He stared at her. He was aware that he was frowning, but couldn’t quite help it.
“What the... for God’s sake... am I... dead? Are you?”
Perhaps he wasn’t fully awake. He pivoted his head. Everything looked very much the same, but then it didn’t seem unreasonable for heaven to look a bit like The Grand Palace on the Thames.
“Well, by now everyone knows I’m not precisely an angel, so this isn’t heaven. You’re alive. For a moment I wasn’t certain, however.” Her wobbly smile showed she was uncertain about the joke, too. “The maid called Dot made me tiptoe in. She said you needed your rest.”
He hadn’t even heard the knock on the door.
He stared at her, amazed. Waiting to feel... something. Perhaps he’d felt too many things in the past several days, or the pitch of his emotions had been such that any smaller emotions simply didn’t register.
His manners drove him to his feet. “Amelia... I’m glad to see you. Are you sound?”
“Please don’t get up, Hugh. I’m sound. And you? Are you well?”
At that, he slowly sat again.
And finally a distinct feeling penetrated his shock: the absurd banality of this exchange made him angry.
His gaze became one of rank disbelief.
She nervously looked away and tucked a spiral of her hair behind her ear.
He said nothing.
“The Clays told me you were looking for me. Hugh, I want to go home. And I don’t know how to get there. I had only enough money to pay for this lark, you see.” Her voice trembled.
He stared at her.
“Lark,” he repeated carefully. After a pause.
She knotted her hands in her lap and then studied them. He inspected her swiftly. Her blue dress was rumpled. She did indeed look a trifle hard done by.
“Six weeks’ passage across the ocean, Amelia. Months in England. Not a word to anyone since. Your father is worried unto death. He would have given you the moon, had you asked.”
His words emerged clipped and scalding.
He, who had lost so many, was nearly dizzy with disbelief she would put anyone she allegedly loved through such torment for a... lark.
“But he never would have let me go without him, and when would that have ever happened? Kathryn Clay said I was pretty enough and rich enough to catch an English lord who lived near her and he never would have consented to me going for that reason.”
He gave a short laugh.
“Well? Were you? Pretty enough?” he said sardonically.
Through his disbelief wound a thread of utterly mordant humor. Apparently Amelia Woodley had harbored ambitions beyond Hugh Cassidy. Here was someone else who’d learned that life was equal parts dreams and disillusionment. He couldn’t fault her for dreaming, really.
She flinched. But didn’t reply.
“And did you?”
After a moment, she shook her head, shamefaced. Mutely. She returned her gaze to her clasped hands.
“Did one catch you?”
“Hugh!” She gasped. She’d taken his meaning, all right.
He wasn’t sorry. He was too tired to be sorry or polite. “You’ve no right to any indignation, Amelia. If we’re to find a way to get you home, I shallneed to know if you’re with child, and if that’s the reason you’ve finally surfaced. We’ll need to make accommodations accordingly.”