any other way.
Just as he couldn’t imagine how he was going to leave her at the end of it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
With every aspect of Nick’s arrival — from how he’d loved her the night before to the danger he now faced, plus all the uncertainty she felt toward him — Ellie was in no mood to trouble herself with her guests. After leaving the study with the contract they’d both signed, she evaded everyone during the breakfast hour.
She couldn’t be fully alone. For one, she needed to settle the menus with her housekeeper, which she did over tea in her salon. She couldn’t avoid her guests for a second full day, though. They would speculate that she was avoiding Nick. And that wasn’t a rumor she wanted to start.
But Ellie knew how to manage them. Give a group something unexpected and no one noticed anything but the spectacle.
“Are you ready, Maria?” she asked her younger half-sister.
Maria nodded. She lifted the bow and fitted the arrow against the string.
“A shilling says you can’t hit the target,” Maria’s twin, Kate, said behind them.
“Two shillings say you can’t do better,” Maria retorted, taking aim.
She let the arrow fly. It sailed down the portrait gallery, past all the generations of Claibornes who would be horrified to see such reckless hoydens in their house. The arrow hit the target with a satisfying thud, lodging halfway between the edge of the target and the red circle at its center.
The guests assembled behind Maria clapped. Sir Percival Pickett, perhaps the most eccentric of Ellie’s guests, was particularly effusive. “Brava, Lady Maria!” he exclaimed. “I vow a Grecian goddess couldn’t have done better.”
“She didn’t hit the center,” Kate scoffed, taking the bow from her sister. “It would be a poor goddess who couldn’t do that.”
She stepped up, took an arrow from the waiting footman, and fired. Where Maria had missed left, Kate missed right — by exactly the same amount, according to the servant they sent down the gallery to measure it.
The ribbing continued, good-naturedly, as Kate promised Maria three shillings out of her pin money. Ferguson teased that he would cut off their allowances for gambling. Sebastian Staunton offered them lessons — an offer that made the twins glow and Ferguson glower. Sir Percy stared off into space, no doubt casting the twins as heroines in his next epic poem.
Ellie smiled. The snows had finally stopped, but they’d received nearly seven inches the previous night. Setting up an archery contest in the portrait gallery when they couldn’t be outdoors had been inspired. Her younger guests were enthused. Her older guests were equal parts charmed and titillated. Archery was one of the few sports open to women, and something that both sexes could enjoy together. It was only the indoor nature of their contest that any gossips might find shocking, and they would have to be the utmost prudes to condemn her for it.
The long, narrow gallery on the floor above the ballroom was perfect for shooting, especially with a footman stationed on the other side of the far door to prevent accidental entry. And if a wayward arrow hit a painting or a window — well, it was Nick’s house, not hers.
Madeleine stepped up to the line they’d agreed to shoot from. Ferguson stood close behind her — whether to give his duchess pointers or to look down the bodice of her gown was unclear. Ellie ignored them and waved the twins over to a quiet alcove near the door.
“Are you enjoying yourselves?” she asked.
“Of course,” Kate said, as though the question was too obvious to be asked.
“Especially when I am winning,” Maria added.
Ellie couldn’t help but smile. The twins had seemed like a single unit the year before, when they had lived with their father and never saw anyone but each other. But since they’d come out into Society and moved in with Ferguson and Madeleine, they had become individuals — still close, but more likely to compete with each other than to unite against the world.
Kate wouldn’t concede defeat. “You aren’t a better shot, Maria, just a better gambler. And there are still other games to be won.”
Their eyes slid simultaneously to Sebastian, who had lost interest in the archery and was looking out the high, narrow windows to the snow-covered lawn. He had lighter brown hair than his brother Alex, with appealing brown eyes in a face tanned by the Caribbean sun. Why he was still in England, Ellie didn’t know. He had a plantation