He took that wrist and tugged her to the sofa. “We’ll watch the sunrise, and you’ll tell me what transpired while I was absent. Did the girls behave, and has Simmons’s gout flared up, and which maid is making eyes at which footman?” She sat, not touching him, hunched forward on the couch, as if her shoulders were weary of a burden. “The staff is all behaving well in anticipation of our guest’s arrival,” she said. “Simmons’s knees wait until September to start bothering him. The cold mornings make it difficult for him to get under sail.” Worth smoothed her hair back over her shoulder and used that gesture to start rubbing her back, slowly, as much to soothe himself as to comfort her. “Does anybody know where we came by Simmons? I should think he’d be out to pasture by now.” “He came down from Cumberland with your great-uncle, he says, but that would have been more than sixty years ago.” “Why haven’t I pensioned him off to some snug little cottage on the South Downs?”
