Page 13 of The Pureblood Daughter
“Nothing.” Adelina holds her friend’s arm and shrugs lightly. “I can’t explain it myself. After the ball, he came calling. We’d not even been introduced.”
“Ooh, scandalous.” Eliza giggles, and it’s like they’re young girls again, waiting for their debut into society so that they may dance with and be courted by handsome young gentlemen. “Go on, tell me more.”
Adelina tells Eliza about their afternoon in the garden and their hidden conversation through the fence. She lowers her voice to a whisper before recounting how the viscount brushed his fingers across hers and the way it sent her stomach twisting in a not entirely uncomfortable manner.
Eliza stops suddenly and turns Adelina to face her. The heat has made her strawberry hair unruly, and it curls about her freckled cheeks in a perfectly angelic way. It’s no wonder Lord Williamson fell madly for her; she’s the picture of beauty.
“It’s settled,” she says. “The man is in love with you.”
Laughter bursts unbidden from Adelina’s lips. “He cannot be. We barely know each other.”
“Which just serves to prove my point. If a man must court you an entire season”—she takes up Adelina’s arm again—“then is there really any passion there? I’d argue not. John only courted me for a month, if you remember.”
Adelina rolls her eyes playfully. “How could I forget? It was ‘Lord Williamson this’ and ‘Lord Williamson that’ forweeks. You’d speak of nothing else. It was rather nettling.”
Eliza gasps as if offended, but Adelina is downplaying it entirely. She thought Eliza’s swooning would never end. Theirs was the first match of the season, and it was only after the wedding that Adelina was granted any peace. But then her friend climbed into a carriage and rode away into the sunset, and nothing has been quite the same since.
“I miss you, you know.”
“Of course you do,” Eliza says, her smile playful. “But you have someone else to occupy your time now.”
“Not quite.” Adelina looks down at her toes in the grass. “Father won’t let him court me. I might not get to see him again after today.”
“What?” Eliza turns so abruptly that a curl comes loose from her plait.“Why? His father is an earl, and he’s the eldest son. I’d think your father delighted at the prospect.” She lifts the hem of her skirt and settles into the grass, then pats the spot beside her.
“He thinks it’s too much excitement for my delicate constitution, or so he told my mother,” Adelina says as she sits beside her friend. They spent many summers just like this, lying in the garden, staring up at the clouds as they passed slowly overhead. Girlhood was a much simpler time; if only she’d enjoyed it more while it lasted.
“That’s ridiculous.” Eliza glares up at the Gray house as if she could stare Adelina’s father down through his office window. “He would really get in the way of Lord Rosetti’s courting you?”
Sighing, Adelina lies back in the cool green grass. “He has thus far.”
“Fathers.” Eliza clucks her tongue. “Always think they know what’s best. Imagine if they’d ask their daughters howtheyfeel for once.”
Adelina glances up at her father’s window, and something malevolent turns in her gut. “It would be inconceivable.”
The night is dark, andthough Adelina is tired, she’s been tossing and turning since Rose extinguished the candles. Her mind keeps drifting to the viscount, to his green eyes and the touch of his fingers against hers.
She imagines what would happen if he were to slip through her door and find her tangled in her bedsheets. Perhaps he would lie down beside her, and she could touch more than his fingertips.
The thought makes her cheeks warm, and for once, she has no one to hide it from.
Miss Gray.
The voice, spoken clearly in her head, sends Adelina’s pulse racing. She casts her eyes about the room but finds nothing amiss.
Miss Gray.
She sits up in bed and draws her comforter to her chest, her heart fluttering like a bird. “Who’s there?”
It feels silly to speak out loud to her empty room, but she’s certain someone must be lurking in the dark.
The window.
The voice in her head doesn’t feel like her own. She touches her temple.
Am I going mad?
The window, Miss Gray.
