Page 85 of Aurelia

Celsa jumped to her feet. “I am pleased to amuse you.”

“I am not laughing at you, you goose. I’m laughing at your assumption that being from an island means you are a yokel.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“It is exciting and exotic to live on an island that belongs to your family. I have never met another person who can say that.”

Celsa looked arrested. “I have never thought of it that way.”

“And if you treat people honestly and kindly—as you’ve been doing with me—mostly, then you will have plenty of friends.”

Celsa stared, her eyes raw with hope, insecurity, and all the other torrid emotions of youth. “Did you make friends?”

“I did. And I still write to three of them to this very day.”

“I will miss you,” Lady Celsa suddenly said.

Aurelia could not have been more surprised. Or more pleased.

“Well, you are not gone yet,” she said, and then—on impulse—reached out and embraced the prickly girl. “You will have the time of your life at school. I promise.”

Rather than squirm away, Celsa hugged her back.

Chapter 18

After an evening filled with crabs in beds, a surprise kiss from Guustin, and an even more surprising embrace from Lady Celsa, Aurelia was simply too restless to close her eyes.

She glared up at the canopy over her head as if it were responsible for her current sleeplessness.

Finally, she groaned, rolled from the bed, and lit three candles on her desk before taking her sketchpad from her satchel and flipping to the sketch of Guustin that she liked best. She could get started on a canvas, but all the ones she had stretched were in the workroom section of the library.

Aurelia shoved her feet into her slippers, draped her heavy shawl over her shoulders, and picked up a candlestick.

Aurelia had already become accustomed to living in a building that was seven hundred years old, but tonight, she really felt the age of the structure as she made her way through the empty corridors. How many thousands of lives had been lived within these walls? Women like her, young and hopeful, now long dead and less than dust.

Aurelia shivered. “You idiot,” she chastised. When she reached the library, she stopped and stared at the faint light seeping from beneath the warped old door.

Was somebody else inside? Arthur was a night owl and she had encountered him more than a few times in both the library and the armory.

Don’t lie to yourself. You are hoping the earl is in there.

Aurelia’s pulse sped at the thought of the last time she had been alone with him in the library.

She stared at the sliver of light. Before she could stop herself, she opened the door to the workroom and then stopped on the threshold and stared.

It was indeed Lord Crewe, and he had removed his coat and wore only his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, his blond hair disheveled and his chiseled jaw lightly dusted with gold glints.

His expression when he looked up from his work was preoccupied and it took him a moment to focus on her, and then he stood, blinked, and tossed his quill onto the table before pulling out his pocket watch. “I had no idea it had become so late” He dropped the watch back into his pocket, tipped back his head, and yawned, stretching out his long body in a truly mesmerizing display.

When he lowered his head, his gaze met hers and she watched, fascinated, as awareness came back to him slowly, like a beam of sunlight gradually penetrating a fog-shrouded day, until the knowing sparkle glinted in his ice-blue eye, which briefly flickered to her hair, his lips curving slightly. “Come in, Miss Burton.”

“I did not think anyone else would be in here,” she said, her face reddening at her brazen lie. She shut the door and then stood frozen.

“I could not sleep, so I thought I might as well be of use. What can I do for you this evening?” he asked.

“Er. I just wanted a canvas.”

“Working at night, are you? What a slavedriver your employer must be.”