the art of loving ; lord tewksbury

ten

"Admit it Daisy, you loved the proximity between us."

Chapter Ten

  "Are we almost there? I don't feel too good."

  Daisy leaned her head against the wall of the carriage she was confined in, her eyes fluttering shut as she focused on her breathing. The bumpy ride from town to Tewksbury's home and the throbbing of her head from the lack of sleep blended into a familiar feeling she never liked. Nausea clawed at her throat as if a beast had dug its sharp claws into it, and she felt bile rising from her stomach. Daisy tried to avert her attention to something else, something that would ease her discomfort in hopes that her lunch wouldn't make a reappearance.

  "Almost there," she heard Tewksbury say. He shifted in his seat and although her eyes remained closed, she could feel him looking at her. "Are you—What's happening to you?"

  "I don't do too well with carriage rides," the girl answered. Not that she rode in many carriages in her sixteen years of being alive. In fact, this was only her second time travelling in one. Her first experience had been on the day she was scheduled to meet Tewksbury at his home, but it hadn't been so bad then. She suspected it was because her brother had been with her, or maybe there wasn't the addition of a pounding headache. Daisy decided it was the latter.

  "Is there anything I can do?" the boy asked as she opened her eyes. His features morphed into an expression of concern, waiting for her to tell him how he could make her feel better.

  "Would you...can you talk about something? I need something to distract me," Daisy told him. "You said you found something important that I needed to know. Tell me why it is so urgent."

  Tewksbury nodded and without hesitation, words began to spill out of his mouth. "I was in my father's study going through his belongings. Mother restricts anyone from entering that room, even me, but occasionally I sneak inside without her knowing. This time though, I thought maybe I would be able to find something which would spark an idea for our plan."

  "What made you think so?" Daisy asked, his words piquing her interest and allowing her attention to slowly be shifted from her nauseated state.

  "My father was a creative man," Tewksbury started. "Much like you, he loved to write. He had these journals with different covers, each of them filled with words from start to finish. Found piles of them on his desk. I thought maybe I could take a page out of his book, figuratively and literally."

  "Did you?" she asked.

  Tewksbury shook his head. "I have yet to go through all of them because I found something else. See, my father sometimes kept pictures in these journals. There was one which caught my eye because you were in it."

  "Me?" Daisy was alert all of a sudden. She stopped leaning her head against the carriage wall and sat upright, her expression twisting into one of confusion. "What do you mean, me?"

  "Well, it isn't exactly you," Tewksbury explained. "At first glance, I thought it was you. The resemblance was uncanny. But then I checked the date of when the photograph was taken, and it was years before you were even born. I did some more digging, and that is when I found her name."

  "Forgive me, but I'm a bit lost," Daisy said. "What are you saying, exactly?"

  "Genevieve Winters," Tewksbury said, ignoring the girl's question. "Do you know her?"