Striding to the door, he knocked, “Ariadne, unless you have escaped the room, you must hurry. We have a timetable to keep.”
He leaned his head to listen and hear shuffling inside. Satisfied that she was still inside, he stepped away to don his jacket. His skin began to prickle the more the minutes ticked away.
Did the girl not understand his position? He had little time to dawdle. Every minute of every day of his week was planned down to the letter.
Grunting out an annoyed breath, he left for the breakfast room.
There weren’t many people in the dining room, but those who were there were eating and chatting none the wiser to who he was—but that only lasted for a minute.
The moment one saw him, the ripple effect ran through the room, and the reaction was as sharp as glass; the gasps of ladies who turned away, and the blatant stares of men whenever he entered a room.
He was accustomed to the covert glances, the polite avoidance, and the undercurrent of morbid fascination. His scars had long since trained him to read people’s collective flinch.
“Your Grace,” the host bowed, “Your table is ready.”
Taking a seat in a private cubicle at the back of the room, he made sure he was facing the room. Enemies rarely came from behind anymore.
“Your paper, Your Grace,” the host laid that day’s edition of the Times. “A server will be by in a moment.”
“Thank you,” he nodded and took the folded paper.
While he scanned the headlines—studiously ignoring the scandal pages at the back—he kept an eye out for Ariadne.
“I am going to have a warm time teaching this girl punctuality,” he muttered while turning a page. “God forbid I raise Emily to be this attached to lassitude.”
He looked up again, and this time, Ariadne entered; she wore a cream carriage gown and a coat that she held off her arm,offset by the faintest shimmer of gold embroidery at the hem and capped sleeves.
The simplicity of the gown only heightened the elegance of her form, the graceful slope of her shoulders, the curve of her neck, and her quiet composure.
He shook the paper, “I am glad you deigned to join me. Now, please sit—” he looked at the timepiece on his table. “We have seven and a half minutes to eat.”
She gaped, “Why can’t we take our time?”
Cedric gave her a long, hard stare as the servers came to set their charge plates and the sideboard. “What sort of structure have you had in your life?”
She blinked, “Structure?”
A headache began to bloom in his temples. “You are going to have a hard time with your schedules, aren’t you?”
Once again, she looked like a poor baby bird on the edge of a limb, “My…schedule?”
He reached for his coffee. “Schedules. Plural. It feels as if I am going to have to spell everything out for you.”
“Are you angry at me?” She asked, eyes narrowing.
“No.”Yes, well, angry at myself more than you. Holding you last night proved I am not as impervious to a woman as I thought I was.“I just do not like being off time.”
Ariadne’s face tightened. “Why do you have to be in control of everything around you?”
This bounder!
His jaw was taut, and his eyes were smoldering embers heating up the cold green. “Because if I did not hold the reins, everyone’s life would splinter to chaos, even yours.”
Her heart clenched, “I should be forever indebted to you then?”
“No,” he said. “Because I am getting as much from this arrangement as you are. Please start eating, we have a long way to go.”
Woodenly, she filled her plate with crisp buttered toast, eggs with herbs, and kippers. “What do these schedules entail?”
