Frustration gnawing at her, Addie insisted, “Then we head out early. At first light.”
To that, the others agreed, leaving her feeling faintly mollified.
A tap on the door heralded their host, who wanted to know if they were ready for their dinner.
The question reminded everyone of how hungry they were. Young Gillies and Rory departed to eat with Jed, Mike, and Sally in the taproom. Addie accepted the chair Nicholas held for her at the table, and they settled to address the plates of rabbit stew and crusty fresh bread the maids ferried in.
* * *
Nicholas had assumed that one of the reasons—possibly the most pressing reason—that Dickie had joined their company was to act as his sister’s chaperon. Yet later that evening, after the dishes had been cleared away and they’d retreated to the armchairs before the small fireplace, apparently oblivious to any question of propriety, Dickie left to join the grooms and stablemen in the taproom.
It might have been that Dickie suspected his sister would gripe about them not racing after the thief immediately and chose to leave Nicholas to deal with that.
Instead, Nicholas had to contend with his escalating physical awareness of Adriana that seized on moments like this, when they were entirely alone, to well and make itself known.
Quashing the impulses that awareness spawned, he searched for some topic with which to distract them both and recalled Dickie’s strange reaction on hearing that Nicholas had met the earl and countess. “Your parents,” he ventured, “seem a devoted couple.”
Adriana smiled fondly. “They are. They’ve been married for nearly thirty years. Mama dotes on Papa, and he adores her. These days, now that Papa no longer rides and Mama is—thank heaven—growing less fond of the social round, they spend much of their time together. Nowadays, I don’t know what Papa would do without Mama.”
He was watching her face closely and sensed her last sentence held some deeper, more nuanced meaning. What that might be… “From what Dickie said, I understand your mama is your father’s second wife.”
Adriana nodded. “His first countess died in childbirth. The tale goes that Mama was at the first ball Papa attended after he came out of mourning, and the instant he laid eyes on her, that was it. They were married some months later.”
Nicholas felt there was something—some aspect—he should be delicately probing, but his sense of what that aspect might be was so vague, it was entirely unhelpful.
“What about your parents?” Adriana asked. “Are they devoted to each other, too?”
He softly snorted and met her eyes. “‘Devoted’ doesn’t quite describe their relationship.” He thought, then said, “You might have heard that Cynsters only marry for love.”
“I have, actually. I assumed it was something along the lines of an old wives’ tale.”
He huffed a laugh. “No, it’s not. To all intents and purposes, it’s a statement of fact. So my parents are madly and utterly in love. Still, even after all these years.” Thinking of them, he had to grin. “One outcome of that is that if you have any sense of self-preservation, you would never do anything that in any way might threaten Mama or Papa in the other’s presence. They are ferociously protective of each other.”
Adriana arched a brow, as if imagining that—or perhaps seeing his parents, whom he assumed she must have met at some point, in a different light.
After a moment, she mused, “Your father is known to be a superb rider. Is your mother interested in horses as well?”
“Indeed, she is. And between you and me, she’s nearly as good a rider as Papa, and in certain circumstances, on certain horses, might even be more accomplished than he.”
“Really? That’s hard to imagine.”
Nicholas laughed and launched into a tale of one long-ago summer picnic during which his mother’s ability with a horse had shone.
Adriana countered with a story of a holiday at the seaside when her mother had demonstrated that she could drive a gig at a pace that, even now, purely in memory, made Dickie blanch.
To Nicholas’s surprise, they whiled away an hour swapping family tales, some of which he hadn’t thought about in years, and he suspected the same could be said for Adriana. A sense of rediscovery gripped them as they related and relived their memories. Although no experience of his was exactly the same as one of hers, he noted that, for both of them, their fondest childhood recollections were all of the country. London never featured, even though both had spent time there during their formative years.
Eventually, the chiming clocks drew their attention to the hour.
“Ten o’clock.” Adriana met Nicholas’s eyes, then pushed to her feet. “If we’re going to make an early start, I believe we should retire.”
He looked up at her. He could make some excuse—such as going to look for her brother—and let her go upstairs alone, but the thought of her tripping on her train and this time, without him there to catch her, falling down the stairs had him rising from the comfort of the chair. “Indeed.” He straightened and waved to the door, then followed her from the room.
As they climbed the stairs, he steeled himself against the inevitable surge of expectation. No, he should name it for what it was—desire—stoked by an avid hope that she would stumble into his arms again…
She didn’t.
He sensed that, even more than he, she watched her steps the entire way up the stairs; he thought he heard her utter a tiny sigh of relief as she successfully took the last step up into the gallery and the tension in her arm holding her train eased.
