Chapter Five #2
“Come along, boy.” He pressed his heels into the horse’s sides and ventured forward, cold, dispassionate determination hardening his resolve.
Then… beyond a wavering film of fog—Hawthorne.
Unreal, long forgotten. Light stone, sloped roof, windows dark like lifeless eyes.
Flagstone steps on either side of the front door led right up to it.
Worn, missing chunks of rock and mortar.
A hazard. Grass and weeds grew through the holes, grew everywhere, an invasion against order.
Landscaping had long ago lost the fight.
Caro was here ? In this mausoleum? He’d known that of course, but knowing differed from seeing. How did someone so bright and alive as Caro stand it? Death clung to it like the fog.
He continued forward. The past was long gone.
It hardly mattered. The house was nothing more than wood and bricks and nails, not some gapping ghoul waiting to drag him into its dark maw.
No matter how ominous it looked. Rotten luck to return here for the first time during a heavy fog, thunderstorms approaching with rolling clouds in the distance.
The door opened, and a woman bustled out as if she hadn’t just bounced straight out of Hell.
Caroline. She adjusted something near the door with both hands, and the lines of wall wavered.
She was moving a ladder, settling it right before the door.
She tucked something beneath one arm, then reached high and settled her foot on the first rung.
What in hell did she think she was doing?
Felix slowed Troy into a walk. If she heard his approach—and surely she did—she paid it no mind, climbing higher and higher, her skirts whipping in the storm winds and tangling with the ladder rungs.
Her reach was limited on one side because of whatever she held smooshed between her arm and ribs there.
Felix dismounted Troy, and the grass that had overgrown the gravel drive muffled his landing.
Troy snorted and dropped his head to forage on the grass that had grown up between the stones.
He should tend to the beast, but—damn it—Caro’s ladder rested on uneven ground.
The stairs before the house were overgrown, and pockets of grass between loose stones tilted the entire thing precariously.
When he stood right behind her, he said, “What in hell are you doing, Caro?”
She yelped, jerked, and the ladder wavered away from the wall until he caught it and pressed it back.
She clung tightly to the rungs, eyes squeezed shut.
“ Oooooh oh oh oh !” Once everything had steadied, her eyes popped open.
“What are you doing here?” Said with a rough exhale.
“You terrified me. I could have fallen!”
He took a breath and spoke with a bored calm at odds with the fear alive in his chest. “I would have caught you. Come down. Whatever you’re doing—have someone else do it.”
“Oh, go away. The window needs fixing.” Indeed, one pane of the fan window over the front door had been broken out. “It’s going to rain.”
Anger jerked like a punch in his chest. “You have brought no servants here with you?” His grandfather had been right.
She continued to climb instead of answer him, and when she was close enough to the fan window, she whipped what she carried beneath her arm out—a jagged board of wood—and pressed it to the gaping hole in the window.
She held it there with one hand as she reached into her pocket, producing a nail, which she placed between her teeth, and then a hammer.
“Caroline Canterbury! Come down now!” If he hadn’t come, she could have died by any means possible in this small sliver of space and time—a fall, a hammer, struck by lightning.
God only knew how a hammer could kill her, but if anyone was going to die by accidental hammer death, it would be Caro.
At the very least, she might swallow a damn nail.
She ignored him once more. But she did not move forward with her task. She seemed frozen. She frowned down at him. Board pinned to the window with one hand and hammer in the other, she had no way to hold the nail.
He crossed his arms over his chest and curved one corner of his lips. “Ready to come down now?”
Her frown deepened, those dark brows forecasting her frustration even at a distance.
Back in the pocket went the hammer, then the nail, and he held the ladder as she dropped the board to the ground—nearly braining him in the process—then descended.
Her skirts swung above his face. He glimpsed slim ankles encased in creamy silk.
Feelings that weren’t fear and irritation melted into softer ones he was trying to ignore. And then, forget.
When she’d descended into the circle of his arms, she hopped to the broken stone and turned to look up at him, dark brows still slashed with irritation.
“Where have you come from like an impossible apparition? If I couldn’t feel you quite”—she patted his chest—“real beneath my hand, I’d think you just that. ”
If he took his hands off the ladder, they could settle at her waist.
He released the ladder, let his hands float where they would.
Toward her. Magnetized to the heat of her body.
He could pull her closer. In the past, he’d banished memory of her, of this place, in other women’s beds.
This woman was his wife, and he’d not touched another since marrying her, since that night at the Lyon’s Den.
The spark of their almost-kiss the day of their wedding still resided in his bones.
He stood too close, perfectly close for a kiss.
He could take what he’d denied her once.
Denied himself. His hands, one accidental flick away from her waist. He could feel her heat, twitched to touch.
He flexed his fingers, ready to take. But after his palms learned the curve of her waist, his lips would want to learn the curve of her smile, and well, then they were both damned.
He curved his nails into his palms and stepped away to save them both. “I received a visit from my grandfather.”
She smiled. As if they were meeting over a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits. “How is the old dear?”
“Worried. About you.”
She curled one arm in front of her waist, propped the other elbow atop it, rested her chin on her knuckles—no gloves—and frowned at the still-too-slim space between them. “He did seem rather displeased with me when he left. More so with you. He refused to say why, though.”
“He’s displeased with me because of you, Caro.” He gestured to the piece of wood and the open door to the entryway with his chin. “Where are the servants?”
“Oh… about.” She whisked inside then whirled in the empty entry hall to face him, throwing her arms out. Her voice was resigned. Or maybe, stubborn. “I suppose I cannot hide it. I’ve only the one—my maid.”
He couldn’t follow her inside. The open door seemed a giant maw, ready to grind him down, swallow him.
She ventured closer. “Is something amiss, Felix?”
He forced himself over the threshold, looking only at her.
She was fresh faced and sunny even in her concern.
The girl who’d saved him from dark and sticky grief.
She was here, so he could manage being here too.
He took a deep breath, shook away the encroaching shadows and found—ah yes, that’s right. He was angry at her.
“Yes, something is amiss!” he grumbled. “Everything is. What are you doing here? Alone . When I agreed to this—”
She rolled her eyes and walked away, disappearing through a door that led to a parlor. It had been a bright room, once, decorated in delicate blues and eggshell whites. His mother had decorated it, had received visitors there, and—
He knocked the memory away and followed her, stopped dead in the doorway. The bright blue room gone. Paint peeling, floors creaking. The once elegant, oak furniture dull, the cushions deflated and torn in little rips and circles likely worn by mice teeth.
He forced himself forward, focused on Caro. “I was not aware you intended to live in a dilapidated state with no servants.”
“Come now. Dilapidated is too strong a word. The house is in need of repairs. But it possesses many charms.” She bustled about the room, flinging back the curtains and opening the windows.
Unlike the fanlight over the door, these windows were all intact.
The curtains were clean but threadbare, holes scattering a haphazard pattern across them.
“You cannot live here alone.”
Oh. Damn. That had been the wrong thing to say.
She marched toward him like a general toward a disobedient soldier.
“You cannot tell me how I’ll live.” She took a deep breath, brown eyes closing, then opening.
She offered a smile, half jolly, half I will kill you .
“And I’m not alone. There’s Polly. She’s at the village just now. ”
Felix snorted.
“Three months ago, you were absolutely elated by this situation, glad to have a wife who preferred to remain out of reach. Do not tell me you’ve had a change of heart.”
“I’ve not. But this is not safe. I thought you’d be living in the country as other wives do. With an army of servants and a rotation of visitors. Not like this !”
“It’s your house. Surely you knew the state it was in. The servants’ quarters have only just become livable. And there’s no room for you, even. I’m afraid you’ll be quite uncomfortable tonight.” Her lips turned down, and she seemed to be contrite.
Bollocks. He knew her better than that. She wanted him gone.
He sat in the nearest chair. “Do not worry about me, my dear. I’m made of stern stuff. I’m sure I’ll survive.”
“There’s an inn nearby in Dorking. With all the amenities.”
“A temptation, to be sure. But it lacks one thing of which I find myself in need.”
Her head tilted, those brows flying fast toward one another. “Oh? And what is that?”
“My wife.”
She rolled her eyes, her entire body giving a stout shake of what he assumed was frustration. “You are impossible. You do not need me. You do not even like me.”
“That’s not true.” He rose slowly, prowled toward her, feeling the decreasing space between them like a never-ending bolt of lightning, buzzing. “I’m halfway to being in love with you.”
She snorted. Her eyes were getting quite the work out, and when he slipped his hand around her waist and hauled her close, she squeaked, a little cry that left her lips parted as he nestled her close. Hip to hip.
“It’s true. If I were the type of man to fall in love, I’d be there already.” But damn… he might just love holding her like this. She was a wild animal in his arms, refusing to be tamed. And who would want to tame her? Not him. He’d want to tangle with her in the wilderness.
Her palms had found his chest, flattened, pushed. “You’re not that type of man, and if you were, it wouldn’t be me you fell for. Release me.”
The small of her back felt like home, and something large and growing larger in his chest threatened to stop him from breathing altogether. “Come back to London with me.”
“No.”
“Mulish woman.” Lovely woman. Warm curves and intelligent eyes. “Come back only until this house is fixed and servants hired. You cannot believe I’ll let you live here like this. Now I know. Now I’ve seen.”
“Let me? Ha!” She struggled out of his arms, wisps of hair sticking to her lips. Those red lips. “Where you see me now is where I stay.” She dropped into a nearby seat, spine stiff and chin high.
Felix sat across from her, sinking low and extending one leg out as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Then I stay, too.”
Her mouth dropped open.
He grinned.
A boom of thunder shook the house, announcing the arrival of the storm.
“See. A deluge no doubt. I’d say that’s a sign. Even God must want me to stay.”
Those brows, winging down and adorably expressive. But then they rose up once more, and a slow, devious smile curled up one cheek. “I’m glad you’re comfortable here, my lord. But your poor horse must be quite put out.”
“Bloody hell!” He’d forgotten about Troy, and he jumped for the door to the sound of Caroline’s gut-deep laughter.
“If you remain at Hawthorne, you must learn to do without, my lord. That includes grooms and stable hands.” Her voice followed him into the entry hall and out into the rain where poor Troy—Damn. Where was Troy? He’d forgotten to tie him up.
Felix found the horse in the trees at the side of the house.
He grabbed the reins and moved toward the stables.
Hopefully it was better equipped for life than the house currently was.
“Come along, boy. We’ll learn how to fend for ourselves for a few days.
” Surely it would take no longer than that to convince her to see sense.