Page 26 of Mending the Baron's Sins
“Here, drink it.” Adam pressed the cup into his hands. “You were in your element in those days. So happy, every dinner and every ball. You were quite besotted with being the center of attention.”
“I was not,” Horace protested, then Adam laughed, and he laughed with him. “Well, maybe a little. That was back when I cut a fine enough figure amongst the ton to be accepted.”
“Accepted? Pah! You were idolized!” Adam clapped him on the shoulder and took the jacket from his lap. “Come, stand. I’ll help you with this.”
“Thank you.” Horace swallowed the rest of the tea and stood again, this time concentrating all his might on staying steady on his feet as Adam helped him into the jacket.
“Do you remember what your sister said of you?”
“Lavinia? Ah, she was always much the center of attention herself. So many suitors on her arm. There was a time Ithought she would never pick between them and marry.” Horace buttoned up the tailcoat, then looked down at his feet. His next challenge was to get his feet into his boots.
“She said we were all diamonds and jewels, shining in the ton.” Adam laughed deeply at the idea. “She had quite an idolized view of the world.”
“She always does.” Horace kept his words clipped. He loved his sister, of course he did, but with her now living in London and married, he rarely got to see her. She persisted with her letters, but he couldn’t help wondering if one of the reasons she stayed away and didn’t visit was because she didn’t want to be reminded of who they all were in their early twenties.
A golden time that was lost, eh, Lavinia? You might not like to think of that.
“I miss it,” Horace confessed. He reached down to his boots and tried to put them on, but Adam got there first. “You are not my valet, Adam.”
“I know.” Adam smiled with ease. He clearly didn’t mind. “But I am your cousin. I, of all people, should be allowed to help you.”
Horace thanked Adam again.
“Those teas of Miss Byrne’s. If you don’t mind me saying, cousin, I think they are helping. Even if a little.” Adam didn’t look up as he spoke, but just concentrated on helping Horace into his boots.
“You do?” Horace was not so convinced, though he angled his head around to look at the empty cup nearby.
“There was a time you would not have been able to stand on one leg. Like this.” Adam gestured to his position.
Horace hesitated, looking down at his own foot in the air as he waited for the boot.
“Maybe,” he whispered. “Maybe there’s something in it.” A sudden need overtook him. He wished to tell Adam exactly what he thought of Orla, of how much he did like her, far more than she did, and how much he wished Orla could have known what he was like in his glory days, then he thought of the embarrassment of his hardness in her presence, and his lips snapped shut.
He was hardly going to confess to another man, even his cousin, that he had been impotent for so long. He thought it was something that would never come back. He especially hadn’t expected his healer to be the one to stir him again.
“There, you are ready.” Adam stood to his feet. “Shall we go down?”
“Yes, let’s.”
As Adam went to the door, Horace glanced out of the window. The sun was setting, casting the wintery scene of the Ingleby Hall in an orange and apricot glow. A carriage was pulling up on the track, no doubt occupied by Walter and the woman he wished to impress. Along the track, burning torches had been lit at Horace’s request. It reminded him of the grand parties he used to hold, where those burning torches would lure people into the grandness of the house. Tonight, they were a great contrast against the growing darkness, stark, a shock of warmth in the cold.
“Are you coming?” Adam called from the doorway.
“Yes.” Horace tore his gaze away and followed Adam out of the room.
On the stairs, Horace hesitated, gripping to the banister to steady himself. Adam hovered beside him. Horace knew Adam was slowing down for his sake, to watch over him, though nothing was said explicitly between them. Horace managed the smallest of smiles in Adam’s direction.
I am so indebted to my cousin.
When they reached the hall, Horace stood straight, his eyes falling on two people he had also asked to attend the dinner.
Colm was adjusting his suit, fussing with it to make sure there was not a single crease in it. Beside him, still, with a curious gaze turned toward the window, was Orla.
“I meant to ask,” Adam whispered in Horace’s ear. “Why did you invite them to dinner?”
“They may be needed to attend to me, cousin,” Horace said deeply. There was a flicker in Adam’s face, a slight alteration to his expression, that vanished too fast for Horace to decipher it. Had Adam not believed the lie?
I wanted her here. To see me as something else other than an invalid. It was a selfish act indeed.
