"Will it be like this for the rest of the stay?"
"It will get worse."
"That's terrible! What do we do now?" She gestured at the bed. "I thought we agreed that I was to have the bed until morning."
Edmund pulled out his pocket watch. "From midnight until morning, yes, but it's barely ten. We'll miss supper."
Ellen's stomach growled.
"We could have a tray brought up, I s'pose." He strolled to the dressing room and disappeared.
Ellen rubbed her forehead. She could sit in that chair and read a book for two hours. She lit the two candelabras on the bedside table, placed them on the small table in front of the window, arranged her chair, fished her favourite book, a well-thumbed leather volume,The Arabian Nights, out of the trunk and opened it.
But somehow she found herself reading the same paragraph repeatedly.
She felt a wave of crimson heat wash over her body as she remembered the kiss. She placed her hands on her hot cheeks, remembering the sensation of his lips on hers. She'd never felt anything like it. Afterwards, there had been a glazed, languorous look in his eyes when he'd looked at her. Not proper at all.
This entire party was not at all proper, Ellen concluded. This high society, these fine lords and ladies of quality, who claimed to be the champions of civility and good breeding, behaved rather badly when they had the chance. Under normal circumstances, it was frowned upon for a man and a lady to be alone together in the same room. It could seriously damage a lady's reputation, and unless he married her, her prospects of marriage would be ruined.
But in society, especially at this house party, under the guise of a parlour game, the single ladies kissed all the gentlemen without as much as blushing, while their chaperones sat snoring in a corner, and it all seemed quite acceptable.
It was a paradox she did not understand.
Ellen chewed her bottom lip as she thought. It was a kind of matchmaking, Tewkbury had explained; perhaps he was right. She could picture Miss Anne and Mr Tilney together; and after Mr Ellington had kissed Miss Mary, a rosy blush had crept into both their cheeks. There were already two couples who seemed to match.
Clever of Louisa, really.
Ellen put down her book and stood up. After a moment's hesitation, she stepped to the door of the dressing room and pushed it open.
Tewkbury stood at a table with a pile of clothes in front of him, humming to himself.
"What are you doing?"
He looked up, startled. "Sorting my cravats."
Indeed. The cravats were neatly folded and stacked.
"Though I must say it's an easier task in daylight." He lifted a pistachio green cloth with a frown. "It's quite difficult to tell in the dim candlelight whether this colour goes with this pile or that." He pointed to two piles of cravats in different shades of green. There was also a burgundy, creamy yellow, black and a white pile. Next to them were shirt fronts, ruffled, laced and ruffled, and an even larger stack of waistcoats.
"I'm trying to come up with more original combinations, you see," he explained as he paired a satin waistcoat, heavily embroidered with little flowers, with a burgundy cravat.
"Not bad," said Ellen. "The cravat goes well with the little flowers in the waistcoat."
"Exactly. That would be the conventional choice." He put the burgundy cravat to one side and chose a mustard-yellow tie. "But this? This combination has never been seen before."
Ellen shook her head. "Most gentlemen wear white cravats," she suggested.
“Precisely. Yet I am not 'most' gentlemen. I have had these cravats made especially for me."
Ellen concluded that she would never understand the mind of a fop.
"I thought it might be a good time to call for a tray of food," she suggested.
"What time is it?" he asked.
Ellen glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. "Almost eleven."
He shook his head. "Too early."
