CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hours later, Amelia held a candle up to the hall outside her bedchambers at Riverside Court. Paintings of severe-looking gentlemen lined either side of the corridor. Glancing through the windows, she guessed the sun had set hours ago.
I should not have slept so long this afternoon,she chided herself inwardly.Now I am too restless to remain in the foreign, strange-smelling room that has been assigned to me.
Her candle cast shadows on the grand staircase as she made her way downstairs.
A flickering, warm light caught her attention on the second floor. She walked towards it, careful not to trip on the runner beneath her.
The housekeeper,Mrs. Smythe, had given her a brief tour upon arriving. She recalled a reading room nearby, where she could waste the hours until sunrise.
She paused in the doorway to the firelit room and peered inside. A smoldering fire crackled in the hearth. Had the servants forgotten to bank it before retiring? Entering, Amelia crossed to the fireplace and set her candle down on the mantle.
“It’s a good thing I could not sleep,” she murmured to herself.
“A good thing for whom?” she heard behind her.
Gasping, Amelia spun around. She squinted against the darkness, her heart pounding in her ears. Nicholas stared at her, his thumb holding a clothbound book open in his lap. A tall candle stood vigil on the table beside him. He had removed his jacket and vest, one leg crossed over the other, his dark hair pushed away from his face in a way she liked.
“I had no designs of— I did not know that you were…” Amelia stopped herself, stumbling over her words. “I am so sorry for disturbing you. I could not sleep.”
“That does not surprise me.” He returned to his book, licking his thumb to turn the page. “You did not come down for dinner. Could not be stirred, so I was told.”
“It was a taxing morning.”
“Hm,” Nicholas hummed, then looked up. “Taxing?”
“Busy,” Amelia corrected. She rubbed her eyes and stepped toward him. “What are you doing here?”
Nicholas looked down at his book again and arched a brow.
“Reading,” he sighed. “Attempting to read.”
He closed his book, preserving the page with his thumb, and gently dragged the chair next to him closer with his booted foot.
“You may sit with me, if you do so silently. You were particularly gregarious in the carriage ride earlier today.”
Pressing her lips together, Amelia crossed the room toward him. She became fiercely aware of her state of undress. A thin cotton chemise clung to her body beneath her silk dressing gown. Each step caused the floorboards to squeak beneath her, and she hastened over to the chair he had offered her, fingers fluttering over the leather back as she inspected the nearby shelves of books.
“Is this your private reading room?” she asked, examining the collection. Barely legible titles glinted in the candlelight. “It is lovely.”
“Not private, but preferred.” The sound of a page turning. “It was once a schoolroom for Samuel and me. But my late father hadit repurposed once we fled Oxfordshire for London. There is a larger library downstairs.”
“I know. Mrs. Smythe showed it to me earlier. Uncle Benjamin never had so many rooms for books, though he enjoyed reading.”
“And the libraries at Bright Corner?”
Amelia started. “How do you know about Bright Corner?”
Nicholas smiled, eyes fixed on the pages of his book. “It was mentioned to me that Bright Corner was where you spent your childhood.”
“Yes, well…” Amelia thought briefly of her family’s abandoned manor. Freddy, when he returned from France, had promised to renovate the house into somewhere they both could live. Though that seemed unnecessary now. “That much is true. But it has been empty for some time.”
“You would not wish to return there?” Nicholas asked after a moment of silence. He closed his book again, invested in her answer.
She guessed why.
“I do not own Bright Corner.”
