Page 35 of Courting Miss Lancaster
“It was bound to happen, old man,” Harry continued. “The poor girl has endured your company day after day for weeks on end. It’s a miracle she didn’t expire from boredom long ago.”
“Shut up, Harry,” Adam grumbled.
Harry laughed but managed to keep the sound quiet enough not to disturb Daphne. Athena simply stared at the unexpected picture before her. Daphne looked quite comfortable, and that state couldn’t be entirely attributed to her being asleep. Daphne had to have assumed her current position while she was awake. And, perhaps more startling still, Adam had to have been party to the situation.
“She is here often?” Athena asked, trying to make sense of it all.
“Miss Daphne spends an hour every afternoon with her brother-in-law and, as I know to my detriment, fiercely guardsher time with him,” Harry answered. “It seems they are quite the closest of friends.”
“Harry.” Adam’s tone was clearly a warning.
“Every afternoon?” Athena couldn’t shake off her shock. She broke her gaze and turned her attention to Harry.
Harry nodded, his smile growing. “Although this is, to my knowledge, the first time Daphne has been rendered unconscious.”
Athena looked back at Daphne once more. Her dark hair, so like Persephone’s, had come loose in chunks as she slept. She was leaning so heavily against Adam that she must have been very deeply asleep. Athena couldn’t imagine being so at ease in Adam’s company. Had she found herself seated beside the duke, Athena was certain she would have been unable to relax enough to breathe evenly, let alone sleep peacefully.
“Have you come for a nap, too, Athena? Adam, I assure you, has many topics he can discuss at length that should almost instantly put you to sleep.”
“You have overstayed your welcome, Harry,” Adam said. “Again.”
“Throw me out in a minute, will you? I, for one, am dying to hear what Athena has to say.”
“Dyingis a very good word choice,” Adam replied.
Athena glanced nervously at Harry. “Is he serious?” she asked under her breath.
“Adam is always serious,” Harry answered, but his smile didn’t slip in the slightest. “So it would be best if you deliver your message and escape before he makes good on his sadly repetitive threat.”
That was not very encouraging. But Adam was watching her with a look of impatient expectation, and Athena knew better than not to obey the Duke of Kielder—even if the command was an unspoken one.
“Your mother has sent me to ask you to join her in the ballroom,” Athena said, rushing her words a bit in her desire to have her message delivered as quickly as possible so she might make a quick exit just as Harry had suggested.
“Theballroom?” Adam seemed to almost choke on the word. “Why would she wish to see me in that of all rooms?”
“For... um,” Athena cleared her throat. “For a minuet.”
“She wishes me to dance?” Adam looked thunderous, though he didn’t move so much as an inch.
Athena backed up and nodded.
“Adam,” Harry interrupted, quite suddenly standing beside Athena. “No point shooting the messenger. I am absolutely certain the minuet was not Athena’s idea—she does not even care for the minuet.”
Athena looked at Harry standing next to her. She had never told him she disliked the minuet. How had he known that?
“If she doesn’t like the minuet, then why in bloody—”
“Adam,” Harry cut him off.
Daphne stirred slightly beside Adam, no doubt rousing a bit at his raised voice. “Why,” Adam continued, voice lowered, “am I dancing it with her at her ball? Certainly not for my own enjoyment.”
“Your mother thinks it would be most proper,” Athena explained.
Adam muttered something under his breath, though Athena only caught the wordsmotherandtorture.
“What am I to tell the Dowager Duchess?” Athena asked, feeling anxious to leave. Adam’s expression was growing less docile by the moment.
“Tell her no,” Adam replied simply, picking up a book set on an end table beside the couch where he was sitting.
