seated at the foot of the table, spoon half poised over an egg.
“Good morning, family,” she sang, enjoying the gloomy tableau. “I trust everyone slept well?”
“Going somewhere?” Teddy demanded as she side-stepped the empty chair he expected her to fall into and plucked the last piece of burnt toast directly off his plate. “That is mine!”
“I’m needed at the clinic this morn, I’m afraid,” she told him, biting into it before he could take it back and letting dark crumbs tumble immediately to the floor. “Delicious toast today.”
Ambrose blinked at her, two pale fingers pressed into what appeared to be a point of pain in his temple. “You like it burnt?” he asked, frowning.
“I like it well attended by the flames,” she corrected. “Have an extra cup of tea, Sir Ambrose. It will help with the bottle ache.”
He gave her a sarcastic little smile which made her glow back at him with her teeth.
Hannah patted her husband’s arm in sympathy as he glowered at the scene. “You don’t work at the clinic,” he told Vix.
“I do as I please, Teddy,” she replied. “Rosalind asked for my help, and so I am providing it.”
“The Clerkenwell Clinic?” Ambrose asked, reaching slowly toward the teapot like he was afraid Teddy might reach out and crush it with his fist if he was caught in the act. “The one with the plaque?”
Hannah laughed then, and immediately cleared her throat in an effort to disguise it as both men turned to frown at her directly.
Vix turned to examine her errant bridegroom, slumped over his egg and toast. His sash and medal were slung over the back of the dining room chair, wrinkled and glinting in the morning light like he’d slept using them as his pillow. Several strands ofhis white-blond hair were sticking straight up from the back of his head.
“You could come with me,” she said to him, if only to torment him a little further. “See your name in brass for yourself, feed some soup to the sick, and so on. It would really help you live up to your new status.”
“Has anyone ever told you,” he said, blinking slowly at her, his words soft and punctuated, “that you are cold and unfeeling?”
“Never,” she said, blinking sweetly at him, a smile growing on her lips. “What a thing to say.”
“I thought you were leaving,” her brother muttered pointedly.
She ate the remainder of her toast and licked the crumbs from the pad of her thumb, grinning at him. “When I am ready. Hannah, are you coming to the clinic today?”
Hannah shook her head. “No, but Dinah may be there. She has lately taken an interest.”
“Oh, delightful!” Vix said, and meant it. “I hope she is.”
She was genuinely fond of Hannah’s hellion of a little sister. She had discovered her at their wedding, needling multiple guests, and been immediately charmed.
Teddy gave a tired chuckle.
“Do see my beloved safely home,” she cooed at her brother. “I shall hold you responsible.”
“Him?” Ambrose whispered, horrified.
“Good day, dearest,” she said, rather than answering, and took her leave, cementing her final impression of him spikyand nervous in that sun-drenched chair as she escaped to the cobbled morning streets of London toward the charity clinic.
She had not felt so buoyant in quite some time. She wasn’t sure if she should attribute the good humor to her victory over Caroline Sedgewick, to the general pleasure of last night’s knighting ceremony, or to … well.
