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‘There, you see? Mabel is going to keep me company. If anything happens, I’ll scream the house down.’
And she gave me a smile. The kind of smile that pulled at something deep inside me, and…
Ignore. Focus.
I felt a muscle twitch. ‘It’s a large house.’
‘And I’m good at screaming, as you should know from experience. Go!’
For a moment, I hesitated—then realized what I was doing. Just sitting here, wasting time? What had happened to me? Abruptly, I rose to my feet. ‘I shall be only a minute. In the meantime…’ Fixing a look on the housemaid, I made sure she understood. Understood without words whom she was dealing with, and what would happen if anything went amiss. ‘You are personally responsible for Miss Linton’s safety. If anything happens to her in my absence, you will have me to answer to.’
*~*~**~*~*
I thrust open the door and marched into the room. My mother was just in the process of stitching a number of superfluous endothermic vertebrates on a scrap of silk—in other words, embroidering a handkerchief with birds. Swiftly and silently, I strode up to her.
‘Mother.’
She jumped a foot into the air, almost stabbing her finger with her needle. My sister, sitting a few feet away, glanced up, looking as if she would very much prefer to stab me instead.
‘Good Lord! Can’t you knock?’
I gave her a cool look. ‘The ability to do something does not imply the necessity.’
She nodded. ‘Ah. So you’re just bad-mannered. Good to know.’
Turning away from the young raven-haired harpy, whom I was seventy-five per cent certain was related to me, I focused on the easier target: my mother. She was looking up at me with a soft, longing look in her eyes. Soft, longing and loving.
Certainty: twenty-five per cent.
‘You wanted something, Mother?’
‘Yes, Rick. Um, I…’ She fiddled with her needle, accidentally stabbing her birds to death multiple times, and turning the flower on the handkerchief from a rose to a porouse. ‘I was wondering…’
‘Yes?’ My cool gaze swivelled back from the vertebrates to her—and promptly, her courage faltered.
‘I was wondering if you would like to sit down?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
‘Err…would you like a cup of tea?’
‘No.’
‘A biscuit?’
‘No.’
‘A kick in the butt?’
That last one had not come from my mother. My gaze turned to Adaira, who was smiling up at me with absolutely no shame. Hm. Maybe seventy-six per cent certainty.
‘Sit down, you granite-headed ligger!’[22] she ordered me, with far too much determination for a little squirt of a girl who, only a few years ago, was dribbling gruel on her nappy. Females! You leave for a decade or two, and all of a sudden they think they’re grown up and entitled to their own opinions. ‘Mother wants to talk to you.’
‘You don’t say. I hadn’t noticed.’
This was a waste of my time. I had to get back to my business. My documents.
