Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

He looked up. Blinked. Cocked his head to the side, then winced, as if the motion had been unwise. “My bride,” he said simply.

And nearly knocked her over with his breath.

Amelia recovered quickly, then grabbed his arm and held tight. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

She looked about frantically. The streets were not terribly busy, but anyone could happen along. “And good heavens, what happened to your eye?”

It was amazingly purple underneath, from the bridge of his nose straight out to his temple. She had never seen anything like it. It was far worse than the time she had accidentally hit Elizabeth with a cricket bat.

He touched the bruised skin, shrugged, scrunched his nose as he apparently considered her question. Then he looked back at her and tilted his head to the side. “You are my bride, aren’t you?”

“Not yet,” Amelia muttered.

He regarded her with a strange, intense concentration. “I think you still are.”

“Wyndham,” she said, trying to cut him off.

“Thomas,” he corrected.

She almost laughed. Now would be the time he granted her use of his given name? “Thomas,” she repeated, mostly just to get him to stop interrupting.

“What are you doing here?” And then, when he did not answer her: “Like this?”

He stared at her uncomprehendingly.

“You’re drunk,” she whispered furiously.

“No,” he said, thinking about it. “I was drunk last night. Now I’m indisposed.”

“Why?”

“Do I need a reason?”

“You—”

“’Course, I have a reason. Don’t really care to share it with you, but I do have a reason.”

“I need to get you home,” she decided.

“Home.” He nodded, tilting his head and looking terribly philosophical. “Now there’s an interesting word.”

While he was talking nonsense, Amelia looked up and down the street, searching for something—anything—that might indicate how he’d gotten there the night before. “Your grace—”

“Thomas,” he corrected, with a rather wiggly sort of grin.

She held up a hand, her fingers spread wide, more in an attempt to control her own aggravation than to scold him. “How did you get here?” she asked, very slowly.

“Where is your carriage?”

He pondered this. “I don’t rightly know.”

“Good God,” she muttered.

“Is He?” he mused. “Is He good? Really?”

She let out a groan. “You are drunk.”

He looked at her, and looked at her, and looked at her even more, and then just when she’d opened her mouth to tell him that they needed to find his carriage immediately, he said, “I might be a little bit drunk.” He cleared his throat. “Still.”

“Wyndham,” she said, adopting her sternest voice.

“Surely you—”

“Thomas.”

“Thomas.” She clenched her teeth. “Surely you remember how you got here.”

Again, that moronic silence, followed by, “I rode.”

Wonderful. That was just what they needed.

“In a carriage!” he said brightly, then laughed at his own joke.

She stared at him in disbelief. Who was this man?

“Where is the carriage?” she ground out.

“Oh, just over there,” he said, waving vaguely behind him.

She turned. “Over there” appeared to be a random street corner. Or it could have been the street that ran around the corner. Or, given his current state, he might have been referring to the whole of Lincolnshire, straight back to the Wash and on to the North Sea.

“Could you be more precise?” she asked, followed by a rather slow and deliberately enunciated: “Can you lead me there?”

He leaned in, looking very jolly as he said, “I could . . . ”

“You will.”

“You sound like my grandmother.”

She grabbed his chin, forcing him to hold still until they were eye-to-eye. “Never say that again.”

He blinked a few times, then said, “I like you bossy.”

She let go of him as if burned.

“Pity,” he said, stroking his chin where she’d touched him. He pushed off the stone wall and stood straight, wobbling for only a second before finding his balance.

“Shall we be off?”

Amelia nodded, intending to follow until he turned to her with a weak smile and said, “I don’t suppose you’d take my arm?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered. She slipped her arm in his, and together they walked off the high street and onto a side alley. He was setting the direction, but she was providing the balance, and their progress was slow. More than once he nearly stumbled, and she could see that he was watching his steps closely, every now and then taking a deliberate pause before trying to navigate the cobbles. Finally, after crossing two streets and turning another corner, they reached a middling-sized, mostly empty, square.

“I thought it was here,” Wyndham said, craning his neck.

“There,” Amelia said, jabbing her finger out in a most unladylike point. “In the far corner. Is that yours?”

He squinted. “So it is.”

She took a long, fortifying breath and led him across the square to the waiting carriage. “Do you think,” she murmured, turning toward his ear, “that you can act as if you are not sotted?”

He smiled down at her, his expression rather superior for someone who needed help remaining upright.