Page 7 of The Marquis, the Minx, and the Mistletoe
They reached the correct door, propped open, with the tray of water and biscuits at the bedside. It was a very masculine room, painted a deep, forest green and adorned with antlers and bookshelves, mercifully warm from a newly stoked fire and insulated with a selection of fluffy rugs over the already lush carpet.
Tia gasped in relief, breaking away from her friend to walk immediately to the bed so that she might remove her stockings. The warmth made her shiver harder, at least to begin with, as though it were breaking through layers of ice between her skin and her bones.
Glory stood nearby, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression still tight with worry. She looked like a moon goddess in her flowing dressing gown with her hair spilling over her shoulder in a thick rope. A very disapproving moon goddess.
Tia averted her eyes, tossing her damp stockings into the corner and reaching up to unclasp her grandmother's cloak.
"Was he ugly?" Glory snapped, her patience clearly wearing thin. "Mean? Stupid?"
"No. He was just wrong," Tia replied. She stood to unbutton the front of her dress, her hands steadier with the aid of the warmth inside. "He was all wrong."
"Well, I can't fault you for that," her friend admitted with a begrudging shrug. "I certainly never let it get to the point of a prospective wedding, however. I think my mother might have strangled me if I had."
Tia shrugged out of her dress, declining to comment upon this observation. Her shift was dirty and the stays she wore were laced so loosely as to serve no function other than discomfort, which at least made them easy to remove as well. Once it was gone, she indulged in a deep, shuddering breath of relief.
"Do they know where you've gone?"
"I left a note behind," Tia said quietly. "But I did not disclose a destination. I myself was not certain of a destination until I was forced to choose one. I did not know if I should come here or go to Kent."
"Well, obviously you chose correctly," Glory said with a sniff. "Do you want a bath before you sleep?"
"No, no," Tia groaned, discarding her tattered shift for the night rail that had been laid out for her on the bed, clean and starched and smelling of lavender. Pulling it over her head, feeling the clean fabric against her exhausted body, was so intensely luxurious that she could not diminish it so far as to call it relief. "Oh, God, Glory. I have never been so glad for a warm bed."
"Do you know whose bed it is?" Glory asked, a little smirk playing on her face. "This room belongs to someone else."
"Is Lord Somers away?" Tia asked, realizing abruptly that she had not seen the viscount, Gideon Somers, nor heard his voice upon her arrival. She hesitated, looking longingly at the pile of sheets and blankets and the down pillows that called to her so invitingly. "Surely this is not the master suite."
"It is not," Glory confirmed, watching her friend sigh in relief and climb into the embrace of the large bed. "Gideon is a bit under the weather, but he is home. This is a room we keep ready for the Marquis of Moorvale, for he visits often."
Tia froze, likely a look of conflicted horror on her face, because Glory immediately began to laugh.
"What is so funny?" Tia demanded, a blush creeping up to her cheeks to highlight her frown. It only made the other woman laugh harder. "You know I do not care for Lord Moorvale."
"Don't you?" Glory teased. "You complain about him anawful lotfor a woman with no particular feelings toward the man. You know he will be arriving here soon, as well? Ah, it's just delicious."
"Go away," Tia huffed. "I want to sleep."
"Mm, all right. It is only that it amuses me," Glory said, wicking a tear from the corner of her eye from her own amusement as she turned to leave. "You fled your wedding only to arrive directly into Sheldon Bywater's bed."
Chapter 4
There is a queer lightness and oddity to the space between night and morning, between being awake far too late and far too early. In the winter, the light looked purple instead of orange, hovering just behind the moon as though the moon herself was saying,Do not look at me! I'm not decent!
Everything felt a little otherworldly at this time. It invigorated a man alone, and unsettled him when he spotted another traveler, awake in the ether on their own business. For Sheldon Bywater, it was a feeling of promise and permission to forget all that had happened the day before.
When he had been on the Continent, in the thick of the war, he would always rise at this time. Echo would stay curled in his bunk, secure in the knowledge that her master's oddities would only take him away for a temporary spell, and Sheldon would pull on his trousers and wet his hair and walk out into the illuminated otherworld, while the rest of his retinue slept soundly in their beds.
The guards on duty at these times would sometimes greet him, but only quietly, for they, too, felt the strange aura of this time of night.
Sometimes he would do nothing at all but sit in a clearing, picking at his fingernails and thinking floating thoughts. Other times he would prepare for something that sat on the horizon, next to the soon-to-rise sun. Then he would return to bed and enjoy the silence as it dissolved into the first hint of morning activity, voices shattering the stillness, moving bodies stirring the air.
It felt like something the world was sharing with only him, and it made him feel as though he had dominion over the coming day.
Why had he stopped doing that, upon returning home? He frowned to himself, dropping the curtain back over his carriage window so that the purple light might only reach inside from around the edges as they rumbled along down the road to York.
Perhaps it was not necessary to commune so with the world when one is no longer in danger. He supposed it might be a good thing that he slept through the night now, back in the safe, familiar arms of Britain.
His dog certainly seemed to appreciate the lack of disruption. Out of the field, she slept at the foot of his bed, often curled into herself like a croissant or flung on her back with her paws twitching in the air as she chased her dreams. This morning, she snoozed dutifully with her cheek resting on her paws, her large body taking up the entirety of the bench across from Sheldon.
