Vane tipped her chin up; his lips touched hers in a fleeting, achingly incomplete kiss. "I'll be back before breakfast is over."
Angela's footsteps sounded in the hall.
Patience opened her eyes to see Vane striding out of the parlor. She heard Angela's delighted greeting, then Vane's answering rumble, dying away as he continued striding. A second later, Angela appeared. She was pouting.
Feeling infinitely older, infinitiely wiser, Patience smiled. "Come and have some breakfast. The eggs are particularly good."
The rest of the breakfast crowd gradually wandered in. To Patience's dismay, they, one and all, had already heard of her injury, courtesy of the household grapevine. Luckily, neither she nor Vane had seen fit to inform anyone of the reason for her nighttime excursion, so no one knew how she'd come by her hurts.
Everyone was suitably shocked by her "accident"; all were quick to proffer their sympathy.
"Distressing business," Edgar offered with one of his meek smiles.
"Twisted m'knee once, when I was in India." The General directed a curious glance up the table. "Horse threw me. Native wallahs wrapped it up in evil-smelling leaves. Knee, not the horse. Came good in no time."
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Patience nodded and sipped her tea.
Gerrard, beside her, occupying the chair she usually used, asked softly, "Are you sure you're all right?"
Ignoring the ache in her knee, Patience smiled and squeezed his hand lightly. "I'm hardly a weak creature. I promise you I'm not about to swoon from the pain."
Gerrard grinned, but his expression remained watchful, concerned.
With her pleasant smile firmly in place, Patience allowed her gaze to roam. Until, across the table, she met Henry's frown.
"You know," he said, "I don't quite understand how you came to wrench your knee." His inflection made the statement a question.
Patience kept smiling. "I couldn't sleep, so I went for a stroll."
"Outside?" Edmond's surprise faded to consideration. "Well, yes, I suppose you'd have to stroll outside-strolling inside this mausoleum at night would give anyone nightmares." His swift grin dawned. "And presumably you wouldn't have wanted them."
Smiling over clenched teeth was not easy; Patience managed it, just. "I did go outside, as it happened." Silence would have been wiser, but they were all hanging on her words, as avidly curious as only those leading humdrum lives could be.
"But…" Edgar's brow folded itself into pin tucks. "The fog…" He looked at Patience. "It was a pea-souper last night. I looked out before I blew out my candle."
"It was rather dense." Patience looked at Edmond. "You would have appreciated the eerieness."
"I had heard," Whitticombe diffidently commented, "that Mr. Cynster carried you in."
His words, quietly spoken, hung over the breakfast table, raising questions in every mind. A sudden stillness ensued, fraught with surprise and shocked calculation. Calmly, her smile no longer in evidence, Patience turned and, her expression distant, regarded Whitticombe.
Her mind raced, considering alternatives, but there was only one answer she could give. "Yes, Mr. Cynster did help me back to the house-it was lucky he found me. We'd both seen a light in the ruins and gone to investigate."
"The Spectre!" The exclamation came from both Angela and Edmond. Their eyes glowed, their faces lit with excitement.
Patience tried to dampen their imminent transports. "I was following the light when I fell down a hole."
"I had thought," Henry said sternly, and all heads swung his way, "that we all promised Minnie we wouldn't go chasing the Spectre in the dark." The tenor of his voice and the expression on his face were quite surprising in their intensity. Patience felt a blush touch her cheeks.
"I'm afraid I forgot my promise," she admitted.
"In the chill of the moment, so to speak." Edmond leaned across the table. "Did your spine tingle?"
Patience opened her mouth, eager to grasp Edmond's distraction, but Henry spoke first.
"I think, young man, that this nonsense of yours has gone quite far enough!"