“You didn’t predict we’d have this much, though. And that would have been the useful prediction, sister!” Juliana then turned to her left to discuss the possibility of a game of whist later, with the Swintons.
“And I hope that I didn’t disturb you two very much last night,” Rebecca said in a very low voice. “I couldn’t sleep and in the old days, when Arabella came to stay with us, I would sneak into her room when I couldn’t sleep and she would tell me a story. Last night, I thought ... well, I had forgotten that sometimes husbands and wives sleep together. Please do give her my apologies.”
So it had not been Lord Morpeth trying to get into the bedchamber in the middle of the night. It had been Arabella’s friend.
Alasdair looked at the head of the table again and noted how large Morpeth’s hands were. The man was still despicable.
After breakfast, Alasdair spoke to Morpeth. The man was irritable and terse. He gave his permission in a very surly manner, and Alasdair went and knocked on the door of Lady Morpeth’s room. However, Nurse Gastrell opened the door and told him that her lady was asleep.
“Would ye have someone tell me when she is awake and would permit a visit?”
Nurse Gastrell nodded and closed the door.
Arabella did eventually come downstairs and sit with Juliana and Rebecca on a sofa in the drawing room. She made a small curtsey to Alasdair when she came into the room but she did not speak to him or smile. She did not join the whist and neither did Rebecca. When Juliana got up from the sofa for the cards, Alasdair made sure to slide into her vacant seat, in order to prevent anyone else—like Lord Morpeth—from doing so. Arabella kept herself turned toward Rebecca when he did that, but Rebecca at times would lean forward or back and try to include Alasdair in the conversation.
Rebecca left the room to fetch a book she wanted to loan to Arabella. Arabella was now alone on the sofa with Alasdair.
“I am not certain what to say to ye,” Alasdair started, thinking out his apology.
“I think it best you say nothing at all then, Dr. Andrews,” Arabella said and stood and straightened her dress and walked to the sideboard across the room.
She had not looked at him. Her tone of voice had been polite but there had been no warmth. This was not the Arabella he knew. Even when she had been angry with him in the carriage because he was trying to apologize for not writing to her and she had declared that she wanted to forget herself and her past, she had been fiery. And he loved that fire. Yes, it cowed him a little, but he already intuited that rising to meet that fire would make him a better man. Had it not been that fire that had led him to kiss her? And all the wonders that followed from that kiss?
And now she was cold to him.
He had not known how much he would miss flirtation until it was gone. And he must discover why he had upset her. Hadn’t he made it clear that women were more noble, less base than men? She should have been flattered, not angered.
There were decanters on the sideboard but Arabella made no move to pour herself wine, Alasdair noted. Instead, she was on her tiptoes, leaning forward, trying to examine some engravings hanging on the wall there.
And then he saw Morpeth approach the sideboard. From behind, it was hard to believe that Arabella and Lord Morpeth were part of the same species. He so large, so hulking. She so small, so delicate. It was obscene that they had coupled. There could be no possibility that Arabella had been a willing party to that. He could not believe it of her.
Alasdair stood up from the sofa, having suddenly developed a fierce thirst that required a glass of claret from the sideboard.
And then Morpeth moved and walked around Arabella, his hand trailing over her bottom, the bottom that Alasdair himself had never touched, had restrained himself from touching even though he thought it might be the next territory on his list. Morpeth settled himself on the wall right next to Arabella, facing her, and leaned down as if to kiss her.
Arabella only knew she wasn’t ready to talk to Alasdair. Yes, she was still angry at him and what he had said about women and lust. But, in truth, she was angrier at herself for losing her temper, for shouting at him. Couldn’t she have reasoned with him? And now, she didn’t know how she could bear to hear censure from him when, so far, he had only been loving to her. She didn’t want to hear that he didn’t want her anymore and that she had ruined everything between them with another example of her lack of restraint.
She had to delay this pain, somehow. So she crossed the room to look at some engravings that she had no interest in, whatsoever.
She felt Giles’ presence next to her at the sideboard before he spoke.
“You have been in my thoughts constantly these last years, Arabella,” he said.
“Mrs. Andrews,” she corrected him and came down off her tiptoes.
“Mrs. Andrews, yes,” he said.
“That is so strange, Lord Morpeth, because I have not thought of you at all. But these are some handsome engravings you have hanging here.”
“Yes,” said Giles and took a decanter and poured himself some claret. “I value beautiful things. I collect all kinds of lovely trinkets and rare curios.”
“Such as gloves, Lord Morpeth?” Arabella couldn’t help herself. Today, she was in a rage against all men. “Gloves and flowers, I seem to recall.”
Giles then walked around her, briefly stroking her bottom with one of his large hands, and then he turned himself so he was leaning on the wall, just next to her.
“I am not averse,” he whispered, stooping down and leaning forward, his lips just inches from hers, “to revisiting flowers I may have already collected.”
Arabella was taking a step backward and preparing a cutting retort—something along the lines of the lie that she was irrevocably in Alasdair’s permanent collection or the truth that Giles might find her a very poisonous bloom indeed these days—when she became aware of a sound that was halfway between a growl and a cry of pain.
