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Adaira stared after him. ‘He called me Lady Adaira. What has he been feeding on since he left home? Ice cubes and starch?’
‘Mostly,’ I sighed. ‘But currently, he’s on a diet of gravel and cobblestones.’
Adaira, who had just taken a sip out of her glass, nearly sprayed its contents all over the table.
‘Don’t you laugh!’ Lady Samantha admonished her daughter. ‘This is no laughing matter!’
Coughing, Adaira shook her head. ‘I disagree. Because you have just two options: you can either laugh or cry about it. I mean, honestly! The two are behaving like children! And over what? Only-’
Lady Samantha shook her head. ‘You were too young back then. You don’t remember how it was.’ She shuddered. ‘I’ll never forget that night as long as I live. If only…’
By this time, I was quite ready to grab someone by the throat and start squeezing, yelling: ‘Just tell me already! Tell me what is going oooon!’
But I was a gentleman - or at least dressed up as one. So, instead, I said: ‘Some more tea, Lady Samantha?’
‘No, thank you.’
She looked so despondent, the words slipped out of my mouth before I could help it: ‘Isn’t there anything I could do?’
Abruptly, her head rose. ‘Well…yes, there is, actually.’
‘Oh?’ I hadn’t reckoned on this.
‘I know I’ll be able to talk my husband around eventually. I just need time - but I’m afraid I don’t have it. Rikkard…when he was younger, he was such a sweet, patient boy.’
Oh he was, was he?
‘But the man who has come back today…I hardly recognised him. I don’t think he would wait. Not for me. Not for his father. Not for anyone.’ She threw me a pleading look. ‘I just need a little bit of time. Could you distract him? Come up with something - papers to sign, news to read, anything - that would keep him distracted for a few days so he doesn’t think about leaving?’
‘Well…I don’t know…’
‘Please. I just want my family back together again.’
Her blue eyes looked so helpless, so pleading…
Damn!
‘All right. I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Oh, thank you, Mr Linton!’ Reaching over, she grabbed my hand and squeezed it. ‘You’re the best of men!’
‘Trust me, I am many things - but not that.’
And with a small smile at the two women, I rose and left the room, on the tracks of Mr Rikkard Ambrose. I found him, or rather the sound of his marching feet, in his room. Every step hit the floor like the crack of a whip. I sat in my room and listened while he punished the floor for things he couldn’t punish anyone else for, dark things in the past that I didn’t know anything about. What an unusually unproductive waste of his time. Especially when I could think of much better things for the two of us to do.
He was stuffed full to the brim with tension right now - and I knew just the way to release it. Besides…I had official permission, didn’t I? His mother had asked me to distract him. So distract him I would. Only, maybe not quite the way she’d had in mind.
Smiling to myself, I sat by the window and watched the sun go down while I waited. Finally, the footsteps in the other room subsided, and silence reigned. He had gone to bed.
It was time.
Rising to my feet, I crept over to the door and, like any upstanding rake bent on despoiling his innocent victim, peered through the keyhole. It was dark on the other side. I could just make out a shadowy figure standing beside the bed, then raising the covers and sliding in.
Oh yes. Relax. Close your eyes. Say goodbye to your innocence. Tonight is the night.
I waited, listening until his breathing had calmed. Slowly, my hand wandered over the wood until it found the knob and twisted.
Click.
