She wouldn’t smash the brandy decanter, but perhaps she could talk sense to him. He’d not been drunk at the ball, or just now when returning here. He couldn’t be crazed with drink yet.
Ethel would be waiting in her room, hot water ready.
But powerless to resist, Ariana went back downstairs, realizing why. There’d been something in his manner when he’d escorted her inside—something that disturbed her more than the thought of him drinking. Beneath his guarded good manners, she’d sensed a darkness. Even despair.
The servants who’d greeted them had disappeared below and the only sound in the deserted hall was theslowly ticking clock. The glass-shielded candle waited for Kynaston to stagger out of the library and weave his way up to his bedroom. It threw a pool of steady light, but created many shadows, through which Ariana must walk on her way to the library door.
There, she hesitated again.
He was none of her business except that he was suffering in some way. The cause was probably years of indulgent debauchery and the consequent financial straits, but she was plagued by an urgent need to prevent disaster.
She realized exactly why she was here.
She was imagining him preparing to shoot his brains out.
Every scrap of reason shouted that was nonsense, but the idea, the vision of it, would not be dismissed. Yet she couldn’t make herself open the door.
She could enter and claim to be looking for a book to read.
At gone one in the morning?
He was simply in there drinking, good sense argued. Thus, she should turn and walk away. She should go up to her room and to bed.
She couldn’t do it.
Heart thumping, she turned the knob and opened the door.
By the light of a branch of candles she saw him standing by the fireplace, looking into the sultry red glow. There was no glass in his hand.
He turned, face shifting from bleak to furious. “What the devil do you want?”
Ariana opened her mouth to say, “A book,” but the lie wouldn’t come out. “I was concerned for you.”
His eyes closed briefly. “There’s no need, I assure you.”
“Then why not come upstairs to bed?”
A wry smile twisted his lips. “Is that an invitation?”
She’d already blushed at her own words. “No. You know what I mean.”
“Sometimes I can’t sleep. Take your own advice, Ariana. Go to bed.”
Ariana.He’d used her name without the “Lady,” which seemed intolerably intimate.
Like a breath of air, she found a reason for being there. “I wanted to speak to you about your sister.”
“About Phyllis?” He seemed blankly surprised. “Your interfering concern extends to her?”
Despite the edge to his words, she persisted. “She needs better clothes.”
“If she’d warned me she was planning to come to Town, I would have provided them.”
“You will now?”
The simmering anger tightened his lips. “Damned interfering female. Perhaps you’d like to take her under your wing.”
“I will if you won’t.”
