He would be very proud. She had written the dedication to her father. Only appropriate for a book about a girl who lost her father and found him again with the help of a great and terrible dragon. She hadn’t given up hope of finding him yet, even though she hadn’t received any credible information about his whereabouts.
She’d been sitting at the breakfast table for nearly an hour, lingering over her mostly empty plate. Her stomach was full, yet she felt... hungry. Restless. One thing she had learned about herself in the hard years following her father’s disappearance, was that inactivity rubbed her the wrong way.
She wasn’t one to mope, to swan about, to wallow in self-pity. She needed to take solid steps toward her goals, although she admittedly preferred taking wild fantastical leaps. The crumbs of progress she felt she’d made, as meager as the remains of her breakfast, the subtle shifts in his manner with her, the passionate language he used during their lovemaking—none of it was enough. Further action was required.
She’d spent a few hours the day before wrestling with a particularly tricky detail of Lady Claridge’s plot outline—the heroine, unsure of her paramour’s fidelity, had invited all members of the ton to a masquerade, the invitation instructing guests to “wearyour feelings,” the goal being to force all unsaid emotions out into the open.
She’d had a devilish time designing the correct costumes for the corresponding players in the novel but had finally landed on the perfect costumes for the protagonists to wear to signal their true colors, so that all the intricacies of the plot could be neatly resolved by the conclusion of the ball.
It was a big scene, rather farfetched, but full of satisfying drama and meaty confrontations and by the end of it (or so she had felt, throwing down her minuscule pencil nub triumphantly on the desk) the characters had all learned something about themselves and each other, enough to enable the much sought-after happy ending her readers would require.
She was jealous of her heroine, who had forced her lover’s feelings out into the open quite easily. Real life didn’t afford such neat endings. Dex would never don Romeo’s doublet and proclaim that her beauty was “too rich for use, for earth too dear!” She smiled at the thought. Besides, if she threw a ball, who would come? They were certainly very isolated here at the castle, their only neighbor the estranged brother, Rupert.
She could speak to Rupert. She gasped, feeling an echo of the excitement she’d experienced finishing the masquerade scene. Inspiration was striking again.
She could talk with this important figure from Dex’s past. He was possibly the only person who could shine some light on the dark corners that made up her husband. Why not? At the very worst, he would reject her advance or have no insights to offer. Maybe he was as closed and unyielding as Dex, and that was why they were locked into this enmity. Maybe it had all started oversomething very silly in their childhood, a coveted pony being gifted to the wrong brother, something trivial that had grown hard layers of meaning over time. Shells that slowed each brother down and kept them from seeing each other clearly.
She could peel off the layers, get to the heart of it. And maybe get to the heart of Dex in the process.
Ana arrived at the door of the neighboring estate in a sorry state. She’d charged out of the castle with the barest of goodbyes to Tessie and the rest of the staff, fastening her coat as she went. She didn’t want to tell anyone where she was going, lest they try to stop her, give her some logical reason not to undertake this quest. Logic be damned today. She was giving her intuition free rein.
It had led her to this doorstep, out of breath and windswept, raising the heavy knocker with a shaky hand. In the moment before the door opened, she had enough time to conjure up a thousand potential forms her new brother-in-law might take, none of them pleasant. A dastardly cad, a pompous imbecile. A bitter man, jealous of Dex’s birthright, plotting his downfall from just down the hill.
The attractive brown-haired gentleman with the ready grin and friendly crinkles around his eyes was wholly unexpected.
“Hullo! You’ll have to excuse me for opening the door myself—Mallard’s been taken ill and our footmen are helping the stablemaster with a breached foal’s birth. I’m Rupert. You must be Analise, the authoress? Come in, please! Come in.”
“How did you know it was me? How do you know my name?” Confusion contributed to her overall ruffled state, as she slid her arms out of her coat and passed it into Rupert’s helpfully outstretched arms. He was taking her in with interested and approving gray eyes, the mirror of Dex’s but with warmth tempering the steel.
“I like to keep abreast of my brother’s doings, as much as he would rather I didn’t. We’d heard he’d brought a young bride to the castle, and you fit the description. I hope you aren’t terribly shocked by my lack of propriety, I’ve just been hoping to meet you but unsure how to make it happen, and here you are, on our doorstep. Astonishing!”
She could hardly help smiling back at him—his easy manner was contagious. “You know more about me than I know of you! I’m so pleased to be received like this, I felt positively gauche arriving unannounced.”
“Did my brother—are you here with his blessing? Does he know you’ve come?”
“Your brother is in London on urgent business. I haven’t had a chance to write him,” she said, neatly evading his first question. “I wanted to invite you over for dinner so that we could all spend time together as a family. I never had a large family; it was always just me and Papa. So, I thought—wouldn’t it be better to deliver the invitation in person? So that we could dispense with the awkwardness of first introductions?” She looked at him hopefully, willing him to let her gloss over Dex’s participation, or lack thereof, in the scheme. He seemed relieved and pleased to do so.
“Quite right! Admirably so. Firmly believe in avoiding awkwardness at all costs. My wife will be overjoyed to meet you. Come into the drawing room.”
He ushered her through the hall and into a brightly lit, warm room, full of harmonious colors and big bowls of flowers. She had an overall impression of domestic bliss, such that it tugged at her heart poignantly. This was a house full of love, she had just timeenough to think, when the raven-haired woman at its center arose from the comfortably stuffed chair she’d been sitting on, embroidery materials falling to her feet.
“Celestia. Look who’s come. It’s Analise!”
Celestia. The periphery of the room blurred. All Ana could see was the woman. Tall, statuesque. An oval face, deep brown eyes, fine features—a face of stunning, ethereal beauty surrounded by a bounty of glossy black hair. A match to the figure in the maze’s fountain, although the sculptor had scarcely done her justice.
Ana was suddenly aware of her own curls, blown willy-nilly by the autumn wind, and her walking clothes, damp with perspiration and hanging heavily about her. Celestia was walking toward her with open arms, a timid expression of pleasure brightening her eyes and tinting her cheeks pink.
“Your Grace, it’s wonderful to meet you.”
Ana clasped hands with Celestia, one hundred questions bubbling behind her lips. She sensed that the goddess in front of her had just as many questions, if the quizzical narrowing of her delicately veined eyelids was any indication.
“I—” she hesitated. “Forgive me, I am woefully uneducated on family matters. I didn’t know that Rupert was married? I didn’t—well, I don’t know much of anything.”
Celestia nodded, understanding dawning on her face. “Rupert, will you ring for tea? Her Grace must be exhausted after undertaking the journey by foot, and in this blustery weather! Shall we sit and attempt to clear out some familial cobwebs?”
Ana sank into the proffered chair with relief. “Oh yes, please! You don’t know how much I’ve longed to learn a little bit more about Dex. He is rather a closed book to me.”
“To us all. But with good reason,” Celestia said enigmatically.