Page 92 of Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

A hot brick? Amelia nearly sagged. It was not a warm day, but nor was it the least bit chilly. They were going to roast in that carriage.

“She is in fine form today,” Grace murmured.

“Amelia!” the dowager barked.

Amelia reached out and grabbed Grace’s hand. Tightly. She had never in her life been so grateful for another person’s presence. The thought of spending another day in the carriage with the dowager, without Grace as a buffer…

She couldn’t bear it.

“Lady Amelia,” the dowager repeated, “did you not hear me call your name?”

“I’m sorry, your grace,” Amelia said, dragging Grace with her as she stepped forward. “I did not.”

The dowager’s eyes narrowed. She knew when she was being lied to. But she clearly had other priorities, because she flicked her head toward Grace and said, “She may ride with the driver.”

Said with all the affection one might show to a mealworm.

Grace started to move, but Amelia yanked her back. “No,” she said to the dowager.

“No?”

“No. I wish for her company.”

“I do not.”

Amelia thought of all the times she’d marveled at Thomas’s cool reserve, at the way he could flay people with a stare. She took a breath, allowing some of that memory to seep into her, and then she turned it on the dowager.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” the dowager snapped, after Amelia had stared her down for several seconds. “Bring her up, then. But do not expect me to make conversation.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Amelia murmured, and she climbed up, Grace following behind.

Unfortunately for Amelia, and for Grace, and for Lord Crowland, who had decided to ride in the carriage after they’d stopped to water the horses, the dowager decided to make conversation after all.

Although conversation did imply a certain two-sidedness that Amelia was quite certain did not exist within the confines of their carriage.

There were many directives, and twice that complaints. But conversation was in short supply.

Amelia’s father lasted only thirty minutes before he banged on the front wall, demanding to be let out.

Traitor, Amelia thought. He’d planned since her birth to place her in the dowager’s household, and he could not manage more than a half an hour?

He made a rather feeble attempt at apology at lunch—not for attempting to force her to marry someone against her will, just for leaving the carriage that morning—but whatever sympathy she might have had for him vanished when he began to lecture her about her future and his decisions regarding thereof.

Her only respite came after lunch, when both the dowager and Grace nodded off. Amelia just stared out the window, watching Ireland roll by, listening to the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves. And all the while she could not help but wonder how this had all come to pass. She was far too sensible to think herself dreaming, but really—how could one’s life be so completely altered, almost overnight? It did not seem possible. Just last week she was Lady Amelia Willoughby, fiancée to the Duke of Wyndham. And now she was…

Dear heavens, it was almost comical. She was still Lady Amelia Willoughby, fiancée to the Duke of Wyndham.

But nothing was the same.

She was in love. With what was possibly the wrong man. And did he love her? She couldn’t tell. He liked her, of that she felt sure. He admired her. But love?

No. Men like Thomas did not fall in love so quickly. And if they did—if he did—it would not be with someone like her, someone he’d known his entire life. If Thomas fell into an overnight sort of love, it would be with a beautiful stranger. He’d see her across a crowded room, he’d be struck by a powerful feeling, a knowledge that they shared a destiny. A passion.

That was how Thomas would fall in love.

If he fell in love.

She swallowed, hating the lump in her throat, hating the smell in the air, hating the way she could see the specks of dust floating through the late afternoon sunlight.

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