A YOUNG LADY MAKES AN ANNOUNCEMENT
Afew minutes later
“He is certainly not what I expected,” Elizabeth said as she settled into her chair at a small escritoire in the parlor. A salver piled with white notes was set off to one side.
“I wasn’t sure what to expect,” Adeline remarked. “I certainly didn’t feel as if I was in the presence of royalty.”
Elkins entered with a tea tray. “Your tea, my lady. Where would you like this?”
“Card table. Adeline can do the honors. It’s been some time since she’s done so,” she said with a pointed glance in her daughter’s direction.
“I did it for my friends the day before yesterday,” Adeline said in her own defense, moving to prepare the cups and pour the tea. She added sugar to both and set Elizabeth’s cup on the escritoire.
Elizabeth handed her one of the invitations from the salver. “If you help, we’ll get through these much faster,” she said. “I certainly don’t want to have to do them in the morning. With you in the billiards room with your father these past few years, I’ve become used to doing my correspondence in the evenings, and I think I’d like to continue the practice.”
Adeline opened the invitation. “The Marchioness of Reading is holding asoiréein a fortnight,” she stated.
“Write it on this calendar and pen a note that we’ll attend. Be sure to say there will be five of us,” Elizabeth said as she handed her daughter a sheet of bright white parchment, a bottle of ink, and a quill. She opened another letter and glanced over it. “And you might mention our guest’s title in the note,” she added before taking a sip of tea.
Adeline frowned as she moved back to the card table. “What might that be?”
Elizabeth looked up and furrowed a brow. “Emir, I believe. George says ‘sehzade’ is the word for the son of a sultan, and a sultan is sort of a king, I suppose.” Her eyes rounded as a look of delight appeared. “Which would make him aprince.”
“I’ll use ‘emir’ in my response,” Adeline replied drolly as she dipped the quill and began to write. “Sounds more exotic,” she added with a grin. “That long hair of his certainly qualifies.”
Chuckling softly, Elizabeth paused her pen to say, “When I was young, most men wore their hair longer. They either wore wigs or they pulled their own hair back into a queue.”
Adeline angled her head to one side. “I don’t think his would look very good pulled back,” she remarked, the fingers of one hand flicking when she considered what it might feel like to run them through his dark hair.
They worked in relative silence for a few minutes before Elizabeth set aside the letter she had been penning. “You mentioned you found our guest admiring a statue on your way to the parlor this evening,” she murmured as she prepared to respond to another invitation.
“I did,” Adeline admitted absently, concentrating on her writing.
“Pray tell, which statue was he admiring?”
Adeline lifted the quill and held it aloft as she glanced over at her mother. “The one by the stairs on the second floor,” she replied, well aware of where her mother’s thoughts were going.
“Aphrodite,” Elizabeth murmured. “Did he look as if he was admiring the female form or—?”
“The art, Mother,” Adeline said in a huff, not about to admit she had spied the emir well before she had made her presence known. Watched as he seemed to study the carving of the hair around the statue’s face. Perhaps he was looking for evidence of the rasp or chisel marks in the marble. Or perhaps he was merely intrigued by the hairstyle. At no point had his gaze settled on Aphrodite’s bare breasts or the curve of her hip or the bare ankles that showed beneath the hem of her chiton, although one of his hands had hovered over a shoulder, as if he intended to grip it. Instead, it smoothed through the air, an inch above the marble surface, down the side of the torso and finally to his side. Adeline was sure she overheard him sigh at the same moment an odd sensation coursed through her own torso.
She might have imagined a certain young man sliding his hand down her side, late at night when she was on the verge of sleep.
Maybe on more than one occasion.
That had been before he decided to marry someone else, though. Once he announced he was betrothed and then married shortly thereafter, Adeline gave up her erotic thoughts of the future Earl of Torrington.
Even so, thoughts of him touching her had never resulted in such a pleasant sensation as the one she experienced watching the sehzade almost caress Aphrodite.
Perhaps it had been her slight gasp that had him stiffening, his attention quickly returning to Aphrodite’s face as his hands clasped together behind his back.
Pretending she had been making her way down the corridor, Adeline stutter-stopped, pretended surprise, and greeted him with a “how do?” before dipping a curtsy.
“I suppose he’s seen hundreds of nude women,” Elizabeth remarked, jerking Adeline from her reverie. “I wonder how many women he already has in his harem?”
“He doesn’t have one, Mother,” Adeline replied, attempting to concentrate on her note. She had almost written the word ‘nude’ instead of ‘number,’ and now ‘harem’ instead of ‘five.”
Elizabeth straightened as she turned and stared at her daughter. “How doyouknow?”
