Page 42 of Mending the Baron's Sins
“Ah, thank you.” Horace’s reply was tight. He was not sure what to think about Adam leaving him alone with Orla at this time.
“I’ll come by to see you tomorrow though, yes?” Adam asked, and Horace nodded. “Oh, and one more thing, cousin.” He reached toward Horace and lowered his voice, casting a small look at the driver to make sure he and the footman weren’t paying attention to their conversation. “Be careful with your healer. She draws a lot of your attention.”
Horace sighed.
So, I have been observed in my affection for her.
Yet Adam winked and then walked away.
“What did that mean?” Horace called after him. Adam glanced back, something of a mischievous smile on his face, then he turned the corner at the end of the road and was gone.
Why did he wink?
It seemed Adam was warning him off with one sentence, and then urging him on with the other. Horace shook his head as he stepped into the carriage, deciding it was high time he relaxedproperly. He sat back, sighing and closing his eyes, waiting for Orla to return.
His mind drifted of its own accord. One minute, he was staring into the darkness, thinking of the Byrne shop. The next minute, he and Orla were far away from here. They were in his chamber, and she was kneeling on the bed, high above him. No, not on the bed exactly, but over him, her knees straddling his hips. Her back arched, her head tilted back, and he thrust his hips up toward her, their bodies connecting.
The coach door closed.
Horace’s eyes shot open. He shook his head, realizing he had drifted off momentarily in the coach. Even in that short amount of time, his mind had wandered. The carriage lurched forward as his eyes focused on Orla sat opposite him.
“You are incandescent with rage,” he observed. She breathed heavily, her eyes not blinking. She drove her gloved hands down either side of her on the coach bench as they were rocked side to side. “What did I do this time?”
“You need to ask?”
“Clearly, otherwise why would I ask in the first place?”
“We did not need your charity,” she hissed, leaning forward so far, he thought she might fall off the bench.
“Charity? What charity have I given?”
“Oh, cry for God’s sake,” she muttered loudly. “You cannot get my brother out of that factory of yours, so what? You try to buy penance for your guilty conscience instead?”
“That’s what you think that was?” Suddenly, he was irate too. He leaned forward, his body thrumming with anger. “Strangely, Orla, that was not about you. None of it.”
“What was it then?” She cried, waving her hands at him. “You spent an obscene amount of money in that shop.”
“It wasn’t that much.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It wasn’t,” he said plainly.
“Oh, is that supposed to make me feel better?” She took off her gloves and threw them down on the bench beside her, discarding her reticule from her wrist too. “That such a large sum seems grand to me and so wee to you.”
“I thought you didn’t want charity,” he said sharply. “Do you want me to be overly kind or not?” he asked with thick irony. “It would be to say I considered such a sum a large one. I did not say it to impress you or belittle you.”
“Impress me!?”
“I did it because it is a fact. I…I wanted to do something,” he said in desperation. “So, I did. It has nothing to do with you or charity.”
“It was all charity,” she seethed. She moved forward once again, her rear scarcely on the edge of the coach bench at all now. He sat forward too, the two of them moving closer together. If she moved another inch, he’d have to reach to catch her to make sure she didn’t fall.
“It wasn’t,” he said again, knowing they were just repeating themselves in their argument now. “Why can’t it just be an attempt at kindness and leave it at that?”
“Because it made me feel small,” she argued loudly. “Oh aye, just what we need, isn’t it? The big baron and landowner, come to make the owners of a tiny shop feel special for one day.”
“Orla.”
