But perhaps she had hoped, at least until a few moments ago. Reckless and impulsive Mercy might be, but stupid she was not. She was clever enough to have deduced—quite correctly, it seemed—what Mother’s refusal of those invitations which had arrived had signified.
Ithadn’tbeen weariness which had caused her to absent herself so abruptly, as he had suspected. It had been humiliation. Thomas tossed back a swallow of brandy, and the burn of the liquor down his throat justified the wince he gave.
Mother gave a long sigh, liberally inflected with regret. “Do you know,” she said, “I’m afraid I chided Mercy a few too many times today, for a somewhat gloomy attitude whilst we were engaged with the modiste. Of course, Marina and Juliet were having great fun, but Mercy…I don’t believe Mercy was enjoying herself much at all. And now I can only think that she must have known. All that time, she must somehow have known.”
She’d had a dressing room full of lavish gowns already, forwhich she had evinced little care. Thomas doubted that he would have put it down to anything other than a surly attitude, either. Besides, he’d never known her to wear much beyond serviceable dresses suitable for tromping about the countryside. There was little call for such extravagant gowns where she spent the majority of her days; perhaps she had simply never accustomed herself to the tedium of standing perfectly still upon a dais while a seamstress pinned up her hem. Enduring tedium had never been one of Mercy’s strong suits.
“What can we do?” he asked, aware that there was an oddsomethingthat tightened his chest, a strange ache just behind his breastbone. Pity? Sympathy? “There must be something—”
“Of course there is,” Mother said, and there was an edge of steel in the sharpness of her voice. “You needn’t concern yourself, Thomas. Naturally, I shall have to write a great number of responses, but I know well enough how to wield the proper words to rectify this situation. Certainly most—if not all—invitations will be reissued as they ought to have been in the first place, likely explained away as a mistake or an oversight.”
That curious tightness in his chest eased a fraction. Just enough that his next breath came a bit smoother.
“But the worst of it,” Mother said, “is that they weren’t either. One or two, perhaps, but a dozen? No. And I am just so sorry that Mercy has been the one to suffer for my poor judgment of character.” Her lips compressed into a grim line, her gaze shied away from his. “She’s a clever woman, you know, Thomas,” she said softly. “She is going to know, of course, that she was not wanted to begin with.”
∞∞∞
A suspicious thump roused Thomas from a sound slumber. It hadn’t come from the servants’ quarters on the floor above, but from somewhere on the floor below. He levered his elbows beneath him, struggling to sweep the remnants of sleep from his brain as he struggled to recall the layout of the house, what room was positioned beneath his, and for what purpose so odd a sound might have come from it.
The library, he thought. Though what anyone would be doing in the library at this time of night was well beyond him. An intruder? Unlikely; there were rooms on floors beneath with far more valuable things to steal, and even if books were valuable in their own right, their weight relative to their value would make them dubious targets at best.
Another thump.Christ. He was never going to be able to get back to sleep without seeing for himself what was going on below. Blinking into the darkness, Thomas slid out of bed and groped for his spectacles, which he had discarded upon the nearest nightstand.
They slid onto his face somewhat less comfortably than he would have preferred, but that was to be expected with a bent frame. His trousers sat, folded neatly, upon the chair placed before the hearth, and he stumbled into them clumsily, his limbs still stiff with interrupted sleep. He snatched his banyan off the back of the chair and slung it on over his shoulders, grumbling beneath his breath as he headed for the door.
Now, mostly awake, rather more dressed than he would have liked to be for the time of night, and surly to have been yanked unceremoniously from a pleasant sleep, he could admit tohimself that he was as certain as it was possible for a man to be whom he would find within the library.
Mercy. It wasalwaysMercy, like a stubborn thorn in his side. Sometimes, he thought she had some bit of the devil in her, that she derived a perverse sort of enjoyment from provoking him.
He tromped down the stairs one at a time, peering down the hall as he arrived on the floor below. Just as he’d expected, there was a glow of light beneath the closed door of the library. With a sigh of resignation as he approached, he pushed it open with one hand, and it swung in a broad arc back toward the wall. “Miss Fletcher, what the devil are you doing?”
Another thump, this time beneath the desk near the window, and the whole thing gave a vicious rattle at the strike—as if she’d struck her head against the underside when she startled at his intrusion. “Ouch. Fuckinghell,” came a distinctly feminine growl, though Mercy remained unseen, concealed beneath the desk.
Despite himself, a startled, incredulous laugh eked out of his throat. “I sincerely hope you are not using that sort of language around my sisters.” What the hell was she doing beneath the desk?
“Don’t be absurd,” Mercy said in a scathing, if somewhat drunken-sounding mutter. “They’ve taught me more foul language that I ever learned of my own accord.”
Now who was being absurd? “Impossible. Where would they have had occasion to learn it?” His eyes strayed to the surface of the desk. The sketchbook open upon its surface, a half-completed pattern forming upon the page, lines smooth and steady despite the apparent inebriation of their architect. The decanter of liquor, noticeably depleted from the last time he’d seen it. The glass set beside it, with but a few drops of amber liquid coating the bottom.
Christ. A part of him wanted to be angry, to launch into yet another lecture on the impropriety of over-imbibing. The best he could manage was a vague exasperation. Probably if he had been so humiliated as she had been this evening, he’d have been tempted to find solace at the bottom of a bottle, too.
A faint tingle slid up the back of his neck, prickling the hairs there. In fact, he had done just that only too recently, the very evening prior to her ill-fated hot air balloon ride. Perhaps they had a little more in common than he had ever cared to consider.
“Naturally they learned it from you,” came the drawl of her reply. “I’m given to understand sisters are very good at eavesdropping. Have you seen my pencil?”
Befuddled, Thomas could only inquire, “Your what?”
“My pencil. I dropped it.” Another hardthunk, which rattled the surface of the desk and set the pages of her sketchbook to quivering. “Ouch!”
A queer, effervescent feeling bubbled up in his chest, and Thomas coughed into the cup of his hand before another unexpected laugh could escape. “You might try waiting until you’re out from beneath the desk to attempt standing,” he suggested.
“When I desire your advice, I will request it.” The grumbly-surly reply preceded a catch of her breath and a strange fumbling sound. Her right hand appeared first, gripping the edge of the desk, and then at last she hoisted herself up from the floor and collapsed back into the chair, pencil clutched in her left hand.
She’d left off the dressing gown this time, and the rumpled linen of her nightdress had, in her efforts to retrieve the pencil that had fallen beneath the desk, coasted somewhat sideways, the sleeve near to falling off her left shoulder. She puffed her frizzy hair away from her eyes, kept her head bent, and wielded her pencil like a dagger as she surveyed the half-completedpattern with a detached gaze. “Leave me be, Thomas. I have patterns to finish.”
His brows inched higher. “At half past three in the morning?”
“No time like the present. Often I find myself unable to sleep at regular hours. I am choosing to use my time productively instead.” When he did not then absent himself from her presence, she gave a muted sigh of resignation and sank unsteadily into her chair once more. “By all means, then,” she said in tones rife with encroaching exhaustion. “Get on with it. A lecture, perhaps, on the impropriety of a lady drinking spirits, or being out of bed at such an hour, or—or wandering the house in such a state of undress. You need not hold your tongue on my account. Say what you will. You always do.”
