Page 27 of An Earl's Christmas Seduction
“We’ll see you after breakfast. I haven’t seen Nicholas this morning, have you?” Isobel asked, and Amelia shook her head.
She and the earl had parted on cordial terms, though Amelia remained uncertain where she stood. Was this the beginning of a romance? A kiss did not make a courtship, but Amelia was curious to know where she stood. She could hardly stop thinking of him or the passion of what they had shared. The way he had held her, the taste of his lips, and the scent of his cologne lingered in her mind.
“No, I haven’t,” Amelia replied, as a clatter of footsteps on the stairs caused the three of them to look up, finding Edmund standing on the stairs.
He looked embarrassed, even as he had no reason to be so.
“Oh… I’m sorry,” he said, but the three of them smiled at him.
“You’re a guest here, Edmund. You’ve as much right as anyone to walk down the stairs,” Clara said, shaking her head.
Edmund smiled. Amelia knew he was enamored with Isobel, and she, too, was attracted to him. There had been some flirtation the previous evening, though Edmund was a shy man, and it seemed he was unable to make the first move.
“I suppose I do. Yes,” he said.
For a moment, they stood in awkward silence, but Amelia’s stomach was rumbling, and she was keen to get to breakfast.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, and the others nodded.
“We’ll see you later, Amelia. You too, Edmund. Come for a walk with us in the snow,” Isobel said.
Edmund’s eyes grew wide with delight, and he nodded, bounding off towards the dining room, like an eager puppy on the scent. Clara shook her head and laughed.
“Enjoy your breakfast,” she said, as Amelia followed after the ecstatic Edmund.
The dining room lay beyond the library, and as she passed the library door, Amelia thought back to her discovery by Nicholas the night before. She wondered where he was. Was he purposefully hiding from her? Voices were coming from the dining room, and she found most of the other guests tucking into deviled kidneys and toast with marmalade.
Her mother was sitting with Lady Turner at the far end of the table, deep in conversation, and again it seemed odd to Amelia to find the two of them on such intimate terms. As she entered the room, her mother looked up at her, nodding curtly, before returning to her conversation.
“Come and sit ye down, Amelia,” the viscount said, beckoning Amelia to join him at the near end of the table.
She did so, smiling at him, as a footman came to pour her a cup of coffee. She had taken a liking to the viscount the previous evening. He was vivacious and lively, and seemed to have a song for almost any occasion.
“Thank you. What a blizzard!” Amelia exclaimed pointing out of the window where the snow was whirling in the gray skies.
The viscount smiled.
“Well, tis’ nearly Christmas. What more do we have to dae but eat, drink, and be merry? Tis’ very generous of our host to allow it, isn't it?” he said, and Amelia nodded.
She wondered if any of the other guests had an inkling of the reason they had been gathered at Ashworth House for the Christmas celebrations. Did they suspect something, or were they oblivious to the part they might play in the discovery of the truth?
“It certainly is, yes. I’m very pleased to be here, I really am,” Amelia said, for despite the air of mystery, she was genuinely glad to be in the company of new friends.
The only dampener was Constance, who was sitting on the other side of the table with a miserable expression on her face. There was no sense of joy about her, and it seemed to Amelia as though she had only accepted the invitation out of a desire to keep control of Nicholas, rather than for any genuine reason of wanting to be in his company and that of others, too.
“I was glad of the invitation myself. I’m all alone in Ireland. Well, I’ve got various aunts and cousins, but nae one I really want to spend time with. Being here, surrounded by such excellent company tis’ quite the tonic, I must say,” the viscount said, spreading a piece of toast liberally with marmalade.
There was a lively atmosphere at breakfast, with all the guests commenting on the snow, and the fact of their being trapped at Ashworth House for at least the next few days.
“I hope the brandy doesn’t run out,” Lord Thornton said, laughing at his own joke.
“I’m sure the earl has a well stocked cellar,” Sir Samuel said, and the others agreed.
But Amelia was eager to see Nicholas. She wanted to know the kiss they had shared had not offended him, even as she felt certain it had not. It was him who had kissed her, she believed. Or had it been the other way around? To kiss another was a strange thing; to kiss or be kissed. It took two to kiss. Two pairs of lips, two pairs of eyes meeting, two sets of hands clasped. Perhaps neither of them had kissed the other.
“We kissed one another,”Amelia told herself, and she felt no shame in having done so, not now her guilt over betraying Rupert was gone.
She was glad to have shared that moment of intimacy, particularly when she looked up from her toast and marmalade to find Constance watching her.
