Free Eros Element by Cecilia Dominic Page A

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    Johann breakfasted in the dining room of the Duke of Waltham’s town house, where Edward lived in one of the extra bedrooms. The family rarely came to town and bothered him since the duchess seemed determined to have a child each year and deemed the country air to be better for her babies. The musician looked chipper in spite of having been out the previous night for a “farewell tour of the pubs” with his favorite actress.
    â€œWhat time did you go to bed?” Edward asked, prepared to remark on his friend’s profligate lifestyle. Not that Johann deserved it, but Edward wanted to scold someone for something, and he wasn’t going to take his irritability out on his brother’s servants, who did their best for the family.
    â€œHaven’t been yet,” Johann said around a mouthful of eggs. “The train is for sleeping. Bloody boring.”
    â€œAre you still drunk?” Edward asked with a horrifying premonition that his friend might vomit in the middle of their journey.
    Johann gestured to his plate, which in spite of his working on breakfast for a while, held a large amount of food. “That’s what all this absorbent material is for.”
    â€œRight.” Edward sat at the table and buttered his toast. A servant poured a cup of tea for him without allowing Edward to put cream in his cup first, but he didn’t say anything. He would have to deal with all sorts of privations soon enough—might as well get used to it now. He put a whole sugar cube in the tea as well.
    â€œGetting ready to rough it, eh?” Johann asked.
    Edward glared at him, and his butter knife went through his toast. He dropped it on the plate and checked his fingers for injury.
    â€œYour brother thinks this will be good for you.”
    â€œHe would.” He put jam on one of his asymmetrical toast fragments and ate it in misery alternating with sips of his too-sweet tea.
    No matter how much he sulked or tried to do anticipatory penance for his sins of pickiness, Edward couldn’t revert everything to the way it once was or delay their departure forever. Even his brother came to see them off.
    â€œWhere is Miss McTavish?” Johann asked and checked his pocket watch. “We weren’t supposed to pick her up, were we?”
    Grange House, 10 June 1870
    Iris woke to a very quiet house, sure she had forgotten something important. This was the fifth time her sleep had been disturbed by such panic, but this time, she couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong.
    Although it was dark outside, she got out of bed and touched her trunk, valise and reticule in turn, then moved toward Sophie’s luggage. Instead of leather-covered wood, air met Iris’s questing hand, and she hurriedly lit a lamp to reveal that Sophie’s trunk was gone. She ran into Sophie’s room, a small bedroom off Iris’s, and found it to be empty of Sophie and all of her things. Her sleep-fogged mind told her Sophie had been taken by whatever had made the strange symbol on her father’s office window, which had remained the following morning. She found herself jumping at every little sound the previous day, when she and Sophie had finished their packing.
    â€œSophie?” Iris called. “Sophie, where are you?”
    She dashed down the stairs and found Cook in the kitchen. Her eyes were red from crying.
    â€œCook, where is Sophie? She’s been kidnapped with all her things.” As she said it, Iris knew how silly it sounded, and her brain put together Sophie’s strange absences and distant looks of the past weeks.
    â€œYes, Miss, but not in the way you think.” Cook gestured to a letter on the table. Iris picked up the folded sheet of vellum with trembling fingers and sensed regret and fear but also joy and excitement.
    The emotions must be intense for a material as flimsy as paper to hold them.
    Dear Miss Iris,
    I am sorry to leave you like