Chapter 13 Likely Horrible
LIKELY HORRIBLE
For a prison, Foggy Hill House was quite cozy looking.
Nestled between gently rolling hills, it was square and mostly unremarkable.
Trees hugged its side, and rather high and unkept hedges extended in either direction from its walls, barriers against the world.
Or fences to keep Sybil inside. The entrance jutted out from the rest of the house, and a massive, curved window stretched above the front door.
A low, sleepy fog shrouded the house, which seemed, somehow, to have slipped between worlds.
Remote, unreachable—the perfect place to stash a woman you wanted to hide.
“The name’s a bit too on the nose, if you ask me.” Apollo lounged against the coach as the driver unloaded their luggage. He’d been unnaturally cheerful all day, as if yesterday—the kiss, the injury, the drunken conversation—had never happened.
Sybil took a step toward the house, but before her foot could touch the gravel, he swooped her up in his arms. This the only change, the only evidence he’d not forgotten. The horrid man wouldn’t let her walk.
“I have a cane,” she said. Mrs. Paisley had brought it to her right before they’d left, iron and silver shaped into a rather lovely twist of tree branches.
“Saw your—erm—brother carrying you down the street yesterday,” she’d said, handing over the cane. “Everyone did. Thought you might need this.”
“Can you open the door?”
“Hm?”
Apollo cleared his throat, and Sybil blinked into the present.
She was fiddling with his cravat. She stopped, tried to find something else to do with her hands, but when they weren’t fiddling with the linen, they wanted to settle in the natural places of someone being carried—his neck, his shoulders, his chest.
“I need you to open the door,” he said. “I cannot when I’m holding you.”
“Knock with your foot. Temple has hired a housekeeper and a cook. I’m to fill the house with any others I might need now that I’m here. But I’ve promised to bring in very few mouths who might give away my location to any nefarious creatures.”
“Too late.” He knocked. “I’m the most nefarious creature there is and you’re inviting me in.”
Her heart thumped.
The door swung open. A woman with steel-gray hair and heavy cheeks stared up at them, hands on her ample hips. Her eyes narrowed. “Who might you be?”
“I’m Miss Sybil Grant, and my chariot is my brother, Hesperus Grant. You are expecting us. Or, me. Hesperus was a rather last-minute addition to the traveling party. He’s here to keep me company and make sure I do not bolt.”
Apollo rolled his eyes and pushed past the woman, who considered Sybil as if she were a creature from the moon.
“Are you Mrs. Collins?” Sybil asked, looking over Apollo’s shoulder to where the woman still stood in the doorway.
“I am.”
“Where’s a parlor or drawing room?” Apollo demanded.
“I’ve hurt my foot,” Sybil explained, looking up at the ceiling.
The house was much lovelier on the inside than it had been on the outside.
The entry hall was circular, and a staircase that began at one side of the room curved around it above the door and upward to an open balcony.
They faced three closed doors like mysterious choices beneath the stairs.
The housekeeper bustled past them and chose the center door, leading them into a rounded, well-furnished parlor with large windows, not that there was much sun to shine through.
Apollo settled Sybil on an elegant sofa near an empty fireplace then stood like a statue looking out the window.
So stony. So stoic. Was her injury truly worrying him so much?
Or was it the kiss? Her request for another?
What a foggy-brained idea that had been. Certainly the wine’s fault. But how could she resist. Their kiss had been a revelation. It had felt like taking hold of her own life and doing as she pleased. A luxury when she was being carted off and hidden like ugly statuary in a closet.
Once Sybil had arranged her skirts smoothly, she smiled at Mrs. Collins. “I understand it has been difficult to open up a large house on such short notice. You have my deepest gratitude.”
“The marchioness ordered it.” Mrs. Collin’s had the grimmest mouth Sybil had ever seen, and the way she said marchioness was like she’d swallowed something sour. “We don’t have a cook yet. Tomorrow was the earliest she could work. I’ve got provisions. Should I bring something for you?”
“That would be lovely. Thank you.”
When Mrs. Collins disappeared behind a different door, Apollo returned to Sybil’s side. He pushed her to the side of the sofa and sat on the other end, opposite her. He patted his lap.
She raised an eyebrow.
“Your foot please, princess.”
“It’s well enough.” And shoeless. Too swollen to fit inside a boot.
His turn to raise a brow.
“Very well,” she sighed, turning to lift her foot onto his thigh. She lifted her skirts a bit higher than necessary, flashing her calf.
Not that he noticed. His gaze never wavered from his intent—slipping off her stocking. The kiss must have been nothing to him. She held her breath, not wanting his touch to feel like a warm bath and a zing of lightning at the same time.
He untied the bandage and lifted her foot, inspecting the sole. “The potion is working nicely. It’s healing more quickly than it would have without.”
“Is it?”
“You shouldn’t need assistance walking by the end of the week.” He drew his thumb down the inside edge of her foot, then stood abruptly, taking up position at the window once more.
Anger bubbled up in her. No idea why except that he was acting so… so bland! “I was drunk last night!”
He spun around. “Pardon?”
“When I asked for another kiss. I was foxed entirely. And… and I know the first kiss”—the only kiss—“was a strategy, an alchemical experiment. Do not worry that I am somehow becoming enamored of you. I’m not a ninny.
Now.” She stood, searching for her cane.
“I’m going to explore this house.” She took one wobbly step, inhaled a hiss as pain scorched through her.
“Bloody hell, woman.” Apollo swept her up into his arms. “Which way?”
She refused to cling to his neck, crossed her arms over her chest and pointed with her chin to the door they’d entered through. “That way. I want to go up the stairs.”
He complied, kicking the door open wider and taking her into the entry hall and up the stairs.
“These stairs are gorgeous,” she said, glad her voice didn’t tremble.
“You’re angry with me.”
“Stop here at the window.”
He did, and they stared out over the drive together.
“You should be thanking me,” he said.
“Thank you for the help with Stone’s notes.
I should have considered your ability to translate his scrawl sooner.
” Lead and gold. Fascinating. When she’d not been agonizing over the first kiss, the failed request for a second, she’d been turning her brain over and over those two elements.
Lead. Gold. Surely Stone could not be trying to turn myth into reality.
“I can move forward now. I was quite stuck before.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“The view from here must be lovely without the fog. You can keep going up now.”
“Consider all the reasons we shouldn’t kiss, Sybil.”
“Go left,” she said at the top of the stairs. “This is such a beautiful house. I feel a distinct need to explore every corner.”
He went left. “First there’s your brother and your father and likely Diana, all of whom would rather see me run over by a mail coach than anywhere near you.”
“Oh! Go in there.”
He slipped through the appointed doorway. “Then there’s your current circumstances. You’re in mortal danger though you seem not to care. Which means everyone around you must care more.”
“The walls are gorgeous. I’ve never seen such murals. I adore it. Next room!”
He carried her back into the hallway. “And of course, you cannot forget the most important reason we must not kiss.”
The most important reason… More important than disapproving family and mortal danger? She was terribly curious. “That room now, please.”
It was a bedchamber, and her heart stuttered.
The bed, flooded in clean, white linens, seemed big and sumptuous, and the eerie, misty air outside the windows seemed to permeate the walls.
It was elegantly decorated in shades of blue.
The curtains were pulled back to let in the dim light, and a set of matching armchairs rested with a small table before the fireplace.
Paintings of open fields and sunsets splashed across the walls—more murals.
And a large rug echoed those evening colors. The chamber begged to be inhabited.
“Drop me on the bed,” she said, “I’m claiming this room.”
He placed her carefully on the mattress then moved to stand at the fireplace, as far from her as possible. With a face as still as the stone carvings bordering the empty grate at his back, he said, “Me.”
“You what?”
“I’m the reason we shouldn’t kiss.”
She chose her words carefully. “If I were desirous of more kissing, you would be the best reason to do so.”
After several moments of silence, he said, “What do you mean?”
“What do you mean?”
He tugged at his hair. “I’m no good! That’s what I mean. I’m a bit insulted you forced me to say it.”
“I’m a bit disappointed you didn’t put more menacing seduction into saying it.” Horrid to tease him, but he looked so boyish admitting his sins, so alone. That hard me had sat like a stone between them, a word that would never meet any others.
He slumped into one of the armchairs, sticking one leg out straight. He was too tall for the little bit of feminine furniture, and he should have looked absurd. He looked sprawling and dangerous instead. “You are making this very difficult, Sybil.”
“Do you want to know a secret about me?”
“Not particularly.”
“I’m more mischievous than most think I am.”
“Hah. That’s not a secret. You’re a menace.”
“Thank you.”
“Not a compliment.”