Page 48
“Go.” He made a shooing motion with one hand. “The night owl can go back to bed, if she likes, or otherwise attend to her own pursuits.”
Could she … do that? What would she do with this unexpected gift of time? While she recognized that here at Gurglewood there were limited possibilities, they felt endless. “How will I know when …”
Lord Marsden produced a timepiece from a pocket. “Let us meet back here in, say, two hours?”
Two hours! A frisson of excitement rose in her chest. “But what if—”
“If we run into any trouble, we shall find you. Or, no, we shall find Archie. That way you needn’t remain nearby if you don’t care to.”
She opened her mouth, closed it. He raised his eyebrows and shot her a look of impatience, but she rather thought it was feigned. At the very least it was a friendly sort of impatience.
“Lady Harcourt and I are meant to attempt to take the waters this afternoon at one o’clock,” she said.
“Excellent,” Lord Marsden said, and when she didn’t respond—she was still pinned in place by a curious mixture of excitement and indecision—he added, “One o’clock is six hours from now, and we shall see you in two.”
She was carrying her volume of stories by Washington Irving. She handed it back to him. It felt like the least she could do in exchange for a few hours of freedom.
“No,” he said, holding his hands up. “I cannot hold your possessions hostage any longer.”
“You’re not holding anything hostage! You’re keeping Frankenstein to read to Lady Harcourt. And you’re borrowing the other volume. Like we always do.”
Like we always do.
She’d spoken as if they were long-standing friends.
The thing was, after that conversation just now, about rage, both hers and Dr. Frankenstein’s monster’s, it rather felt as if they were.
But also, and again, she wasn’t sure if friends or friendly were precisely the right words.
The forearm image returned.
He still seemed hesitant, so she said, “I have packed other books. Besides, I shan’t be reading the next while. At least keep it for now.” He nodded, and she added, “I haven’t gotten to it yet, but the reason I purchased that volume was a story entitled ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’”
“All right, then. I thank you.”
She had made it fully out the door when he called after her. “Miss Brown!”
He held on to the doorframe with one hand and wrapped his head and torso around it to speak to her in the corridor. “Miss Brown, for what it’s worth, you do excite the sympathy of at least one existing thing—or person, in this case: me.” He paused. “If that was something you were concerned about.”
10
A Holiday from One’s Holiday
Simon enjoyed the morning he spent with Lady Harcourt, but not as much as he enjoyed giving Miss Brown a few hours to herself. After that, he took tea with the whole group—they served scones he had helped make—he and Christine had added some lemon zest to them—and everyone had exclaimed over them. And then a ramble in the woods, some time with “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and the evening meal.
It had all been very pleasant.
Less pleasant was when, as they were preparing to move to the drawing room, Miss Brown excused herself and withdrew with Lady Harcourt. It was the second night she’d done that. A pattern was forming, one he did not care for.
“Do you think,” he asked everyone and no one when there was a lull in the conversation after her departure, “that Miss Brown ought to have a holiday, too?”
“She is, isn’t she?” Archie asked.
“Not precisely,” Simon said.
“She is absolutely not,” Miss Morgan said.
Simon shouldn’t have been surprised. Olive Morgan noticed things.
