Page 25 of The Duke and His Jilted Bride

“I really don't mind,” she said, fingers hovering over the keys. “If you want to stay and keep me company. This is your house. Just because you gave me this room doesn’t mean you can never come in here.”

He settled back in the armchair and tried to accept the permission she was giving him. “Play something then,” he asked her, leaning his head back against the soft back of the chair.

“Any requests?”

“I couldn’t give one if I wanted to.”

“Then I’m sorry to say Haydn it is.”

Nine

It was a few days later, and Aurelia had been awake since midnight. Her back ached. Her thighs ached. Everything south of her waist had formed a collective opinion about the past three days of riding that was strongly unfavourable. None of the baths were helping. And this wasn’t conducive to sleep.

But she liked her rides in the morning with Evander so much, she thought, that she didn’t want to alert him to the toll they were taking on her body. At least it meant she was eating more. She was always hungry at Carrstone for some reason. Her stomach rumbled in protest at that moment, and she placed a hand over it and sighed.

“Will you shut up,” she told it quietly.

It was impossible to sleep while she was this sore and this hungry. Her legs were getting restless. It was too dark to write letters – she would keep working on the letter to Aunt Violet in the morning. Finding a wool shawl and slipping into her house shoes, she left the room in search of the library.

The library was down a storey and to the left. She had confirmed this twice now and was reasonably confident. She took her candle and went down the corridor in her night clothes, which was fine, she assured herself, because no one was awake and this technically was her house.

But to her surprise, the library door was open when she arrived. Light came through it. She stopped. Then she went in, because turning around felt too much like retreating – and if her husband chose to read at half past two in the morning then that was his business and she could take a book without it being remarkable.

Evander was in the chair by the east window. He had a lamp at his elbow, his book open, his legs extended toward the low fire. He was in his shirtsleeves again. He looked up when she appeared in the doorway, a little startled, leaning forward abruptly.

“I’m so sorry. I couldn't sleep,” she whispered.

“Neither could I.” He was already standing, the way he always stood when she entered a room. He gestured to her nightclothes. “But at least you tried.”

Aurelia held back from rolling her eyes, mortified that he was seeing her like this.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Well… a book.”

He looked at the shelves, which contained by her estimate several hundred volumes. “What kind of book?”

“I don’t know… What do you usually read?”

“Do you expect it will put you to sleep?”

“Maybe.”

He considered this, and then he went to the far shelf, the lower section nearest the window, and came back with a volume and handed it to her. She looked at it. A Natural History of the Norfolk Coast, published two decades ago, with illustrations.

“It is very specific,” she said. “Not a very catchy title.”

“Not a very catchy book. But it will soon send you to sleep, learning the difference between a loon and a jaeger.”

“I feel a bit like a loon myself at the moment,” she said through a sigh. “But thank you.”

She was again very aware of her night chemise and her loose hair, and the fact that the shawl she had grabbed on the way out was one of her thinner ones and was doing an incomplete job of covering her bare shoulders. He was, thank heavens, not looking at any of those things. He was looking at her face, and this was somehow not better.

“I will sit over there,” she said, indicating the chair on the other side of the fire, separated from his by an appropriate distance. “And I promise I will be quiet.”

“Until you start snoring.”

“I do not snore.”