Emily looked at her to find her expression had turned from scolding to teasing. She smiled over the steam of the tea. “Ye love food and speaking yer mind almost as much as I love knitting. Why can ye nae understand?”
“Because I ken it is most pleasant, and I also ken that we share the same sentiments and that the only time ye stay up is when ye’re anxious.” Elize took her hand and gave it a comforting squeeze.
It almost broke her resolve.
But Emily did not want to feel so fragile. She did not want her mind picked through, her emotions spread out on a twine,pinned and exposed like the laundry she had hung out in the orphanage.
She forced a smile. “I couldnae sleep without finishing it. Ye ken I am particular about certain details.”
Elize did not look convinced.
Emily had never been so good at lying, having never experienced privacy in her whole life. The thing about growing up in an orphanage where doors were always wide open, where one could not possess a thing for longer than a minor stint, was that you never saw the need to own a thing, to claim something belonged to you and you alone. Because of that, she could not fully possess her feelings, and she could not properly conceal them.
“Do ye regret agreeing to the engagement?”
“I daenae regret a thing, Elize.”
“Ye should. First, ye returned from an outing with the Laird looking ashen, and I had to brew ye a calming tea. Then, last night, ye returned to yer chambers a little dazed. Ye were barely there when I spoke to ye. Ye had been with him, had ye nae?”
“Can we not talk about the subject anymore?” Emily huffed.
She could assert her authority as the elder sister, but Elize had always been the dominant one, the least afraid to speak hermind. Even at the orphanage, where independent thinking was greatly punished, she’d never let any man silence her.
“What better thing is there to discuss than the situation we’ve found ourselves in?” Elize’s face was pinched with distaste.
“Well, first.” Emily stood and wiggled her fingers toward the crockery. Then she rose on her tiptoes and twirled, showing off her dress.
Mrs. Donnelly had brought her the dress that morning. It was made of fine blue velvet, and it did not smell stale or have stains from its past wearers, as was the state of the clothes handed in the orphanage.
She felt like a real woman, not a mascot from a horror novel.
“There are many things I could think of,” she continued. “Like…” She scanned the room. “The bed!”
How comfortable the bed was! Her back had never felt such lushness. The bed she had shared with Elize growing up was hard like stale bread. If it hadn’t been so flat, she would have thought mice had made a nursery of it.
“Do ye nae sleep better?”
“I sleep, ye daenae.”
Suddenly, a knock sounded at the door, which she was grateful for.
Elize rose to answer it, and Emily moved to the window. She liked to stare out of it into Adair’s room. She imagined the furnishings there. They could not have been much different from the ones in her room. A magnificent bed; sensible chairs positioned before the fireplace; heavy dark curtains all the way to the ceiling; an empty pitcher on the bedside table, his presumably full. A surmise based on the intoxicating scent of whiskey she had smelled on his breath last night.
She shuddered.
She still could not bring herself to think about the library. The more she tried to avoid it, the more her thoughts gravitated toward it.
Something had transpired between them. She just didn’t know what box to place it in. Perhaps it was friendship? But when he had breathed against her neck, she had not been thinking of being his friend.
Her visitor ought to be Mrs. Donnelly, summoning them to breakfast. Only it wasn’t.
She whipped around at the sound of that velvety baritone.
“Good morning,” Adair greeted Elize, seeming a bit taken aback, then his eyes drifted behind her and found Emily. She could not have imagined the quirk of his lips. “Good morning, Emily.”
It sounded different. Itwasdifferent. Softer, more tender.
She could not stop staring, wondering at the change in his demeanor.
