She was adorable, he admitted, shutting the door. And he was doing her a favor, keeping her from a lonely supper. "Does Eloisia ever have to sup alone?" he asked, biting a grin into his cheek.
"Oh, every evening!" Amelia danced around the room, drawing shut their green and white curtains and examining a cold fire box. "She's an orphan who lives in her Uncle Murdock's drafty attic. He sends her meager dinner up to her, and even if he didn't, she would sooner eat in the earth closet than with that…that…" She stood and flailed her hands, "That cad!"
The word assailed him. He laughed so hard that he fumbled prying off his boot and slammed to the floor on his backside, and then kept laughing.
"I shouldn't use such language, I know," proclaimed Amelia, bosom heaving with deep, righteous breaths, "but his wickedness makes me positively tremble!"
"Wickedness, indeed," sighed Patrick, rubbing a smarting lower back.
"Don't let that color your opinion. It's a very fine book, in spite of wicked Murdock. Because of him, even, because he's written so well and you're so very exhilarated when Eloisia overcomes him."
"It sounds captivating," he muttered, getting his boot off at last.
"It is! I have my copy with me, in my traveling case." She bit her lip. "You could borrow it."
The eagerness in her blue eyes broke his heart too much to tell her he would never in a thousand years do so. "Thank you. I'll keep that in mind."
When his second boot came off, she leaned over and peered down at him, apparently recognizing for the first time that he was, in part, undressing. "What will you do now?"
"Sleep," he yawned, and rubbed his eyes. "Do you mind very much? I'm too exhausted to be better company at the moment."
"No!" She rushed past, and turned down the quilts, patting the mattress. "Rest. Don't suffer on my account. Oh, I would hate for you to do otherwise. You rest up, and I'll go down to the mercantile. I forgot a few necessities in my haste to leave town." Her smile broadened and she waved him up off the floor, making it clear that she wouldn't be leaving until she'd tucked him in. He abandoned his coat to the chair with her shawl and wriggled into the bed's thick cocoon.
Amelia turned the blankets up and patted his cheek with the same satisfied pressure she would an obedient child. "There you are. You'll have peace and quiet aplenty."
He answered her with a smile, already succumbing to the bed's witchcraft, and before she'd closed the door he was fast asleep.