Page 17 of Her Heart's Rightful Earl
Arabella seemed once again to reawaken from a daydream. “Oh … I believe … perhaps Friday?”
“I must ask Thomas if he is attending.” Charlotte fussed with her napkin in her lap. “We shall choose our dresses together, Arabella. Perhaps this afternoon?”
Arabella’s eyes were hooded by her heavy lids, and she looked up at her sister through absent eyes. “Hmmph?”
“I am dissatisfied with your claim that you are not suffering some malady, Arabella.” Charlotte cocked one eyebrow at her questioningly.
“Be content, sister. I have no ailments.” Arabella smiled to appease her.
“You are pale, and your hands tremble. It is as though you saw a ghost,” Charlotte summarized; her observations falling unsettlingly close to Arabella’s truth.
Arabella looked down at her white hands and noticed the slight tremor Charlotte had identified. If she had the luxury of being honest, she would confess how her skin still tingled from where Alexander had touched her, as if she were unable to wash his presence from her skin. She would tell how her eyes still burned at the sight of such betrayal and how her heart danced in perpetual palpitations since she saw him across the room.
She was being pulled apart internally by the want of seeing him and still loving him, conflicted by the agony of his brutal lies and deception. It almost hurt more to know that he had continued to live without her than it did to think that he’d died abandoning her.
On her external façade, though, Arabella prepared another smile for her sister and forced an amiable laugh.
“Merely fatigue, Charlotte. Do not fret. I will rest this afternoon.”
“Very well.” Charlotte lifted her coffee cup to her lips. “Dresses tomorrow, then.”
Arabella smiled weakly and nodded to satisfy her sister.
***
Carriage wheels were heard arriving on the cobbles outside the main entrance. Margaret’s eyes snapped open, suddenly alert and attentive. Her lips murmured, “Marcus …”
“Is he home so soon?” Charlotte enquired. “I had thought it would be later today …”
Some of the household staff bustled out of the room to greet their master, and Arabella dabbed the sides of her mouth with a napkin, despite having eaten nothing.
They heard him enter the hallway before they saw him. His flamboyant greetings as he loudly announced his arrival home in a chaotic sing-song voice. They heard the staff respond in muttered affirmations, more stoic than his own enthusiasm.
“Well, smile, man!” They heard Marcus laugh. “The day is yet young!”
Within moments, he was bursting through the dining room door. In the years since Alexander’s disappearance, Arabella often caught her breath as Marcus would make a certain facial expression or use a particular intonation.
Marcus had a notable physical resemblance to his older brother, except for his light blond hair, and his presence would torture Arabella, as she could see glimpses of the man she lost, knowing that it was not him.
As he entered the room now, with a vibrant energy, Arabella noticed how his usually immaculate appearance had shifted. Now she had seen Alexander again, on reflection, Marcus did not seem so much like his brother. Marcus’s eyes were bloodshot, and he had the beginnings of dark circles under his eyes. His complexion was pale and his hair dishevelled. Hewore a red cravat over his white shirt, which had come slightly untucked from his linen trousers.
As Arabella compared him to her fresher memory of Alexander, she found Marcus somehow looked older, more world-weary than his brother.
“Ladies!” Marcus spread his arms wide, and in his hands were various hothouse flowers. ‘I have returned!”
He paced rapidly around the table towards Margaret. “Mother!” Marcus held out a bright pink camellia, handing it to Margaret with a mock bow, and then turned.
“Miss Charlotte!” He produced a lilac Orchid and flourished it under her smiling face.
“And not to forget Miss Arabella!” Like a dancer, he swooped a white lily in front of her.
“Thank you, My Lord.” Arabella lifted the delicate stem to her nose and breathed in. “It’s beautiful.”
“Such as all the ladies of the Wellwood estate!” Marcus said, his voice a pitch too high and a little too loud.
“How was your trip, Marcus?” Margaret croaked.
Marcus’s smile dropped as he registered his mother’s frailty, and he crossed the room briskly to bend at her side. It seemed he carried a breeze of nervous energy as he swept around the space.
