“Just that. You’ll have to wait.”
“Is this your revenge, then?” she asked, fisting her hands on her hips. “You think to keep me wondering, worrying, what nasty trick you might pull.”
“A welcome side benefit.”
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “A decent strategy, really, or would be, if you were capable of keeping more than two thoughts in your head at a time. You’ll forget by dinner.”
“How can you be sure my cunning scheme won’t play out before dinner.”
“I…” She opened her mouth, closed it again.
“Cat got your tongue?” he inquired. “Or are you struck mute by worry?”
She snorted derisively and spun on her heel to leave. The sun broke from behind a cloud and, for the briefest moment, highlighted her in soft amber. She seemed, he thought, brighter all of a sudden—different. He blinked, taken aback. Why the devil should she look different?
“Just a minute.” He reached out and caught her arm a second time.
She groaned but let herself be turned around. “What’s the matter, cretin, a third thought push the first two out so soon? I’ll own myself surprised that you had that many in so short a time. Perhaps, if you had someone to write it all down for you…”
He stopped listening in favor of looking her over. It was the imp, certainly: average height and build, same brown hair and brown eyes, thin nose, oval face. Looking fairly nondescript, as was her wont, but something was off—changed or missing. He just couldn’t seem to put his finger on what that something was.
Was it her skin? Was she paler, tanner, yellower? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t say for certain, having never really paid any attention to her skin in the past.
“There’s something different about you,” he muttered, more to himself than to her, but he noted that she blinked once before opening her eyes wide in an expression that displayed both surprise and skepticism.
So there was something different. What the devil was it? Same widow’s peak on her forehead. Same high cheekbones. Had she always had that little mole just above her lip? He couldn’t recall, but rather doubted it had appeared overnight. Certainly her color was a little higher than it was a minute ago, but that wasn’t what was stumping him now.
“It’s the damndest thing, imp. I can’t seem to…”
He cocked his head the other way and ignored her exasperated expression. He just couldn’t puzzle out what was altered about the chit. He knew something had changed and he knew that, for some inexplicable reason, he didn’t like it. The alteration made him uncomfortable, uneasy somehow. And so it seemed a perfectly natural thing to straighten up and ask,
“Have you been ill?”
Two
Mirabelle’s trip around the side of the house was not so much a walk, as it was an extended fit of huffing.
Have you been ill, indeed.
It might have made more sense for her to simply use the back door, but in order to do that, she would have had to walk past Whit. And an exit was never quite so dramatic as when one could spin on one’s heel and storm off in the opposite direction, which was exactly what she’d done after Whit had voiced his supremely asinine question.
Have you been ill?
She kicked at a small rock and watched it tumble through the grass. Maybe…possibly…she shouldn’t have been quite so contrary with him. But she’d been in a foul mood all day. Ever since that blasted note from her uncle had been delivered to her at breakfast.
Twice a year, every bloody year, she was forced to make the two-mile trip to her uncle’s home for one of his hunting parties. And every year, he sent a missive in advance of those occasions to remind her she was to come. And every single year, no matter how hard she tried to make it otherwise, the note left her with a sick dread that lingered for the whole of the week.
She despised her uncle, loathed his parties, and abhorred nearly every dissipated, dissolute, and debauched sot who attended them.
She’d much rather stay here, at Haldon. She stopped for a moment to stare at the great stone house. She’d been a child the first time she’d seen it. A small girl who’d lost her parents to an outbreak of influenza and come to live with her uncle only a month before. Reeling from the change in her circumstances, and finding herself unwelcome in her new home, she soon came to look at Haldon as both a haven and an enchanted fortress. It was an enormous combination of the old, the new, and everything in between. There were cavernous rooms, narrow halls, sweeping stairs, and secret passages. There were gilded ceilings in one room, lowered beams in another—an oddly endearing collection of the past eight earls’ tastes and lifestyles. A person could, and occasionally did, get lost in the maze of it all. If only, she thought, she could get lost and never find her way out again.