August requested the cook prepare a tray to send up. He spent a large part of the day in his library reviewing correspondences and trying not to think about the lovely Irish girl whose presence suddenly made her so accessible. In the early afternoon, Caroline asked if she and Maeve might take the carriage down to the O’Connor cottage. If they were to be guests while Rory convalesced, she said, they would need some things from home — clothes, for example. The idea of Maeve wearing her meager attire to tea disheartened him. It was not that he viewed it as unpleasant, or her unworthy of company. On the contrary, the fact that Maeve’s beauty could still shine so brightly despite the lack of opulent Parisian fineries was one of her finest attributes. She was deserving of such fineries, nonetheless, and thus August again found himself ascending the stairs to peruse his mother’s things in the attic. He found some dresses there still hung in an old wardrobe. If there was one credit August could allow his father, it was that he had never withheld from making certain that Lady Grayson’s dresses were at the very height of fashion.
