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“Perhaps we were family friends, Miss Doyle. If the Masons and the Doyles are both local.”
Mr. Mason was teasing in that wry way of his again. She shuffled closer to him as though compelled by a string tied between them. “It may be all right for you not to think about the implications…”
“But?” said he, raising his black eyebrows. “I do not think we have much of a choice. Even if you wished to return to Glasgow with us, you couldn’t walk here from Ullinn House without tiring. We would have to wait.”
“It… it is nearly the new year. Surely you cannot delay with a stranger at such a festive time.”
“Until I received news that I was to inherit something, I planned on spending it entirely alone.”
The thought saddened her, not that she knew why.
Florence felt Mr. Maclean’s eyes on her, on them.
She did not take hers from Mr. Mason’s. “Oh. Well, I don’t suppose it is the same in England. Mr. Danvers’ wife is from—” She stopped speaking when his name left her lips and Mr. Mason’s face was ominous as overhead thunder. “My employer’s wife is from York. She said that when she first married and moved to her husband’s home, the amount of effort spent on the new year, on Hogmanay, instead of anything else was surprising.”
“We aren’t going to send or take you anywhere until you have recovered somewhat.”
She tried something else. “What of your work? The duke?”
“I’m sure I’ll be missed but he has an entire household. I shall write to him immediately. Besides, your concern does you credit, but I expected to be gone at least three weeks.”
This Lord Valencourt must have indeed been generous. She shook her head again. Now the room, as well as the floor, spun. “I am not an invalid.”
“No, Miss Doyle,” said Mr. Maclean. “But I suspect that you have been through much. Whether or not you believe it is so.”
She almost managed a reply, but her tongue was unexpectedly, impossibly heavy. It would not work.
Her eyes seemed to close, or the room became shadowed.
The last thing she recalled thinking as she slumped toward Mr. Mason, who was still sitting quite close, was,I hope he does not think I am being weak. Or brazen.
