Caught in her deep brown eyes, Silas did not look away, nor loose his hand from hers. He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “If Isaac was here, he would berate me soundly for needing to be saved by his little Essie.” Her eyebrows raised at the childhood name. “If I had been paying attention, none of this would have happened.”
The moment stretched long, until he became aware of the way their breaths had synced, quiet and deep. The sunlight filtering in through the tall windows warmed the room, though he thought something else likely caused the heat to rise in his cheeks and the answering blush on her own.
A loud slam startled him out of the silent exchange. A tightness in his chest, one he hadn’t been aware of, gave one last squeeze before vanishing. Silas stood, ready to investigate the noise, when the rather shrill voice of a woman filled the entry hall beyond the closed door.
“Where is she? Where is my Esther? Is she well? Oh, she is ruined, even if she is well,” the voice loudly proclaimed.
Frowning, Silas looked down at Esther, who suddenly appeared paler and more pained than she had in the entire time he had been sitting with her.
“Diana,” she whispered, then squeezed her eyes shut. “Good luck, Lord Inglewood.”
Silas did not have time to be disappointed in her use of his title before the door to the parlor opened, another footman scuttling out of the way of a rampaging woman.
Mrs. Aubrey proved to be a formidable looking woman, nearly as tall as Silas, dressed in deep purples, she looked like an oncoming thunderstorm. She brought into the room both a sense of urgency and an overwhelming scent of gardenias.
“Esther,” she nearly shouted, causing even Silas to wince. “Oh, my poor girl, my poor sweet child.” She hardly spared a glance at Silas, though he stumbled backward out of her way, before throwing herself on the ground next to the couch. She took up one of Esther’s hands and began patting it rather forcefully. “Are you fainted, my dear? Are you able to speak? I have heard the whole of it from that feather-brained friend of yours, and your sweet maid. You poor darling. What were you thinking? My little heroine.” She abruptly stopped her patting and withdrew a handkerchief directly from her bosom, using it to stop a suddenly onslaught of tears.
Esther had opened her eyes, though she winced, and attempted to speak several times only to be cut off again by the exuberant Mrs. Aubrey. Silas might have been amused, had he not seen Esther’s discomfort.
“Mrs. Aubrey,” he said, presuming to forgo an introduction. “Your sister-in-law is injured. The doctor has asked that we keep her from overexcitement.”
The woman’s tears stopped as abruptly as they started and she rose to her feet with almost an unnatural swiftness. “You,” she said, pointing a gloved finger at Silas’s chest with as much force as one might put into a rapier thrust. “What are you going to do about this?”
Silas, hands raised defensively, narrowed his eyes at her. “What do you mean, madam?”
She drew herself up to her rather impressive height, a large silk blossom in her hat waving dangerously. “You have ruined her.”
Esther drew in a sharp breath, and Silas glanced down quickly to see her face turn pale enough for him to finally make out a few freckles on her cheeks. “He has what?”
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About the Author
Sally Britton lives in the desert with her husband, four children, and two rescue dogs. She started writing her first story on her mother’s electric typewriter, when she was fourteen years old. She knew romance was the way for her to go fairly early on. Reading her way through Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, and Lucy Maud Montgomery, Sally also determined she wanted to write about the elegant, complex world of centuries past.
Sally graduated from Brigham Young University in 2007 with a bachelor’s in English, her emphasis on British literature. She met and married her husband not long after and they’ve been building their happily ever after since that day.
Vincent Van Gogh is attributed with the quote, “What is done in love is done well.” Sally has taken that as her motto, for herself and her characters, writing stories where love is a choice each person must make, and then go forward with hope to obtain their happily ever after.
All of Sally’s published works are available on Amazon.com.
Courting the Vicar's Daughter: A Regency Romance (Branches of Love Book 6) Page 23
