“I know exactly what you’re thinking,” he murmured.
Her eyebrows formed a skeptical arch. “Oh? Pray tell.”
He leaned forward, rather too close for her peace of mind, for she swayed back warily. He scrutinized her face. Then he grinned. “Right now you’re hoping I fall into some very cold, very muddy water—with leeches.”
She gave him a cool look. “And lots of slimy weeds.” She glanced around the room in search of a new topic of conversation. Something innocuous and dull. Without hidden shoals. There were several paintings; some landscapes, rather dark and gloomy, and a few portraits, years out of date.
A portrait that intrigued her hung over the mantelpiece. It was of a woman in middle age, sharp-featured and severe-looking. Bright blue eyes glared down at the occupants of the room, along a great beak of a nose.
Poor woman, to be afflicted with a nose like that. It made her grateful for her own undistinguished snub nose.
“My great-aunt Gert,” he said, making her jump.
“She raised Harry and me and left me this house.” He rose to his feet. “Now, since you won’t let me flirt with you, I’ll salvage my pride, take myself off, and offer your son a game. He’s looking a little bored and there’s another chess set in the cabinet there. Would you care to join us?”
“No, thank you, I have my sewing to do,” she said politely. She watched him cross the room and invite her son to join him in a game. He might have been asking another adult to play.
She glanced at the portrait of the harsh-featured woman over the fireplace and wondered how an elderly great-aunt had come to raise the two younger sons of an earl, but not the two older ones. And why Harry was a half brother. And a wild child.
The next morning after breakfast, true to his word, Gabriel took Jim and Nicky fishing. It was a simple breakfast: four maidservants had arrived to start work that morning and Mrs. Barrow was busy directing a joyful frenzy of housework.
Callie and Tibby took refuge in the octagonal room, taking some sewing with them. Nicky needed new shirts and Callie needed more underclothes, so the two women sat in the warm, sunny room sewing and catching up on the important minutiae of the years they’d spent apart, talking and making plans.
Around eleven o’clock, Mr. Delaney poked his head around the sitting room door. “Miss Tibthorpe, I was wonderin’…I’m planning to drive over to Rose Bay Farm to see that stallion and, since your cottage is on the way, I thought mebbe you might want to stop off and see if you can find that cat of yours. As long as you don’t mind waiting while I inspect the stallion, that is.”
“Mind waiting? Indeed no.” Tibby set down the shirt for Nicky she was sewing and jumped up. “Thank you, Mr. Delaney, it’s very thoughtful of you. I’ve been so worried about Kitty-cat. He’s such a sweet little creature and he’s had such a hard life.” She turned to Callie. “You don’t mind, do you, Callie?”
Callie smiled. “No of course not, Tibby dear. Go. I hope you find your Kitty-cat.”
Tibby had hurried off, leaving Callie alone.
She continued her sewing. To tell the truth, she was rather enjoying the peace—for the past eighteen days she’d been traveling, rarely stopping, barely sleeping. It was wonderful to be able to just sit and not have to worry or be alert; her whereabouts were unknown and Nicky was safe.
He really was safe, she knew, with Gabriel. He was a man she could rely on—in matters of protection, at least. She’d been lucky to have fallen under his protection when she did, to be given this respite before continuing on her way.
But that’s all it could be—a respite. She hadn’t gone to all this trouble to break out of one sort of prison only to exchange it for another. And it would be a prison, she could see the warning signs. A safe and comfortable one, perhaps, but a prison, all the same. A prison of her own making.
She had a tendency to want to run her head into the noose.
It had been the first true lesson of her marriage. Even after so many years, it had the power to fill her with remembered humiliation. What a fool she’d made of herself with Rupert. What a public fool.
She thought she was over all that, but that kiss in the octagonal room, that amazing, mind-scrambling, sublime, and dreadful kiss had given off warning signs ten feet tall.
Never again would she place her happiness in the hands of a man. She was older and wiser now.
She would leave. Protect Nicky, protect herself.
She took advantage of the privacy to unpick some of the jewels she had sewn into her thick petticoat—not the most valuable ones, just a ruby pin and some pearl earrings—small and easily sold items that would give her ready money for traveling.
The question was whether to go to some other rural location and live there quietly, or to disappear in London.
You can’t keep running. Count Anton must be stopped.
He was right, she knew, but how could she stop Count Anton? The only thing that would stop him was death, and she wasn’t sure she had it in her to kill someone. She tried to list her options, but it kept coming back to just two: Run or kill Count Anton…run or kill Count Anton.
If Nicky could abdicate…but he couldn’t, not until he was eighteen. And she didn’t want him to, anyway. To be the prince of Zindaria was his birthright.
Plans and possibilities swirled in her brain. The sun streamed in through the octagonal window. The warmth was heavenly. She folded her sewing on her lap and closed her eyes, just to enjoy it for a moment.
