“Very trying,” Millie agreed.
“Understandable, perfectly understandable,” Harbury said. “If Aunt Jane will pardon me, I’m going to remark, for no apparent reason, on the thickness of the walls.”
A squeak escaped Millie’s throat. Sarah rolled her eyes.
“Shall we?” He smiled down into his wife’s upturned face.
She nodded, darting a glance back to their grinning collection of relatives.
“One of the words I think you might have been looking for last night in the library”—he leaned down and whispered directly into her ear—“is grind.”
Millie turned sharply.
“Unless, that is, you are interested in the far more vulgar fu—”
She silenced him with a kiss.
Harbury whistled. Sarah clapped. Cassie gasped. Mercy the spaniel yipped. And his mother laughed.
“Now, for a story that began with potential ruin, that is a satisfying ending,” Sarah said.
He smiled.
The evening had only just begun.
Chapter Thirteen
Millie reentered thespare bedchamber she’d left a few hours prior, but she felt as if she were seeing the room anew.
Had the bed Cassie tucked her into last night shrunk?
The mirror was now too close to the footboard, anyway. The brass argand lamps, three in total, burned too bright. Even the non-threatening array of feminine accoutrements she’d arranged on the table were no longer comfortingly present.
Instead, her familiar things had been replaced by plates of simple food, a wine decanter, and crystal glasses. Two glasses.Two.
Ominous.
Millie’s throat closed, heightening the alarm that had first seized her when Neville said that vulgar word.
Well, he’dalmostsaid that word.
Wouldhave, too, if she hadn’t silenced him with a kiss. Quick thinking, that.
Though, if she were being fair-minded, all that last night oflickingandstrippingandevery roomshould have warned her of impending danger. Still, she hadn’t adequately seen the risk. In Neville’s presence, the talk had been exciting.
Now that the ceremony was over, she wondered if she hadn’t worried enough about “men’s carnal lusts and appetites” which, if one believed the Vicar, men satisfied like “brute beasts.”
Brute. Beasts.
She felt a dry quiver in the back of her mouth.
Neville’s shoulders, once distinctive, were now daunting.
Restlessly, she stood up from the bed, paced to the table, and sat down in one of the two chairs. She stared at the untouched pile of square-cut cheeses and then popped one in her mouth.
Well,thathad been a mistake. How could she eat? She couldn’t properly swallow!
Finally, she forced down the cheese, leaving her throat even more thoroughly parched.