A Petal And A Thorn by Bella Donnis

Author:Bella Donnis [Donnis, Bella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

A Cup of Tea

It was the knocking that roused me but it required several salvos before my half-conscious mind made the connection. “Oh damn, Tilly.”

Throwing back the covers, my tired body arose slowly, which was about as fast as I could manage in my panic.

Bloody hell, but I’d at least wanted to take a shower and apply some makeup before her arrival, I thought, whilst simultaneously donning my red gown and flinging open the door. The former, we could do together, so it wasn’t all bad.

Stumbling beyond Percy pecking at his seed, I shook off the gargantuan folly of oversleeping as the excitement flooded through every nerve in my body.

Tilly was here!

I picked up speed, almost slipping down the stairs, unlocked the door and yanked it open.

My head jerked back, which was all the natural response I could muster from the unwelcome sight before me.

“W…wh…what the bloody hell are you doing here?” I demanded of the jezebel who was loitering in my threshold without a care for anything, certainly not for my fraying nerves.

“Good morning, Erica.” She absolutely said, with the hint of a smile as though she was arriving for a day of dusting. “I trust you slept well?”

“W…what?” Really, what? I scratched my head and thrust my face out beyond the threshold and she quickly stepped back.

It was daylight, that much was clear. And at least two groups of tourists were already photographing the east side of the minster and even now, some were looking this way.

I grabbed her arm, pulled her inside and slammed the door.

“Oh, good gosh, Erica. What on earth has got into you?” She backed away as far as the tiny confines at the bottom of my stairs would permit.

I wiped the sleep from my eyes, still not quite believing who’d returned to torment me. “What time is it?”

“Time?” She shrugged her scrawny shoulders and continued to look uncomfortable.

“I overslept.” I almost spat into her face, gritting my teeth and jabbed a finger up the steps. “Up!”

She didn’t argue or delay and blundered up the stairs causing a mini tremor when she creaked over that second step - Tilly she most certainly was not.

Percy made the kind of squawk usually reserved for when he was hungry, except he already had a full dish of nibbles - I trusted his judgement.

“I know, I know, don’t you mind her. We’ll see what she wants and then send her away…again.” I reassured him, assuming the jezebel overheard and not caring overly much.

She had, as it transpired, and now stood in the living room with a hand covering her mouth.

“Just take a seat, missy, and I’ll be right with you.”

I prepared a pot of tea in the kitchen and then carried the tray into the other room where Elspeth waited.

Despite her, up until now, perky mood, she still looked like crap. Indeed, if anything the red blotches beneath her eyes were of a deeper colour, the skin even sorer than yesterday - Despite her mood, these things couldn’t be hidden, not from me.

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