“Is the food not to your liking?” Grace asked her, looking down at Amelia’s barely touched plate as she took the seat recently vacated by the dowager.

“I’m not hungry,” Amelia said, even as her stomach rumbled. There was a difference, she was coming to realize, between hunger and appetite. The former she had, the latter not at all.

Grace gave her a quizzical look, then ate her own breakfast, or at least as much of it as she could in the three minutes before the innkeeper arrived, looking somewhat pained.

“Er, her grace…” he began, wringing his hands. “She is in the carriage.”

“Presumably abusing your men?” Thomas queried.

The innkeeper nodded miserably.

“Grace has not finished her meal,” Mr. Audley said coolly.

“Please,” Grace insisted, “let us not delay on my account. I’m quite satisfied. I—”

She coughed then, looking terribly embarrassed, and Amelia had the singular sensation of having been left out of a joke.

“I overfilled my dish,” Grace finally finished, motioning toward her plate, which was still well over half full.

“Are you certain?” Thomas asked her. She nodded, but Amelia noticed that she shoveled several more forkfuls into her mouth as everyone rose to their feet.

The men went ahead to see to the horses, and Amelia waited while Grace wolfed down a bit more.

“Hungry?” she asked, now that it was just the two of them.

“Starving,” Grace confirmed. She wiped her mouth with her serviette and followed Amelia out. “I didn’t want to provoke the dowager.”

Amelia turned, raising her brows.

“Further,” Grace clarified, since they both knew that the dowager was always acting provoked about something or other. And sure enough, when they reached the carriage, the dowager was snapping away about this and that, apparently unsatisfied with the temperature of the hot brick that had been placed at her feet in the carriage.

A hot brick? Amelia nearly sagged. It was not a warm day, but nor was it the least bit chilly. They were going to roast in that carriage.

“She is in fine form today,” Grace murmured.

“Amelia!” the dowager barked.

Amelia reached out and grabbed Grace’s hand. Tightly. She had never in her life been so grateful for another person’s presence. The thought of spending another day in the carriage with the dowager, without Grace as a buffer…

She couldn’t bear it.

“Lady Amelia,” the dowager repeated, “did you not hear me call your name?”

“I’m sorry, your grace,” Amelia said, dragging Grace with her as she stepped forward. “I did not.”

The dowager’s eyes narrowed. She knew when she was being lied to. But she clearly had other priorities, because she flicked her head toward Grace and said, “She may ride with the driver.”

Said with all the affection one might show to a mealworm.

Grace started to move, but Amelia yanked her back. “No,” she said to the dowager.

“No?”

“No. I wish for her company.”