A maid came into the room at three. “Miss Susan, Lady Barrington sent me to ask if you wished for tea?”
She had worked on and on and forgotten the time. “No, thank you, but is my aunt in the drawing room.”
“She is, Miss Susan.”
“And has Lord Henry come down?”
“No, miss, he is taking tea in his room.”
He must have risen from his bed at least then.
“Susan.” Christine walked about the maid, entering the room with a quick stride. “Sarah and I are going to take the dogs out as far as the meadow, would you like to come? It is one of those lovely fresh days, with a breeze to sweep away the fidgets and a pleasant sky without the sun pounding down upon you.”
Susan looked out of the window. It was a middling day, with a light grey sky, and she could see the breeze was strong as the clouds whisked across it. It would be refreshing to go for a walk before she returned home. She looked back at Christine. “Thank you, I would love to join you.”
Christine smiled. “I am going to fetch my bonnet and a cloak.” She looked at the maid. “Will you have someone bring Miss Forth’s to the hall?”
The maid curtsied in acknowledgement and left them. Christine looked at Susan. “I shall meet you in the hall, then.” Then she was gone too.
Susan tidied up her things and thought of Samson upstairs with Henry, while the guilt she had felt at luncheon skipped around her, taunting her with a pointed finger of accusation.
She shut her paints away in their box, and closed the book. She would not come back until Henry sent for Alethea.
She had maligned Henry in her thoughts too much. He did deserve some sympathy. Perhaps she could offer to walk Samson, as Henry could not take the dog out. Perhaps she should prize Samson free from his precious idol and give him some fresh air too. Henry would most likely appreciate the gesture, and there was little else her sense of empathy might do to be quietened.
She decided to go up to his sitting room before meeting Sarah and Christine in the hall. She knew where his suite of rooms were. She did not need a servant to show her up. They had still been playmates at the point he’d moved into his current rooms.
She left the library and instead of making her way to the family room walked past it and on to the main hall, where the dark, square, wooden stairs climbed upward about the walls. No one was there, the footman had probably gone to fetch her outdoor things.
Her hand slipped over the waxed wood of the bannister as she hurried up the stairs to Henry’s rooms on the second floor.
She remembered his huge bedchamber, and beside that a dressing room and a large sitting room, with a desk and about half a dozen chairs in it. He had been allocated the rooms because he was the eldest, the heir—and the most spoilt.
When she reached the second floor she turned to the right. His rooms were at the end. He’d moved into them one summer when he’d been home from Eton, in his last year there, and he’d made Susan and Alethea go upstairs to look at the space he’d been given solely to show-off.
She walked to the end of the hall and tapped on the door she knew was his sitting room. If he was out of bed and taking tea, he would be in there. If he did not answer she would presume him undressed and still in bed and go away.
“Come!”
Her heart pounded foolishly as she opened the door. She could not see him. But one of the high backed chairs had been turned to face the window and she could see the footstool before it and a tray containing a teapot, cup and saucer, and a small plate of cakes, was on a low table beside it.
“Henry?” she said as she walked across the room. “I—”
“Susan…” His pitch carried incredulity as he stood up before her.
He was not clothed! Who took tea in a sitting room unclothed?
Or rather he was clothed but only in a loose dressing gown that covered one shoulder and was left hanging beneath his bad arm before being held together by a sash at his waist.
He held his damaged arm across his middle. It drew her eyes to his stomach. She had thought him muscular yesterday but today she could see all the lines of the muscle beneath his tarnished skin on the exposed half of his body. He sported a variety of shades of blue, black, dark red, bright red and gruesome yellow, and his shoulder was entirely black as she had guessed yesterday, and the bruising ran not only down his chest but also covered his arm.
“What are you doing here? Being rebellious again? What do you wish for?” His initial tone may have been incredulous, but now his voice mocked her as it always had.
Her gaze lifted to his face. “I thought you were taking tea?”
His eyes laughed at her. “I am taking tea, alone, here, in my private rooms.”
“But, who drinks tea, in…”
“In what?”
Embarrassment engulfed her. She had been about to accuse him of being naked, although he was not quite. She looked at Samson, who had risen when Henry had, like Henry’s shadow. He had been on the far side of the chair.
“You are truly lucky you did not do yourself more harm,” she said without looking at him again.
“As I said yesterday, believe me, I know what I risked far more than you. I was there. Why did you come up here?” His pitch now lacked amusement and had instead become dismissing.
“We are taking the other dogs out to the meadow. I came to offer to take Samson too. I thought you had risen.”
“I have risen, but only as far as my private sitting room so I did not need to strain my damned arm by putting on clothes.” She glanced up when he swore, in response to the un-Henry-like bolshiness in voice, a note that came from pain. “And pray do not look your horror at me for using a bad word. You made the choice to come up here and this is my private room, I will speak as I please.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
He sat down in the chair, almost deflating. His good hand holding his bad arm.
“It must be very painful.” She took two steps farther into the room.
He looked at her with unamused eyes. “It is, thank you for the recognition? Now you ought to go, before Mama catches you here and then tells your Mama and then you will earn yourself a scold and some penalty…”
“We are not children anymore, I am—”
His eyes suddenly looked hard into hers. “No, precisely, Susan. We are not children anymore. You cannot run around doing anything you wish.”
“Perhaps you should listen to yourself.” Her ire rose and snapped in answer, before she turned away. Because, was that not exactly why he was in this state? He had no right to chastise her for anything she did when he hurtled about the roads racing his curricle with no regard for others. “I will not come back until you send for Alethea,” she said, as she walked back across the room. “So you may run about shirtless all over the house without fear!”
A sharp bark of laughter caught on the air behind her, she did not look back.
“You know you are as bad as me! Admit it or not! You cast your judgements, and yet you are just as rebellious, in your way.”
Rebellious? She turned back. She could not see him. He was in the chair, facing the window, invisible behind it, although she could see Samson, who looked back and forth between her and Henry, his tail swaying. “I am not rebellious.”
“No? Then why are you here, disturbing me?”
“I