Page 32 of The Pureblood Daughter
The dark red wine glistens in the candlelight, and Adelina crosses the room in an instant to fetch it from the tray. She lifts the glass to her mouth and takes a deep drink, savoring the rich flavor and the sleep it will bring.
Miss Gray...
It’s back again, his voice echoing in her head.
“Another glass,” Adelina tells the maid, who looks at her with rapidly widening eyes.
“O-of wine?” the girl asks.
“Yes. Quickly now.” She takes the tray from the girl and sets it down on her bed. Rose changed the damp duvet before assisting her in the bath, so it’s dry and plush when Adelina sits and pulls her bare legs up underneath her.
Get out of my head, she thinks, though she has no way of knowing if this communication works both ways.Stay away from me.
There’s no immediate response. In the silence, Adelina reaches for the fluffy honey cake waiting on a dainty plate. It melts in her mouth, and she leans back against her pile of pillows with a satisfied sigh as the candlelight casts flickering shadows on her ceiling. The rhythmic dancing makes her eyes tired, and it takes the maid returning with a second glass of wine to awaken her.
“Anything else, Miss Gray?”
“No, thank you.” Adelina takes the wine but waits to indulge in another sip until after the maid has left; that’s a rumor she certainly doesn’t need going around the gossip mill. Adelina Gray, the spinster sot. The thought itself is enough to drive her to drink.
A light tap sounds at the window. Adelina knows who it is before she turns to look: Celeste.
The owl pecks the window once more before alighting on a branch in the elm tree, her wide eyes impossibly bright in the dark night. The rain has since stopped, and Adelina knows the air would smell of earth and minerals if she were to swing her window open, but she won’t—not tonight or ever again.
Please, Miss Gray. You must—
Adelina takes another long drink of the red wine before crossing her bedroom and drawing the draperies closed over the window. The last thing she sees is the glow of Celeste’s eyes and the almost disappointed tilt of her feathered head.
Stay out of my head, Lord Rosetti. For good.
Chapter Thirteen
Lady Gray does indeed learnabout Adelina’s nighttime ride, and she’s so perturbed the next afternoon that even the hasty fluttering of her fan does not chase the redness from her cheeks.
“You lied to me, Adelina. You’ve never been a liar. Not even as a child.” She flutters the fan harder and turns sharply to gaze out the sitting room window. A moment later, she whips her head around, her brown-eyed gaze simmering with indignation. “You will explain yourself. Immediately.”
Adelina fell into a fitful sleep the evening before, but she was plagued with dreams of the viscount and his touch and his—
No. I’ll not think of him.
The wine helped her to fall asleep, but she woke up with a headache, and the cheerful sun streaming through the open windows does nothing to ease the pounding in her head.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I’d hoped an evening ride would invigorate me. How was I supposed to know a storm was coming in?”
“You should not be riding in your condition.”
Adelina laughs. “You make it sound as if I’m with child.”
The thought of carrying Lord Rosetti’s child excites her, though she knows it should not. She’s reminded herself time and time again of his nightmarish appearance last night, and soon, she hopes, she’ll not think of him at all. As long as his voice stays out of her head.
Lady Gray shoots Adelina a sharp look. “You look like you’ve not slept. Your complexion is lusterless. Have you been eating?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“And taking your tonic?”
Adelina’s heart jolts briefly. Her mother’s intonation wasn’t searching; Rose hasn’t told her. She represses a small smile. Her lady’s maid has always been loyal.
“Every morning.”
