Page 29 of Adoringly, Edward
Her pulse jumped when the window opened again, and the same sheets she’d climbed up the other night tumbled over the sill. Hurriedly, she picked up her heart and slammed it back into her chest as she watched him throw one leg over the side of the window, quickly followed by the other.
Suddenly, she realized how he might have felt watching her climb up as she watched him climb down. Her heart clung to her throat, terrified he might slip on the slick stone and fall and break a bone or two.
But when his feet landed on solid ground, she relaxed. Climbing towers was not an ideal way of sneaking around and spending time with someone she cared for, but she would do what she must to make this work.
Not giving him a chance to recover from the feat, she giggled as she took his hand, and the two of them raced away from the estate and closer to the forest bordering the property. Edward led her through an obscure path to prevent someone from spotting them, and soon, they raced into the cover of the trees and into the safety and solitude of the forest.
Edward slowed first, gasping and breathing heavily as if the short journey had exhausted him.
“Sitting behind a desk all day slowing you down?” She playfully pinched his side, and he responded with a weary smile. Somehow, he appeared even paler than before, truly struggling to breathe. “Edward?”
He held up a hand as if to say to give him a moment, and she made a mental note not to run again lest he collapse entirely. It was almost comical the way he no longer had the lungs he used to years ago, as if the desk truly had stripped him of physical exertion.
After a few moments, he lowered himself on a root jutting out from the ground and leaned back against the trunk of a large tree. The sight of the tall trees surrounding her, jutting roots, and low, overhanging branches brought back many memories of hours spent with her childhood friend. Oh, the adventures they’d had within these forests!
“Our secret place is much different now that we’re adults, isn’t it?” she asked, running her fingers over the damp bark of what used to be her tree. She’d climbed as high as she could one day just to glimpse the edge of the world.
“You simply need a bit of imagination.” He gestured toward a group of pines, much larger than she remembered them. “Over here we have the ballroom. And this…” He motioned toward the tangled roots to his right. “It’s the valley of fire and destruction.”
“I remember!” she laughed, picking up her skirts and stepping over a few of the roots to reach into the nearby tree. And then she gasped as she spotted a cluster of pinecones. “New treasures! Come look.”
But he shook his head, still struggling for breath. “In a minute.”
She tsked, wagging a finger at him. “The bedsheet rope is not the best idea. We need to think of something else.”
“I used to have a trellis I was able to climb down.”
“What happened to it?”
He shrugged sheepishly. “I got caught. Clara had it removed.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Oh, I must have been sixteen or seventeen then.” He snorted, shaking his head. “And then I managed to hide a ladder in the sky parlor above my room. I promptly got that taken away after I failed to return to it fast enough after…” He rubbed the back of his neck in a sheepish manner. “After the masquerade. A servant found it. And once again, I was caught.”
The fact that he was locked in his room every night was concerning enough. Since he was at least sixteen? “Why are they doing this to you? You are the lord of the house. It doesn’t seem right.”
He pressed his lips together, visibly shrinking away from her and closing himself off. Like everyone else, he wouldn’t speak of the reasoning behind such drastic actions. But if he didn’t want to divulge the information, then she wouldn’t press him. At this point, she knew she was missing some relevant information. He wasn’t in legal trouble, which she had written off days earlier. A controlling sister, perhaps?
It seemed as if Clara controlled estate affairs, which only made sense when she was years older than him and had to take over when their parents had died. But then did that mean Edward didn’t have a backbone? Or was something else going on that she couldn’t figure out on her own?
Finally, Edward pushed himself to his feet and joined her beside the tree. A soft smile reached his mouth as he picked up one of the pinecones and turned it around in his fingers. “We never did finish that game of treasure hunting, did we?”
“No, we certainly did not.”
She watched as he stripped a small, wet, flexible branch from a tree, stringing on an eye-sized pinecone followed by another.
“Tell me the truth,” she demanded playfully with a hand resting on her hip. He glanced up with an alarmed expression, at least until he seemed to notice her kittenish attitude. “You know who organized the masquerade, don’t you?”
He returned her grin with one of his own. “If I tell you,” he said, reaching across the space between them to place a finger against her lips, “I must swear you to secrecy.”
Wordlessly, she nodded.
He dropped his hand. “My friends and I set it up every year. Tobie chose the location this time. It’s one of Barnaby’s vacant properties.”
“And I never received an invitation?” She gave him a mock pout. “I had to resort to stealing one. I’m most disappointed.”
“You were seventeen when the invitations were sent, apparently.” He laughed, stringing on another few pinecones and tying a knot in the branch between each one. “Eighteen and older only. But no older than thirty-nine, and only if we deem one worthy of an invitation.”
