took a fit of some sort and went pelting off into the maze. She was quite out of sorts. I don’t think she likes being married to you, Dorning, nor is she entirely in her right mind.”
“Or perhaps she found the company here on the terrace unsuitable.” Rather than bicker with Chastain, Ash descended the steps and entered the maze. “Della?”
He did not recall seeing anybody in the maze from his window perch, but that hardly signified. He’d been watching cards dealt in a fictitious game, then clouds moving across the sky. By the hour, he’d watched the autumn breeze steal dying leaves from tree branches as sadness stole the will to move from his mind.
Goddamn stupid melancholia. “Della, where are you?” Ash did not call loudly, lest he create a scene, but he moved up and down the rows of privet systematically, working his way from one dead end to another, then taking the path that advanced toward the center of the maze.
Della did not like mazes, and that Chastain was watching for her to emerge from this one meant she might be waiting in the middle.
“Della?”
Ash reached the clearing around which the maze had been configured, finding the space deserted. The statue of Cupid, arrows clutched in a chubby fist, remained on a pedestal in the middle of a rectangle of grass, and two benches were arranged along the hedges to Cupid’s left and right.
No, Della, so where the hell could she—?
A blur of brown velvet hurtled against Ash’s side.
“Della?”
She clung to Ash as if every demon ever to escape the pit pursued her. “Hold…” The word was rasped, and Della sounded as if she’d run the entire distance from London. “Hold… me.”
She made a terrible noise, which Ash realized was an inhalation, but drawn as if her lungs were constricted by some paroxysm.
He took her in his arms, draping her shawl around her shoulders. “I’m here, Della. Can you tell me what’s amiss?”
“Don’t… go.”
He would not have recognized that desperate, hoarse voice as hers had he not heard the words himself. “I won’t leave you. Shall we sit? I can hold you while we sit for a moment.”
“Hate this. Hate it.” She took another of those noisy, anguished breaths. “Chastain said…”
Chastain was a dead man. “We can discuss that later, I promise.” Ash gathered her in his arms and sat with her on the bench, and that was apparently a bright idea, because as Della sat on his lap, the tension she carried eased. Her arms around Ash’s neck became less desperate, though she kept her cheek pressed to his shoulder.
“You have married a crazy woman.”
“No, I have not. I suspect at present my wife is upset.”
“I wanted to give you your privacy.”
Her hands were scratched, though the skin wasn’t broken. She had apparently thrashed about in the maze until she’d found Cupid by blind chance. Having melancholia felt like that—a lot of blind thrashing around to end up exhausted and nowhere of any import.
“I need for you to be well and happy, Della, much more than I need any sort of privacy from you. That is not merely gentlemanly manners talking either. I saw your shawl on the empty chair next to Chastain and knew something was seriously wrong.”
“He’s still out there?”
Ash hated the dread in Della’s voice and hated Chastain for putting it there. “He will likely be underfoot for the next week, but if you want to leave here, Della, we can be in the coach within the hour. I can stare out of one window as well as another. We’re blasted newlyweds. We can take up our wedding journey whenever we please.”
Except that leaving halfway through the house party would be most unusual, and Chastain would put the worst possible complexion on the whole business. Sycamore would take exception to Chastain’s gossip, and another duel would likely result.
“I should have told you,” Della said, climbing off Ash’s lap and taking the place beside him. “I’m sorry, and now it’s too late.”
He tucked an arm around her shoulders, not to comfort her, though he hoped his touch did comfort her, but because he needed the contact. “Told me what?”
“You’ll send me away.” She drew her feet up and curled into him. “You need a wife who can be of use to you, who can make your situation better, not worse.”
“Della, I would never send you away, though I can imagine circumstances where you will find my company tiresome. We can face almost anything if