“You’ve been distracted,” he said slowly. “For almost two weeks, yes.”
She flinched. Two weeks. Finn had unknowingly pinned the exact date of when she’d gone to Sebastian. When he’d done such wicked things with his tongue that had haunted her dreams ever since. When he’d told her he wouldn’t ever choose her over his friendship with her brother.
“I’m simply busy with party preparations,” she said, pointing to the papers they had been working on together during their tea. “We leave in so short a time—I want to ensure everything is perfect.”
His brow wrinkled. “We’ve done this party every year for I can’t recall how long and it’s always wonderful, Mari. You needn’t trouble yourself so much that it keeps you up at night.”
She took a slow sip of her tea so he wouldn’t note how his statement affected her. “Who says I’m up at night?”
“Aunt Beulah mentioned hearing you wandering the halls when I took her to church last week,” Finn said. “The day you had a headache.”
“She cannot hear when I ask her to pass the tea, but she has no problem listening to me go to the library late at night to fetch a book?” Marianne said with a forced laugh.
She got a half-smile in return. “Well, she’ll enjoy being on her own while we’re gone. I think she intends to call on all her friends.”
“Yes, and Cousin Fiona is coming, I believe,” Marianne said absently as she looked at a sketch of the guest rooms in the estate outside of London. Names were written in the boxes representing them. Sebastian’s was there, in her own hand, in the chamber closest to the family quarters. Four doors down from her own.
“…won’t be going with us in the carriage as usual.”
Finn’s voice pierced her thoughts again and she jerked her head up. “I’m sorry, what was that?”
“You remain distracted,” he said with a shake of his head. “An affliction that Ramsbury shares, it seems. He told me when I met with him yesterday that he didn’t intend to ride with us to the estate.”
She drew in a breath. She and Sebastian had been studiously avoiding each other for weeks, but the three of them always rode out to the estate in the carriage together for this gathering. She’d actually been looking forward to it, hoping that the time together with her brother as chaperone would help them get some of their old friendship back.
“Did he give a reason?”
“Not a good one,” Finn said with a shake of his head. “He’s been out of sorts lately. I’ve tried to determine why. Perhaps it’s trouble with a lady.”
Marianne clenched her hands in her lap. “Well, that would fit his personality, wouldn’t it?”
Her brother laughed again. “It would. Or it did but he isn’t—” He cut himself off. “Forgive me, these are not topics to discuss with my sister.”
“He still intends to come, though?” she asked, hating the lilt of desperation to her tone. “He hasn’t rejected the invitation outright?”
“He’s coming,” her brother said. “And I think we’ll all enjoy the respite. London seems too…close this year. Too hot.”
There was something in her brother’s tone that drew Marianne’s attention to him. He had a troubled line to his lips, but he didn’t give her a chance to question him about it.
“Now I’m off to my club. Must meet with a few gentlemen before we depart. Thank you again for the company and all the assistance. I do appreciate you.” He pressed a quick kiss to her cheek and then he was gone, thundering out of her drive a few moments later.
Marianne sat staring at what remained of her tea, her breath a bit shorter. Then she got up and rang her bell. When Adams appeared, she said, “Will you fetch me something to write with and ask a footman to prepare to deliver it immediately?”
“Yes, my lady, of course.”
After he departed, she returned to the table and pushed aside her drink and all the papers she had been studying with Finn. Right now she had more pressing matters to attend to. Ones she could no longer pretend away.
Sebastian had received many letters from Marianne over the years. Invitations to suppers, messages of thanks for some small kindness, larger letters of condolence that he still kept in the drawer of his desk, along with the gloves she had forgotten when she came to box at his home what felt like a lifetime ago.
Never had one been so curt as the one he’d received half an hour before. The one practically burning a hole in his pocket as he rode onto her drive.
I need to see you. Now.
Marianne.
Two lines and a signature, nothing more. And yet he felt her frustration in every word.
“Good, then she is matching my own,” he muttered as he swung off the horse and gave over the reins to her servant. He was halfway to the door when it opened and revealed the lady herself.
