It might have been then that she first fell in love with him without recognizing it.
Lizzie tilted her head. The younger woman almost looked like she was reading her. Seeing something Aurora hadn’t meant to reveal. She smiled. “I can see that Morgan has exactly eleven hundred questions to ask about Nicholas and his childhood.”
“Exactly eleven hundred, yes,” Morgan teased.
“We’ll be here a while then,” Aurora said with a laugh.
“And many of those questions are either very boring or very wicked,” Morgan continued. “I see Selina motioning to you, Elizabeth, if you wish to escape my truly terrible ways.”
Lizzie laughed. “This is his way of saying he wants to talk to you alone. He’s very subtle.”
Aurora continued smiling, it was impossible not to in the face of their playful banter, but her heart thudded in her chest. Morgan wanted to talk to her alone. About Nicholas. Was it to warn her off? She deserved that, likely, but still didn’t look forward to it.
“I’ll join you in a moment,” Morgan said, and leaned forward to kiss his wife’s cheek gently.
Lizzie smiled at him and Aurora, then slipped away. Morgan picked up the tongs and began carefully nudging through the links of sausage on the plate before them. “It’s nice to hear what Nicholas was like as a boy,” he said. “Especially from someone who knew him so well.”
“He was my brother’s best friend and they always included me, which was kind considering I was younger.”
She frowned. Thomas hadn’t spoken to Nicholas since he left for the army. Even when Nicholas was injured, he hadn’t reached out. Because of her. That past they hadn’t yet addressed had destroyed so much.
“And was he always such a serious creature?” Morgan asked, the teasing in his tone making her smile. “Please tell me he at least played pranks or something. I need to hold some wicked moment over his head.”
The wordwickedmade her flash to Nicholas perched between her legs, mouth making magic against her clitoris, and she blushed as she shoved those thoughts away.
“Oh, if it’s moments to hold over his head you’d like, then I could probably provide a few,” she said. “Give me a bit to compile a list. It will be longer than you might think.”
Morgan tipped his head back and laughed, and for a moment she was put to mind of Nicholas at twenty, right before they’d been torn apart.
“Well, I look forward to that, my lady, very much,” he said with a tip of his head before he slipped off to join his wife, sister and brother-in-law.
She worried her lip. She’d expected him to engage in some kind of interrogation. And perhaps he had at that. Morgan seemed capable of reading people on a different level than anyone else she’d ever met. Perhaps his questions had allowed him to see whatever it was he was looking for. She just had no idea what it was.
She sighed and turned to go to the table herself, but came to a sudden stop. There, standing in the door, watching her, was Nicholas. She hadn’t seen him since she reluctantly slid out of his bed just a few hours before, but the way her heart thumped, she would have thought it was days, weeks, years all over again. He’d been much more mussed when she’d kissed him goodbye, but now he was back to his usual fully pulled-together self, not a hair out of place.
She rather liked him in both iterations, liked knowing she could make him come undone. She also looked forward to doing it all again. After all, they’d both said they wanted more of what they’d shared.
Even though she had no idea what more meant or how long it would last.
“Nicholas!” Selina called out. “Come and sit. Join us.”
That shook Aurora from her slack-jawed distraction. She smiled at him, then took her seat between the Duchesses of Roseford and Northfield. The opposite side of the table from Nicholas, but it didn’t matter. The connection was there, just as it always had been. And she was realizing more and more that time and distance had never erased it. Changed it, perhaps, but not destroyed.
She wasn’t certain whether to be comforted or saddened by that fact.
“—what we do today,” Katherine was saying, and once again Aurora was pulled from her thoughts and back to reality.
“It’s true, the fine weather does change things,” Robert said. “And I hate to trap our party inside with it so sunny.”
She blinked as she realized they were discussing the day’s activities. The original plan had been cards, she thought, because it was supposed to rain.
“What about a picnic?” Lizzie said from the opposite end of the table.
“Oh, an excellent idea, my dear,” Morgan agreed. “I have not had a chance to truly explore this estate since our arrival and steal all of Roseford’s best management tools to impress your brother.”
Roseford chuckled. “I have no good tools, Morgan, you should know that by now.”
“I would tend to disagree,” Katherine muttered with a half-smile. No one else heard her except for Aurora and the Duchess of Northfield, but the two of them giggled together. Katherine cleared her throat with a guilty look for the pair and said to the room at large, “I think Lizzie’s idea is perfect! A walk through the grounds and a picnic would be lovely. I’ll make the arrangements and we can leave in an hour. Does that suit everyone?”
