Page 11 of The Bookworm and the Pegasus Tamer

“You’ve been to the palace?” Alanna asked, breaking through Aurelia’s abstraction.

She jumped guiltily. “Just the gardens. Last public day.”

Alanna’s eyes almost started out of her head. “Is that why you turned down the invitation to go riding? So you could visit the palace gardens on your own?” She shook her head. “A whole season in the capital is wasted on you. Mother should have waited another year and let me go to the parties too.”

“Alanna,” her mother said warningly, but her younger daughter ignored her, gripped by a new thought.

Squeezing herself onto the sofa on Aurelia’s other side—although there wasn’t really room for three—she fixed her sister with wide eyes.

“Unless you didn’t go on your own,” she breathed. “Were you meeting someone there?!”

“Of course not!” Aurelia’s words came out too quickly, her cheeks warming as her body remembered the feel of walking with her hand tucked into the Earl’s arm.

“You met someone there!” Alanna squealed. “Tell me who it was immediately! Is he hopelessly ineligible?” She sounded equal parts shocked and thrilled.

“Alanna!” her mother said in louder, sterner tones. “That is enough.”

Alanna subsided with a sulky look, and Aurelia carefully avoided meeting her mother’s eyes. From the thoughtful look being directed toward her, she had better be ready to answer the same questions again—although her mother would wait for a private moment and employ a more decorous delivery.

But when all the arrangements had been finalized and Phoebe had left, her mother only sent Aurelia off to pack. And later in the evening, when her mother appeared in her room to check over her luggage, she said nothing about Alanna’s accusations.

“I went to see the pegasus stables!” Aurelia blurted out, her guilty conscience too heavy to be ignored. “I heard they were sick, and I wanted to see for myself.” Her voice dropped. “But I know you’re not really supposed to go there on public days.”

Her mother laughed, cupping her cheek in her hand. “There’s a confession worthy of my honest girl.”

Aurelia’s cheeks flamed again, her thoughts leaping to the part she hadn’t told her mother. It was quite true that she’d gone there to see the pegasi and not the Earl, but the omission of their chance encounter weighed as heavily as a falsehood.

She couldn’t bring herself to tell her mother the full story of what had happened, though. Not because she had done anything wrong in talking to the Earl, but because she didn’t want her mother to get the wrong idea. Their meeting had been entirely by chance and wouldn’t be repeated. There was no need for Aurelia’s mother—or worse, her sister—to ever get wind of it.

While her grandmother was the most determined to see Aurelia and Alanna make advantageous marriages, Aurelia’s mother also wanted to see her daughters happily established. And what mother could resist the thought of her daughter drawing the attention of the Earl of Windward? Even if the notion was pure fantasy.

“Let me see what outfits you’ve packed,” her mother said, letting the matter drop, much to Aurelia’s relief.

But she caught her mother watching her with speculation as they talked of the upcoming journey, and when they settled across from each other in the carriage the next morning, she still had the same unsettling look in her eyes.

Aurelia did her best to put the whole matter out of her mind and focus on the visit to come. She couldn’t wait to spend a whole week with Phoebe and Fable.

Five

Having set out early in the morning, they pulled in at the gates of Phoebe’s family manor by late afternoon. When she had referred to it as remote, she hadn’t been talking about the distance from the capital but the lack of other homes and towns in the region.

The vast majority of Wynkara’s population lived east or south of the capital, and they had traveled through no towns or even villages of any size on their journey to Phoebe’s home. The lack could be explained by geography. The ground sloped upward toward the northwestern mountains, and the land was too rocky for fields or even decent pastures.

At least the road was good, and they made excellent time, arriving before Aurelia had expected. Even so, her body was stiff from the hours of travel, and she alighted in front of the manor house with eagerness, taking in the sight of Phoebe’s home.

Her eyes widened as she absorbed the size of the building before her. Front steps led up to a large door, but the multistory home extended out into two graceful wings, and she could see several smaller doors to either side, along with any number of generously sized windows.

“My goodness,” her mother said mildly, climbing down behind her. “How lovely. I didn’t realize it would be quite so large.”

Aurelia looked back at her mother, frowning. In a truly contrary fashion, the daunted expression on her mother’s face removed Aurelia’s own hesitation. Large or not, it was still Phoebe’s home, so there was no reason for them to be intimidated. Perhaps her family had fallen on hard times recently, which would explain her change in fortune.

The creak of the door made her turn back to the house, eager to see her friend. But it wasn’t Phoebe who descended the stairs. Dimly, Aurelia registered an elderly lady coming toward them at a dignified pace, but most of her focus was fixed on the tall, masculine figure who trod lightly down the stairs ahead of her, coming toward them with a smile.

She could feel the color draining from her cheeks as she stared at the handsome face of Danton, Earl of Windward. What was the Earl doing at Phoebe’s house? Surely he had not accepted an invitation to a remote house party in the middle of the social season.

To her left, the mountains loomed over them, and she sucked in a breath. She could think of one reason the Earl might have wanted to attend a house party within stone’s throw of the northwestern mountains.

She almost blurted out some combination of accusation and question, but the sight of the Earl bowing over her mother’s hand silenced her.