Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Adena almost collapsed into the large wooden chair that sat in the hallway of the Kerrs, but whether it was from physical or emotional exhaustion, she could not tell.
In a strange way, it was as though she had never left.
The grandfather clock was still ticking away, showing that the time was a quarter to nine.
The candle near the door was a tad more burned down than she had remembered it, but other than that, the hallway looked exactly as it had done the last time that she had seen it.
She laughed under her breath. It could all have been a dream, for the difference that the last night had made to her life. Here she was, a little sandier than before, and in desperate need of a good wash, but nothing more.
The grandfather clock chimed the quarter hour, and a door opened to the breakfast room.
“ – and if no sign of her shows up soon, then we will have to inform – Adena!”
Adena was almost flattened by a rush of golden brown hair and sobs.
“Rowena!”
“Oh, Adena, we thought we had lost you,” her friend sobbed, breaking away from her to stare at her wildly. “You did not return from your walk, and I waited up all night! The search party, it could not find you…”
Adena could see the truth of it in her friend’s eyes: they were rimmed with grey, and red from tears.
“We thought something terrible had happened to you!” Rowena clutched at her friend’s hands, and drew them close to her. “But you are here – and you are alive!”
“Alive?” Adena tried to force a laugh, but it felt and sounded hollow. “My dear Rowena, you must accept my apologies, I must have given you such a fright. Were you concerned?”
“You have been gone all night,” Rowena said breathlessly, her eyes wide. “Where have you been?”
Adena swallowed. She should have expected this rather obvious question, and yet she had had no time to construct a believable answer. Thankfully, because she had time to answer, another voice entered the fray.
“My word, it is Miss Garland!” Rowena’s father, a tall man with an almost continuous smile the entire time that Adena had known him, was hurrying out of the breakfast room with concern and fear on his visage.
“‘Tis indeed, and she is quite safe,” Rowena said hastily. “That is – you are not hurt, are you?”
“Fetch a doctor,” said Mr Kerr decidedly to a servant who was gawking at the three of them from the breakfast room doorway. “Quickly now!”
Adena could not help but laugh genuinely now, it all seemed so strange after her night on the island – what she had thought was the island. “I am uninjured.”
Leaving aside the broken heart of course, her inner voice wanted to speak aloud, but she quashed down that particular thought as Mrs Kerr came through the door, her arms full of flowers she had just picked from the garden – flowers that were strewn on the floor as she jumped at the sight of her daughter’s missing friend.
“Lord save us, Miss Garland! You are back!”
“Yes,” said Adena helplessly, giving herself up to the chaos. “And I must apologise profusely for giving you such – ”
“A doctor,” said Mrs Kerr hurriedly, moving over to her and feeling her forehead with the back of her hand. “A doctor must be sent for.”
“A doctor has been sent for, Mama,” Rowena said with a smile, and Adena was pleased to see that she had relaxed somewhat.
Her attention seemed to have moved on, and though her smile was genuine, it was a little more vacant than Adena was accustomed to.
“Come now, I will help Miss Garland up to her room.”
There were many shouted protestations to this – Miss Garland could not possibly be moved, how could she think of it? Was it not best for them to wait for the doctor to arrive?
But eventually Adena was able to convince them that really, all she wanted was a little peace and quiet to rest from what Mrs Kerr termed as ‘her ordeal’.
Exactly what that ordeal consisted of, she would not say, simply affirming her desire for rest.
“Well, if you are quite sure,” said Mrs Kerr, unconvinced.
Her husband nodded at his daughter. “Rowena will help you upstairs, and we shall send the doctor up directly.”
It was a relief for Adena, after spending so much time with just herself and – another, as she would call him in her mind from now on – to be away from such a crowd of people, as the butler, two more maids, and a footman had all arrived to see what the commotion had all been about.
Finally the bedroom door was closed, and she and Rowena were alone.
“What a noise!” Adena threw herself onto the bed and closed her eyes. “I thought that we would never escape them all!”
For a moment, she thought that Rowena had departed from the room, for there was no reply. She opened her eyes, and saw her friend seated at the dressing table, fiddling with her hairbrush.
“I am glad to be back,” said Adena, more quietly now. “It was…a rather strange experience, I must say.”
She was not one to attempt to be mysterious on purpose, but she had expected her rather obtuse comment to provoke questions from her friend.
But Rowena did not turn around, did not even catch her gaze in the mirror. “Hmmm?”
Adena propped herself up on the bed, and relaxed into the soft delight of the cushions. “I never thought I would be so glad to be in a bed again!”
That, surely, was enough of a bizarre statement to elicit a response – and perhaps it may have been, for a companion who was not otherwise lost in her own thoughts. Rowena Kerr, however, seemed distracted, unable to concentrate.
“Rowena, I have to tell you,” Adena said in a rush. She knew that she would be overcome if she did not tell someone, and as her closest friend, who better to act as her confidante. “I met a gentleman.”
This at last seemed to be the cue for Rowena’s attention. She started, turned around, and smiled mischievously. “A gentleman, you say! One that I am acquainted with?”
Adena hesitated. Happy as she was to share most of the details of her story, there were some elements – some moments, some experiences – that were better kept to herself.
After all, and she blushed to consider it, would she want Luke sharing exactly what they had become to each other with his closest friends?
“I am not sure,” she said carefully. “He is a marquis, and not of this neighbourhood.”
The interest in Rowena’s eyes flickered and died, and her shoulders slumped. “Oh, I suppose not then.”
Her gaze slipped away from her friend, and settled onto what appeared to Adena at least as a very uninteresting piece of carpet.
“As I was saying,” she continued, rather pertly, “I met him. He is – oh, Rowena, he is unlike any other person that I have ever met, any gentleman for sure.”
Rowena sighed. “Handsome?”
“Very,” Adena nodded, and a small smile sparked across her lips. “And yet, sometimes you can almost forget that. When you are speaking with him, I mean. His conversation is so captivating, you can at times lose yourself in….Rowena, are you listening?”
Rowena moved with a start, and gazed at Adena wildly. “What?”
Adena stared at her friend, now more curious about her than interested in sharing her story. “What has got into you, Ro? Has anything happened?”
It looked at first like Rowena was going to speak: her mouth opened and her cheeks flushed at the upcoming words, but then she seemed to decide against it.
“You must be tired,” she said quietly, rising from her seat and moving to the door. “I will leave you to rest, and prevent the doctor from being sent up when he arrives.”
Without another word, she had left the bedroom. Adena stared after her in confusion. And she had thought that she would possess the more interesting secret.
Luke’s hand felt heavy as he knocked on the door of his friend’s estate, and waited the expected two or three minutes for the elderly butler to arrive at the door.
“My lord,” said the old man in pleasant surprise. “What an honour. I am afraid that Sir Moses – ”
“Sir Moses will see me,” Luke interrupted, without the typical grace and elegance that he utilised when in society. “I am sorry, Andrews.”
Pushing past the elderly gentleman who gently protested at the intrusion, Luke strode into the Great Hall of Wandorne and made his way to the room where he knew he would find the miser at this hour, or at any hour for that matter.
The library had its shutters still closed, and naught but one solitary candle gave light to the room. Sir Moses was hunched in a chair by the unlit grate.
“Andrews? Is that you?” He said gruffly without looking up.
Luke strode forward, removed the book from his friend’s hands, and dropped into the chair opposite. “I am in trouble, Moses.”
The long-haired man scowled at him. “Dang it all, Dewsbury, at least put a bookmark in it.”
Luke rolled his eyes, grabbed at a letter that was lying on the floor beside his chair, and stuffed it into the book. “I do not know how you can live like this, Moses, ‘tis barbaric.”
Sir Moses shrugged. “I like it. That is all that matters.”
Sighing, Luke placed the book down on the floor. He had heard that Moses had allowed himself to wallow in his unhappiness, but he had not expected anything like this.
“When we left Cambridge,” he said sternly to his friend. “You promised me that you would try to get back to living. To put aside the past, and take up your estate’s duties once more.”
Sir Moses glared at him, and shrugged once more. “I lied.”
Luke held his friend’s gaze for a few seconds, and then they both laughed.
“Come, ring the bell and we can get some brandy in here,” said Sir Moses with a wave of his hand. “Trouble, you say? Not a woman, ‘tis never a woman with you. Gambling?”
Luke winced as he leaned over to pull the bell beside the fireplace.
“Hurt your shoulder then – hunting accident?”
“Outdoor sleeping,” corrected Luke with a wry smile. “If I tell you that it is a bit of a strange predicament, would you believe me?”