Hadrian by Grace Burrowes

tea?”
    “Please.” She pulled off her gloves and withdrew the message from her pocket. “This came for you this morning.”
    He took the paper from her, carefully, as if it might bite him. “Do you mind if I read it?”
    “Of course not.” She busied herself at the door, requesting tea and some sustenance from a footman, and when she turned back to Hadrian, he was already refolding the message.
    “Harold took on some cargo in Calais, dropped off some last-minute passengers in Amsterdam, and is probably making landfall at Copenhagen as we speak.”
    “Isn’t that like him? A recitation of facts, but no real information.”
    “He says the sailing is wonderful, and he can’t recall when he enjoyed himself so much.”
    “Then your sacrifice is worthwhile?”
    Hadrian’s answer mattered, because nothing stood in the way of him hiring a senior steward and taking himself off to London or back to Yorkshire, or even to Copenhagen, for that matter.
    In which case Avis would miss him. All over again, worse than ever, she’d miss him. She excelled at missing people she cared for.
    “I’m no longer convinced it’s a sacrifice,” Hadrian said. “The weather is turning beautiful, the company is delightful, and the work gratifying.”
    “Is that why your hands look like Gran Carruthers’s this morning?” Avis had watched his hands as he’d folded the note. They were heavily blistered across his palms, the right worse than the left.
    Hadrian frowned at his paws as if he hadn’t a clue what had befallen them. “Using the shears is so repetitive, one blisters even through the gloves.”
    “Does one? And yet, here you are, without gloves, probably scratching away at some correspondence rather than giving your hands a chance to heal.”
    Hadrian stuffed his hands into his pockets, like a schoolboy. “I neglected my ledgers and letters while I played at shearing.”
    He’d worked as hard as Fen, which was very hard. “Are you pleased to hear from Harold?” Avis asked.
    “Am I over my pout, do you mean?” His tone confirmed he wasn’t quite, but his smile suggested progress.
    “You judge yourself too harshly, Hadrian. Harold is sailing the waves, and you’re here,”—she took his hands—“ignoring your blisters.”
    He led her to a long comfortably worn sofa that faced a set of sparkling windows. “Do you know how long it has been since I’ve had blisters?”
    Did he know how long it had been since Avis had taken a man’s hands in hers? “I do not.”
    “When I was a boy, learning to ride,” he said, seating her in the middle and coming down beside her. “I acquired those calluses caused by contact with the reins. I was proud of them.”
    “These.” Avis touched his hand with her index finger, gliding over the calluses he referred to.
    “You have them too,” Hadrian observed, tracing the side of her fourth finger and leaving tendrils of pleasure in his wake.
    So wicked of her. “Calluses are only one of my many infractions against the code of ladylike behavior.”
    He drew back, and Avis waited for the moment to degenerate into awkwardness, but Hadrian simply rose and admitted two footmen, each bearing a tray.
    “First, tea, then we see to your hands, Hadrian.”
    He gave the appropriate direction to his staff and submitted with good grace, seeming to welcome both the company and the chance to take a break from his desk work. Avis forced a pair of buttered scones on him, and then set her teacup aside.
    “Rue used to scold me for forgetting to eat,” Hadrian said as Avis unscrewed a jar of comfrey salve. “I’d get to toiling away on a sermon, or looking up this or that text, and next thing I knew, she’d be standing over me, demanding my presence in the kitchen.”
    “You miss her.” Avis put his left hand on her thigh, the better to wrap a strip of linen around an abused index finger.
    “I miss the company, but there are times, too, when I can’t clearly recall her features.”
    He