Accidentally in Love by Claudia Dain Page A

father’s house forever. You know that full well. As does she.”
    He was being far too subtle for his mother. Blunt speaking was his only recourse.
    “There is no attraction between us.”
    “You’ve but barely met. Attraction can grow over time.”
    “Can, perhaps, but it will not. Not between us,” he said. “Set not your heart upon that woman for me. It will never be.”
    How well he knew it. Speaking the words, how true he felt them to be. Not Eleanor Kirkland. She was not the woman for him. His gaze strayed again to Emeline, Raithby at her side. He felt jarred by the aspect of them. They did not look well together. They looked completely wrong, at odds, an imperfect pairing. Surely everyone could see that. Surely everyone in the room could feel how wrong they were together.
    Raithby chose that moment to smile at something Emeline said, and Emeline laughed lightly in response to that smile, and the jarring became a hammer blow and the sounds of chatter and the first swell of the music was like a thunder clap. Everything was discordant, even his mother’s voice. On and on she went, Eleanor this and Eleanor that, and how fine their home in Wiltshire was and how Eleanor could never find fault with it . . . and something inside him clicked. Snapped. Broke.
    “Enough, Mother,” he said. Two ladies to their right turned to look at him. His mother gasped. “Perhaps you will enjoy sitting next to . . .,” and he could not think of a name, of any name to throw at her, and so he gestured to the room at large and walked away from her.
    He walked across that wide, grand room to stand next to a massive chest of burled walnut and he stared at the violinist and the pianist and the cellist and the harpist and paid not a bit of attention to anyone other than Emeline, who sat in easy comfort with Raithby. Emeline, who ignored him. Emeline, who kept her back turned to him.
    Kit leaned against the wall, crossed his arms, and kept his face impassive, pretending to watch the players, but seeing only Emeline.
     
     
    “I suppose he can’t find a seat,” Emeline said.
    “There are seats in the rear,” Raithby said. “I think it is that he cannot find a seat where he wants one.”
    “How very like him. I don’t know what Mr. Culley was like up at school, my lord, but the Mr. Culley I am familiar with does very much like to have things his own way.”
    “Don’t we all,” Raithby said.
    To that, Emeline had no polite reply.
    “You two are well acquainted,” Raithby said. Lord Raithby had the unusual habit of asking questions that were not actually questions.
    “We are. In a sibling sort of fashion,” she said.
    “A sibling sort of fashion,” he said, making it sound almost like a question, but not quite. “You think of him as a brother.” Since he had not actually asked , she held her tongue. It was an effort. “And Culley sees you as a sister.”
    “Most definitely,” she said. It was well known, at least in Wiltshire, that she could not hold her tongue for very long.
    The violinist was having trouble with his bow. The playing was delayed. Therefore, Lord Raithby kept talking.
    “I have no siblings,” Raithby said. “I, of course, have many friends who have siblings, of both sexes.”
    “Naturally,” she said. What an odd conversation. Could Kit see that she was conversing pleasantly with Lord Raithby? She did hope so.
    “It has been pointed out to me that having a sister is a most weighty responsibility for a brother.”
    “Is it?”
    “Oh, yes. It is a universally agreed upon truth.”
    “I’m sure my brothers, and I have three, do not think of me at all, and least of all as a responsibility.”
    “They are how old?”
    “Pip is fifteen, Sig is thirteen, and Harry is eleven.”
    “Perhaps they are a bit young for the full weight of responsibility to be felt,” Raithby said. “Though, perhaps not. Have you seen any indications that Pip is trying to protect you from men who are disposed to