Free Love on a Midsummer Night (Shakespeare in Love #2) by Christy English

their rooms, Pembroke went downstairs and washed his face and hands in cold water in the inn yard, making his linen damp. Reynolds would be annoyed when he saw the evidence of Pembroke’s carelessness, but no matter. Cold water was called for, so cold water was what he doused himself in. It would be a long night.

Seven
    With no lady’s maid to attend her, Arabella rang for hot water, recalling her youth when her father thought such expenses as personal servants a needless extravagance.
    The bedroom Pembroke had taken for her was comfortable, with dark wood beams between swathes of whitewashed plaster. The air was scented with thyme and rosemary. As she washed her face, Arabella could smell chicken roasting in the kitchen below and hear the faint clamor of copper pots being set down on the stove.
    The kitchen had been her haven in her father’s house during the dark years of her childhood after her mother’s death. She would sneak away during her governess’s nap each afternoon and spend an hour with her father’s cook, Mrs. Fielding, who spoiled her, feeding her pastry fresh from the oven. Mrs. Fielding had always proclaimed that Arabella was far too small for a healthy girl and that she needed fattening up. Arabella had eaten every morsel her benefactress bestowed upon her, setting the cook high in the pantheon of her heart, worshiping her as she worshiped her long-dead mother.
    Arabella did not change her dress, for she had brought only a few more suitable gowns with her. Her bag was heavy with the flotsam and jetsam of her life. She had not pressed many gowns into it. She had only the boots on her feet and the ugly black-dyed bonnet trimmed in blue ribbon that now rested on her vanity table. Perhaps she might find time to sew a new dress while in the country. In her father’s house, a few of her old dresses might still lie in the clothespress, gowns she had worn as a girl, all of which had been deemed too shoddy to bring into her new life as the Duchess of Hawthorne.
    She heard Pembroke come back into the sitting room. Arabella met her own eyes in the looking glass and breathed deeply, shoring up her courage before she stepped into the parlor.
    He stood by the door as if afraid to come in. She could not remember seeing him so uncertain of his welcome even when he was a boy. Her heart seized, and without thinking she extended her hand to him and offered him a chair by the fire across from her own.
    “Dinner will be served in a moment,” Arabella said. “Come and sit. May I offer you a brandy? I had the staff bring up their best bottle. I hope it will suit.”
    Pembroke pushed his dark blond hair out of his eyes and simply stared at her. He blinked as if waking from a deep sleep. “There is no need. I have brought my own.”
    Arabella sat and he followed her example, watching as she drew her chair close to the table. Pembroke’s sensuous lips quirked in another smile, and her heart paused in its beating.
    She told herself that she must not stare at him, but she found that she could not bring herself to drop her gaze. They sat for a long moment in silence, the expanse of their empty dinner table and the cheerful crackle of the fire between them.
    Their dinner of roasted lamb and new potatoes, creamed spinach, and carrots in wine sauce was brought in, and they turned their attention to it as if they might not ever see another meal again. They ate together in companionable silence until Pembroke asked her a question over pears in brandied sauce.
    “When you are free, what will you do?”
    Arabella froze, her dessert fork halfway to her lips. She set the fork down again, the pear speared on it forgotten. Her hand trembled, and she forced it to be still, pressing it hard against the white cloth on the table between them.
    She was afraid to voice her desires, lest they be taken from her. But the fact that he had thought to ask the right question, when no one else on Earth, save perhaps Angelique, ever would, made her