Chapter 22
“Theodore Holbrook, if you tell me you merely wished to admire the sunset, I shall push you into the duck pond myself.”
Theodore blinked.
“I don’t believe Wolverton has a duck pond.”
“It will by the time I’ve finished with you.”
He stared at her for another heartbeat before an entirely unhelpful grin spread across his face.
“Oh dear.”
“Oh dear indeed.”
She marched across the courtyard without slowing, skirts swaying sharply enough to betray every ounce of her temper. Theodore lengthened his stride to keep beside her, though he had the decency to look faintly cautious now.
“I take it,” he ventured, “this concerns what happened at the stables.”
“This concerns,” Adelaide replied through remarkably composed teeth, “your astonishing talent for arriving at precisely the wrong moment.”
“I wasn’t aware there had been a right one.”
“There most certainly had.”
“I see.”
“No, you really do not.”
“I trust you and change my stance… I suspect I do not.”
She stopped walking altogether. “Theodore.”
He sobered immediately.
“I was this close.” She held her thumb and forefinger scarcely an inch apart. “This close to kissing my husband.”
His eyebrows climbed.
“And then you appeared.” She pointed accusingly toward him. “Bellowing my name across the yard as though Wolverton had caught fire.”
“I did not bellow.”
“You absolutely bellowed.”
“I called out.”
“You startled the horses even. Bellowing!”
“I rather thought they looked calm?” For one glorious moment Theodore looked entirely at a loss. Then, to Adelaide’s immense irritation, he laughed with the unmistakable amusement of a man who had finally solved a puzzle. “Oh,” he said.
“Oh?”
“So that’s why you’ve scarcely looked at me since supper.”
“You have eyes.”
“I’ve always had them.”
“Well, they’ve been tragically underused.”
“I admit,” he said, still smiling, “I hadn’t appreciated the gravity of my interruption.”
“You interrupted my first opportunity to discover whether my husband possessed the courage to kiss me.”
His expression transformed almost instantly, and the laughter disappeared. “I owe you an apology.”
“You do.”
“And a very good explanation.”
“Yes.”
She folded her arms. “Well?”
For a long moment he simply looked at her, and then he sighed. “I did not come looking for you merely to ruin your afternoon.”
“How comforting, and yet you have managed it without even trying.”
Theodore gave her a look. “There is something peculiar happening in this house.”
Adelaide stopped. Her irritation sharpened immediately. “If you are about to offer me some observation regarding my husband—”
“Not Wolverton.”
That checked her.
Theodore glanced toward the house before lowering his voice. “Violet.”
Adelaide gaped at him. “What about Violet?”
“I don’t know.”
“Excellent.” She started walking again. “A remarkably compelling reason to interrupt me.”
“Would you stop being furious for half a minute?”
“I have no reason to as of yet, but please carry on…”
“It’s just—It’s her hands.”
Adelaide stopped again, this time because she genuinely had no idea what he was talking about. “Her hands?”
“Yes.”
“You dragged me away from my husband because you’ve developed a sudden interest in Violet’s hands?”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I should sincerely hope not, for your sake.”
Theodore made an aggravated sound and caught up with her. “They don’t make sense. Do they?”
“They are hands, Theodore. There are two of them. She has had the same ones for as long as I’ve known her.”
“And have you ever actually looked at them?”
Adelaide opened her mouth with another retort and stopped because she had. And it was quite recently that she had. Only days ago, across the sewing table, while Violet spoke of the comfortable life she might once have had.
Theodore saw something change in her face. “See… you have. I knew it.”
“That still provides no grace by way of your ill-timed bellowing this evening.”
“I haven’t said what I think it proves.”
“You didn’t need to. You’ve been behaving strangely since you saw that portrait.”
His expression altered. “So have you.”
Adelaide’s temper flared all over again. “I have done nothing of the sort!”
“You noticed the resemblance before I did.”
“I noticed dark hair—”
“And it yielded you speechless. It’s uncanny, is it not?”
“No,” she said, the word like venom as she rounded on him.
“And I will repeat myself, if I must, because it seems that for one unfortunate moment I entertained an absurd thought, and then I possessed sufficient sense to dismiss it, but you have failed to follow suit. And if every dark-haired girl with curly hair were a member of this family, then half of England would be related—which is a ridiculous notion, indeed!”
Theodore watched her for a beat. “Is it, though?”
Adelaide hated the question mostly because she had no satisfactory answer to it. She had returned to the gallery. Twice.
She had looked at the cliffs painted behind Olivia Sullyard and remembered a maid going pale in her bedchamber. She had remembered his servants revealing that they had been told to speak nothing of it.
And, despite every sensible explanation Adelaide had supplied herself since, she had remembered Violet refusing to name the place she’d grown up.
None of which made Theodore’s ridiculous suspicion any less ridiculous.
“Whatever you think you’re discovering,” she said, “Violet is not a dead woman.”
Theodore frowned. “I didn’t say she was.”
Adelaide blinked. “Then what in God’s name are you saying?”
“I am saying I think Violet might have known Olivia,” Theodore shoved his hands into his coat pockets. “Or this family. Or someone in this house. I don’t know yet. But there is something she isn’t telling us.”
For several seconds Adelaide said nothing. His conclusion was considerably less absurd, and therefore considerably more irritating. “You interrupted me,” she said slowly, “because Violet might once have known someone?”
“When you say it like that—”
“How else should I say it?”
“Preferably after you’ve stopped imagining ways to end my family line.”
Adelaide exhaled heavily, stepped around him, and resumed walking, and Theodore fell into step beside her. “Where are you going?”
“Since my evening has been royally interrupted by some kind of harebrained idea, I am going up to my father’s rooms, as you have indicated his request to see me. Perhaps he can help provide a break from this insanity.”
“Adelaide—”
“And, in future, if you interrupt me and my husband again without possessing an actual fact or emergency, Theodore Holbrook, I shall see whether the Wolverton cliffs are as dangerous as everyone claims.”
He was silent for two steps. “That sounded remarkably specific.”
Adelaide’s stride faltered. Damn him.
“Go away.” She said roughly and bounded up the stairs, leaving him standing alone in the entrance hall looking considerably less certain than when the conversation had begun.
She spent the next few hours tending to her father, which served as a lovely distraction from what had just happened outside with Theodore and Eric. By the time Adelaide reached her chambers, she had almost convinced herself she was no longer angry.
She closed the door behind her with rather more force than intended.
“You’re upset.” Violet looked up immediately from where she had been arranging freshly laundered gowns inside the wardrobe.
“I am not.”
“You just slammed the door.”
“There was a draft that took control of it.”
“You’ve never closed a door like that in your life.”
Adelaide opened her mouth and closed it again.
Violet smiled knowingly. “What happened?”
Adelaide sat heavily on the edge of the bed. “Theodore.”
“That usually explains a great deal.”
“He interrupted —something.”
“What sort of something?”
Adelaide buried her face briefly in both hands. “A… moment.”
Understanding dawned with astonishing speed. “Oh.”
“Oh indeed.”
Violet crossed the room and settled beside her. “Tell me.”
Adelaide painted a clear picture , and Violet was hooked on what was to come next.
The sunset over the paddock as they walked their horses. The heavy silence that had grown between them and how close they had been. And then Theodore’s perfectly dreadful timing. When she’d finished, Violet was trying very hard not to smile.
“You’re laughing at me?”
“I would never.”
“You absolutely are.”
“Only a little.”
Adelaide sighed dramatically. “I’ve become ridiculous, haven’t I?”
“No. You’ve become a wife in love.”
The words settled quietly between them. Adelaide looked down at her folded hands. “I don’t know when it happened. I told myself this marriage would never become… this.”
“And yet?”
She smiled despite herself. “And yet.”
Violet reached over and squeezed her hand. “I think what truly upset you wasn’t Theodore.”
“No?”
“No.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “You’re angry because he interrupted something you’d finally stopped being afraid of.”
Adelaide considered that and then groaned softly. “Oh dear. I hate when you’re right.”
“I know.” Violet stood, smoothing the front of her gown. “You’ll continue to survive it though.”
“You sound remarkably unconcerned.”
“Please do not mistake me for anything else. I am quite unconcerned.” She smiled warmly. “Because I rather suspect there will be another opportunity.”
Before Adelaide could answer, Violet slipped quietly from the room, leaving her alone with the realization that, much to her annoyance, her friend almost certainly was right.
***
Sleep came only in scattered moments. Whenever Adelaide drifted off, she found herself waking again with the previous evening waiting patiently for her, as though it had simply paused until she opened her eyes.
By the time the morning doves began calling outside her window, she gave up the effort entirely and climbed from bed.
It was not Theodore’s impossible theory that had stolen her rest, though that had lingered stubbornly enough.
Nor was it Violet’s quiet certainty that Adelaide had finally fallen in love with her husband.
Those thoughts rose and fell with the hours, but they were not the ones that refused to loosen their hold.