Chapter Nine
F elix sauntered into the parlor as if he owned it. And he did. Technically. But he’d promised to let her do with it as she pleased. It was written into their marriage contract! That made the house hers. In spirit if not in actuality. Damn the laws.
“Good morning, ladies,” he said with that charming grin at the assembled women. “Thank you all for coming today. I’ll ask you all to wait in the hall. I’ll call you in one at a time.”
“What in Hades’s name is going on here?” Polly hissed.
She’d helped Caroline dress then joined her as the village women poured into the parlor.
The small blue room had become so crowded, they’d pushed all the tables, chairs, and the small writing desk to the edges.
That had the unfortunate consequence of revealing just how damaged the rugs were.
She’d add procure new rugs to her list of things to do.
“I know as much as you do,” Caroline admitted.
“Less, likely.” She’d done much with Felix’s lips this morning, but talking had not been much of it.
What he had said… illuminating. She’d gotten it all wrong.
She did not repel him. Quite the opposite.
Her hand floated up to touch her lips. She could still feel his there, tingling.
Had he been deceiving her for some reason? Trying to make her think he desired her? Unlikely. Impossible to pretend that level of arousal. The thought made her stomach flip and the star between her legs…well. She bit back a smile. It still glowed a bit, keeping her warm.
“He’s ruining your plans,” Polly said. Wasn’t he just. “We cannot do anything while he’s here. It was fine when he was fixing things and hiring tradesmen, but this!” Polly held her arms out wide. “Establishing a harem!”
Caroline choked. “A harem? Polly. Utterly ridiculous.” Though a man as ravenous as Felix had been this morning, might have need of a communal means of slaking his lust. No! Utterly ridiculous. “He’s… he’s interviewing them.”
“For a harem.” Polly snorted.
“For…” Aha! “Servants.”
“We can’t have those. Not many at least, and they have to be carefully chosen.”
“I know ,” Caroline ground out.
With that wide, easy smile, Felix was ushering the women into the hall.
He would not take no for an answer. If he wanted servants here, he’d have them.
And if she refused, he’d want to know why, and there was no terribly good reason for a viscountess to refuse maids and housekeepers and cooks. Unless she was broke. And she was not.
Curses.
“We will have to… put off the plan. For now. We will resume once he leaves.” And fire everyone he’d hired.
Most of them, at least.
Polly made a clucking noise. “The more people about, the easier to lose our secret.”
As if she didn’t know that. As if keeping a skeleton staff only wasn’t a principal backbone of her plan. “As far as anyone knows, this is merely a private residence in need of improvement. They will never discover more than that. That must be all Lord Foxton ever knows, too.”
“Of course. Like I’m goin’ ta tell a man .”
Caroline bristled. Felix was not simply a man.
He was a fighter, a good man. If he knew, he would…
he would… what would he do? Hm. Something to think on.
She’d not considered it while she’d been trying to drive him away.
Now that she knew she couldn’t, the idea of telling him everything slipped in like fog through a cracked window.
Room emptied of the applicants, Felix closed the door and sauntered toward Caroline and Polly, his gaze for Caroline alone, his intent expression brimming with memories of their morning together.
She almost stepped into his arms.
But Polly poked her in the ribs. “Stand your ground.”
Yes. Stand her ground. Why was she melting anyway? This was Felix ! And now she’d seen him shirtless. And he no longer laughed at her request for kisses, but took them mercilessly, as if he’d never not kiss her.
“What was that?” Polly poked her again.
“What was what?”
“You made a little sound.”
“I did not.”
“You did,” Felix said, his grin as seductive as… well, she no idea what was seductive. Other than Felix’s grin. Other than… Felix.
Curse it all . Stand her ground .
“What are you doing interviewing these women?” she demanded.
He crossed his arms over his chest, reminding her of all his muscle. “You need a housekeeper. And maids. And a cook. You seem unwilling to hire them yourself.” He shrugged. “I’m helping.”
“You’re interfering.”
He craned his head to one side then the other with a grimace then pulled the writing desk and one of the chairs to the middle of the room and sat behind it, readying a quill and paper. “Will you stay for the interviews? It is probably for the best. Since they will be serving you, not me.”
Oh. That knocked the wind out of her somehow. Of course, the servants were for her, not him, not them . She wanted him gone. But somewhere between his pale nightmare-ravaged face and the line he’d licked across her collarbone, she’d begun to… like him here.
Rubbish.
She pulled up a chair to sit beside him. “I’m staying.”
“Excellent.”
“Me too!” Polly lifted her chin at a haughty angle.
Felix looked to Caroline.
She nodded. “Polly stays.” The other woman’s disapproving eye would keep Caroline from further error.
“Very well,” Felix said. “Miss Polly, will you admit the first applicant?”
Polly did, and the interviews began, and each woman who stepped forth made Caroline’s stomach sink. “This is excessive,” she said after Felix had hired a tenth woman. “How many did you intend to—”
Felix scratched something on the paper before him and spoke without looking up. “All of them. This place is bigger than I remember. It will take a large staff to run it.”
A large staff. Too many eyes and ears and mouths.
By the time he had, indeed, hired all of them, telling the lot to return tomorrow, she was despairing.
“Miss Polly”—Felix leaned back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head in that habitual motion that strained the very fabric of his coat, and that made her mouth water —“could you tell the women that until the servants’ quarters are habitable, they are to remain in the village, visiting from noon to five each day. ”
Polly grumbled but left, and Caroline almost called out for her to remain. How else would she shield herself from Felix?
With her rising irritation, that’s how.
He folded the paper he’d been writing on then pulled a bit of ribbon from his pocket. He tied it around the folded note then slid the whole thing across the desk toward her. She ignored it, standing and planting her hands on her hips, so he’d know she was quite, quite serious.
“You cannot give orders here.” Good. She sounded firm, resolute.
He took the folded paper and held it out to her between two fingers. “I am, though. And I will. Since you seem incapable of taking care of yourself.”
She threw her arms out wide, ignoring his offering once more. “Do I look unwell, my lord? Do I look frail and sickly?”
He stepped closer, his booted foot resting between her slippers, beneath her skirts, and wrapped one arm around her waist as he slipped the folded paper into her pocket with the other hand. “You look”—his eyes glowed with something like hunger—“delicious.”
She dropped back down into her chair. Ignore him. “I have a plan , Felix.”
He groaned, sinking into his own abandoned seat.
“And a household teeming with servants is not part of it.”
“Is this because of your father?” Felix cast out his hand, his finger dragging across her upper arm. “You do not have to grieve alone.”
“My father has nothing to do with it.”
“Stubborn Caro.”
“Perhaps a little bit to do with it,” she admitted.
Surprising to say that out loud. What else would she tell him?
Because the patient way he waited for her to speak, the admiring, teasing way he’d called her stubborn—it made her want to pour out her soul.
She folded her hands in her lap and spoke to them.
And what if telling him this little shadowy secret appeased him, made him realize he could leave?
She could try.
“We traveled,” she said. “All the time, as you know. I met so many different people and explored so many different places. It shaped me into who I am, gave me a sense of the world, and its people many do not possess. Yet… it would have been nice to have a home, a place to return to. Siswell Abbey was as close as Chloe and I got to something like that. Those summers at your grandfather’s house, the only stillness in our lives, the only… permanence.”
Somehow his hand had stolen into her lap, his fingers stretching toward her until his hand engulfed hers. He squeezed.
“My father gave us everything but a home to return to between journeys, and I suppose that was a lesson, too. Our travels taught us that differences between others were not frightening. That the world could be cold, but that we could make small corners of it warmer for some. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a safe home, you know.”
“You want Hawthorne to be your home.”
“It will be a home. Warm and lovely.” She scowled. “Once we get all the windows replaced.”
“And dust banished.”
“And there’s a banister or two in need of tightening.” She sighed. “I need Hawthorne to bring to life the final lesson my father taught me. It is as much a memorial for him as it is my hope for the future.”
He nodded, his hand snaking out of her lap. “I understand now your determination. And I”—he tugged at his already loose cravat—“know what it is like. To lose. And to grieve. And to heal.”
Did he, though? The way he tiptoed around this house, shadow-eyed… she was not convinced he’d mastered that last part. The healing part.
“Will you open the note, Caro-mine?” he asked.
“You mispronounced it.”
“Don’t think I did.”
Caro- mine .
She jerked away from him, worried she’d do whatever he asked in that moment. “What is wrong with you, Felix?”