A Season of Ruin by Anna Bradley

Author:Anna Bradley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-06-22T13:47:53+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

“I’ve got it.” Eleanor entered the drawing room waving a scandal sheet over her head.

Charlotte looked up from her embroidery with a frown. “Well, that was quick. What, did one of the ton leave it on our doorstep? It’s one way to make sure we see it.”

“No.” Ellie hesitated. “Actually, I had it from Robyn.”

Charlotte dropped her embroidery into her lap. “Robyn! How strange. I wouldn’t have imagined him even awake at this hour, much less in possession of Mrs. Tittleton’s latest slander.”

Eleanor took her seat. “Awake? It’s nearly one o’clock, Charlotte. Still, his behavior was rather odd. Did you go straight to bed when you arrived home last night, Lily?”

Lily had sunk low in her seat the second Robyn’s name was mentioned, but at this, her head snapped up.

Bed? How would she know anything about Robyn’s bed? What in the world could Ellie mean by such a question—

“Ouch!” She looked down to see a drop of blood on the tip of her finger where she’d driven her needle into the pad of flesh there. The blood welled, then dripped onto the white ground of her needlework.

Splendid. Blue violets in a straw basket on a bloody white background. If it was the only blood she shed today, she’d count herself lucky.

Ellie looked at her expectantly.

Lily’s face grew warm. “I did lie down almost immediately upon my return home, yes.” There. That would do. It wasn’t a lie, after all. There was no need to mention she’d lain down on top of Robyn.

No need to mention it or even to think about it, and certainly no need to spend all day dwelling on each and every moment of it to the exclusion of every other thought in her head. It had amounted to nothing. Less than nothing.

“What’s the matter with Robyn, then?” Lady Catherine set her work aside and chose a biscuit off the tray on the table in front of her. “You said his behavior is odd?”

Ellie tapped the scandal sheet against her knee. “Quite odd, yes. He’s in a foul mood, for one thing. Rather bearish. He even looks bearish. A fright, really.”

Charlotte snorted. “So far I haven’t heard anything out of the ordinary.”

“He says he fell asleep in Alec’s study. Indeed, he told me he spent the night there.”

Both Lady Catherine and Charlotte exclaimed at this.

“Now, that is odd,” Charlotte said. “He has an aversion to studies and places of work of any kind. I’ve never known him to go anywhere near one if he could avoid it.”

Lily kept her eyes on her embroidery and did her best to look uninterested in the discussion, but her brain began to churn. Robyn had been very much awake when she’d left the study. Had he fallen off to sleep after she left, like an innocent babe in arms?

She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised to find their encounter had meant so little to him. Very likely he’d drifted off into a blissful sleep the moment she left the room, while

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