Or at the very least, rendered them able to walk straight enough to make it back to their beds, where they could sleep off the last of their miseries.
He looked at Amelia. “Can you spare another half an hour?”
She motioned around her. “Apparently I can spare the entire day.”
It was a bit embarrassing, that. “Ah, yes”—he cleared his throat, trying to hold himself very steady as he did so—“sorry for that. I hope you were not forced to abandon important plans.”
“Just the milliner and the cobbler.” She pretended to pout, but anyone could see it was really a smile. “I shall be poorly hatted and shod for the winter, I’m afraid.”
He held up a finger. “Just one moment.” Then he reached across the carriage and gave the wall two pounds with his fist. Immediately, they rolled to a
halt. Normally, he would have hopped down to redi-rect the driver, but surely this time he could be forgiven for trying to limit his movements. The last thing any of them wanted was for him to lose his stomach in a closed carriage.
Once the new arrangements had been made, and the driver had got them back on their way, he resettled himself in his seat, feeling decidedly more chipper just at the thought of the Baddish that awaited him. Harry would wonder why he’d been drinking and why he’d been drinking somewhere else, but he would never ask.
At least not this afternoon.
“Where are we going?” Amelia asked.
“The Happy Hare.” It was a bit out of their way, but not drastically so.
“The posting inn?”
Indeed. “I shall be cured.”
“At the Happy Hare?” She sounded dubious.
“Trust me.”
“Said by a man reeking of gin,” she said, shaking her head.
He looked over at her, lifting one of his brows into the famously regal Wyndham arch. “I wasn’t drinking gin.” Good Lord, he had more breeding than that.
She looked as if she might smile. “So sorry. What were you drinking, then?”
He was quite certain this wasn’t the sort of conversation one ought to conduct with one’s fiancée, but nothing about this meeting was the sort of thing one ought to do or see or say with one’s fiancée. “Ale,” he told her.
“Have you ever tried it?”
“Of course not.”
“Tsk tsk. Such outrage.”
“That wasn’t outrage,” she shot back, outraged now.
“It was simple fact. Who would have ever served me ale?”
She did have a point. “Very well,” he said, everything gracious. “But it wasn’t gin.”
She rolled her eyes, and he almost laughed. They were like an old married couple. Not that he’d had much cause to witness old married couples doing anything but insulting (his father) and accepting it (his mother), but Grace had told him that her parents had been won-drously devoted to each other, and from what he’d seen of Lord and Lady Crowland—Amelia’s parents—they seemed to get on reasonably well, too. Or at the very least, neither seemed consumed with desire to see the other one dead.
“Do your parents like each other?” he asked quite suddenly.
She blinked several times in rapid succession, obviously surprised by the change of topic. “My parents?”
“Do they get on?”
“Yes, I suppose.” She paused, and her brow wrinkled adorably as she considered it. “They don’t do very much together—their interests really don’t mesh—but I do think they hold each other in some affection. I haven’t given it much thought, to be honest.”
It was not exactly a description of a grand passion, but still, it was so entirely different from his own experience that Thomas could not help but be intrigued.
She must have noticed the interest on his face, because she continued, “I suppose they must get on.
If they didn’t, I probably would have given it much thought, wouldn’t you think?”
He thought about the endless hours he’d wasted thinking about his own parents. He nodded. For all her innocence and guileless speech, she could be extraor-dinarily astute.
“My mother can nag a bit,” she said. “Well, more than a bit. But my father seems not to mind. He knows it is only because she feels it her duty to see all of her daughters settled. Which is of course his wish as well. He just doesn’t wish to be involved in the details of it.”
Thomas found himself nodding approvingly. Daughters had to be an incredible amount of work.
“He humors her for a few minutes,” Amelia continued, “because he knows how much she likes an audience, but then he most often just shakes his head and walks away. I think he is happiest when out of doors, mucking about with his hounds.”
“Hounds?”
“He has twenty-five of them.”
“Gad.”
She grimaced. “We keep trying to convince him it’s got a bit excessive, but he insists that any man with five daughters deserves five times as many hounds.”
He tried to suppress the image in his mind. “Please tell me none are included in your dowry.”
“You should verify,” she said, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “I’ve never seen the betrothal papers.”
His eyes held hers for a long, steady moment, then he said, “That means no.” But she held her blank expression for long enough to make him add, “I hope.”
She laughed. “He could not bear to part with them.
Me, I think he will be happy to get off his hands, but his dogs . . . Never.” And then: “Did your parents get on well?”