He didn’t have to respond, because after a knock, the innkeeper peered in. “All well, sir? Here’s another bowl of punch, some soup, and some slices of pie.” A maid carried in the refreshments and laid them out on the table, and then the servants bowed out.
Ariana chuckled. “They seem relieved not to have found dead bodies.”
“Indeed. Would you like anything? We should leave soon.”
Or not, Ariana thought, agreeing to soup and pie and moving to the table. The stolen curricle bar was now on its way to Derby, and with luck she’d never be found out. But at this moment she and Kynaston were in harmony, and she was learning about him. That was a feast on its own.
Chapter 18
He came to join her at the table and poured himself a tankard of punch. “Rather stronger than before,” he commented after a sip. “Perhaps the innkeeper misunderstood my instructions.”
“The soup is delicious. He thought Uncle Paul shouldn’t fall further under the hatches.”
“He thought your uncle was dying of drink,” Kynaston said. “Didn’t you notice his yellow skin, and even yellowish eyes? There were other signs.”
“He might die soon?” Ariana asked.
“You sound so hopeful.”
“Can I deny it? He’s a hovering disaster. Without him, everything would be much simpler. Ethel suggested we murder him.”
“Your Ethel seems an extraordinary person.”
“She is. All in all, I’ll be glad if Inching marries her. She’ll keep him in line, and she’ll like to be ‘my lady.’”
“How did she come to be your maid?”
Ariana told him the tale as she finished her soup, and then took two slices of pie. “Her calm nature has often kept me in balance.”
“You’re inclined to fly into alt?”
“It has been known.”
“And yet you prefer the harpsichord to the piano.”
“I learned it first. But yes.” She risked a direct question. “Why the lute?”
“Blondel,” he said with a wry quirk of the lips. “As a boy I fell in love with the tale of Richard the First, and how, when he was secretly imprisoned, his faithful minstrel, Blondel, found him.”
“By going from castle to castle singing a song only they knew.”
“So that Richard could sing the next verse and be rescued. In the story, he played a lute. All nonsense, of course,” he added.
“But an enchanting story.”
“Perhaps all enchantments are deceit. But that led me to insist on learning the lute, and as a young man I found being different appealing.”
“You play very well.”
“So do you.”
She considered him. “How do you know that?”
“You played once in Albemarle Street.”
“I hoped no one would be disturbed.”
“And at your mother’s entertainment.”
