The Dress of the Season (6 page)

“I don’t read novels,” he tried again, and he could feel his scowl settling over his brow.

“Why not?” she asked, tilting her head to one side.

“I . . . I don’t have time for this,” he said, standing to turn out of the room.

“Oh, and here I thought we were trying to be friends,” the singsong of her voice told him she was being playful, but there was something else in there, too.

“If I didn’t know better, I would say that you are challenging me, Felicity.” He turned, his eyebrow up.

“When is the last time you read a novel, Harris?” she asked, smiling. And again, the pleasing zip of his name on her lips settled into his skin. “When is the last time you took an afternoon to yourself to do something frivolous?”

She stood then, languidly unfolding herself from her casual pose in the leather chair, and crossing the room to him. “When is the last time you tried something new?”

Tried something new? He felt raw and young again, as if he were still trying to get a handle on his environment. Still trying to learn the rules of being Viscount Osterley. So his mouth slammed shut, set in a hard line, his face set in the stern expression that told the world he knew what he was doing, even when he didn’t. But as Felicity walked toward him, easy and graceful, he feared that she saw right through it.

He still held the red leather volume in his hands. She lifted it within his grasp, and pushed it to his chest.

“Read the first volume. And if you dislike it, I’ll never mention it again. But if you do . . . I’ll lend you the second and third volumes. All you have to do is admit to it.”

He looked at her little hand, pressing the book into his chest. Her fingers resting near enough to his that he could feel the electricity passing between them. He should say no. That old panic settled in. He should go back to his work, whatever it might be, and keep her at a distance. When she was younger, it had been a distraction, trying to do right by Felicity, while still learning how to be Osterley. Now . . .

She wasn’t a distraction anymore. She was a temptation.

“I dare you,” she challenged, her eyes sparking.

He really should simply walk away.

“Agreed.”

Chapter Seven

On the second day of rain, Felicity was certain that something was going to break inside her guardian. His dual nature was at war. Either Harris was going to come out from where he’d been hiding, or Osterley was going to squash him back down into oblivion again. And Felicity was too fascinated watching the game play out to have caution about her part in it.

Harris had come up to her right before dinner, and told her his feelings on the first volume of the book. “It was utterly ridiculous,” he said. “The girl is insipid, the man a brute who, if he acted like that in real life, would be arrested on the spot. And the house is a complete anachronism. If it is tumbling down about their ears, why on earth does it have modern plumbing?”

This speech carried on right through dinner, with Felicity adding in the appropriate noises here and there, until, sometime around the soup course, he asked, “So, may I have the next volume?”

“I thought you hadn’t liked it?” Felicity replied with an easy smile.

“It’s terrible! But I have to know how it ends, especially if it is as ludicrous as I expect,” he grumbled. “Besides, you haven’t told me anything about it, and I suspect that’s because you’re trying to not ruin it for me, so how are we supposed to have this discussion you crave if I have not read the whole thing?” He put his nose up in the air . . . a rather difficult thing to do during the soup course. “It would be unconscionable of me to go into a situation without having all the information.”

“Of course.” She smiled serenely, taking a sip of her soup. But inside she was doubled over with laughter. She had long thought about the split between Harris, the boy she had known and grown up with, and Osterley, the mantle he had taken on. It seemed that for Harris to do something out of Osterley’s character, he had to find an Osterley-like justification for it.

The next day, she was with Mrs. Smith, looking over the larder and the pantry, deciding what stock needed to be laid in for the cook, when Harris found her again.

“Oh! Hello,” he said, as if caught in the act of stealing a cookie, even though he was the one who came upon them. “I wanted . . . er . . . tea? Mrs. Smith, would you mind fetching me some tea?”

Mrs. Smith, somewhat startled, smiled and curtsied, and went to fetch a tray. Which left Harris and Felicity in the pantry, alone together.

“You know, you can ring for tea,” she replied, amused. “You don’t have to go searching through the kitchens.”

“Yes, well,” he answered gruffly, clearing his throat. “I . . . ah . . . was exploring a bit. It’s always good to take proper stock of where you are, and make sure the house’s upkeep is in good hands.”

There it was again. The Osterley excuse for Harris wandering the halls. She smiled at him, but then she caught his eye.

“You look tired,” she said, suddenly concerned.

“It was that dratted book,” he frowned at her. “I was awake until my candle burned down, reading the second and third volumes.”

“Oh dear.” She smiled at him, suddenly relieved. “I’m terribly sorry to have subjected you to such an ordeal.”

She was teasing him again, and was gratified to see the tips of his ears blush. So rare it was to see Harris blush. Osterley usually didn’t allow it.

“I will be restored after some tea.” Then after a brief pause, “Would you care to join me?”

Even though he did not hold it out, she took his arm. She was strangely happy right now, she realized, as they made their way out of the kitchens. Perhaps it was because she had not been left alone as feared. Perhaps it was because the rain was keeping them in a protected little bubble, and she knew that if the torrential downpour was as strong in London, she was missing absolutely nothing in the way of scene and society. She knew that the rain would stop soon enough, and Osterley would leave, taking her friend Harris with him, and she would be left alone, in this land of her past. A past that had sadness around its edges, which she would have to look at, truly, for the first time in four years.

But not yet.

“Tell me, did you find anything of interest on your travels through the house?” she asked, as they came into the front hallway, on their way to a drawing room.

“Oddly enough, yes,” he answered. “Here, let me show you.”

He changed course, pulling her into a third, less used drawing room—one that she remembered as having been his mother’s writing room, where she received her cousin, Felicity’s stepmother, for hours at a time, laughing and gossiping, eating cakes and sewing blankets for the local church charities.

A rush of memory washed over Felicity. She had loved being included in those afternoons. It made her feel grown-up.

There were drop cloths over everything, preserving an unused room and the new furniture therein. Harris moved over to a shelf of trinkets, ceramic and glass figurines. He pulled the shelf back, careful not to disturb the delicate figures, revealing that the shelf was actually a door. Beyond it was a set of stairs.

“I found it this morning. I never knew it was there. Or where the stairs go.”

“The stairs go to your mother’s bedchamber,” she replied easily. He shot her a curious look. “You mother showed it to me ages ago—apparently it was installed sometime in the seventeenth century. So the lady of the house could come down and do her morning correspondence without having to become fully dressed to traverse the house.” She peeked into the dusty space. “It used to be a wonderful hiding place for hide-and-seek.”

“Hmm,” was his only reply. “No wonder I can never remember finding you.”

She laughed aloud at that. “You never looked!”

“No? Of course I did.” He frowned back at her.

“Harris, when I was eight, you were sixteen. You and John could not stand to have me around. You would tell me to go hide and then not come to find me.” She shook her head at him. “I always ended up playing with one of the younger maids, or your father would indulge me for a little while.”

A complex array of emotions crossed over his face. “He did? My father played hide-and-seek with you?”

“Yes,” she replied, kindly. “He always said there was time enough to play a round or two. ‘Osterley can take care of itself for a half hour,’ I believe was a favorite phrase.”

His grimness came down over him again, that hard-set jaw, that twitch at his mouth, but not before she saw a flicker of sadness cross his features. As if . . . as if he wished Osterley could take care of itself for a half hour now.

“There is another corridor like this one, connecting your study to the master bedchamber,” she said, in an effort to bring him back to the present.

“There is?” His head came up. “No there isn’t. I would know about it.”

“You would if you had bothered to come and find me when we were playing hide-and-seek,” she countered. Then, wickedly, Felicity decided to see if she could get Harris to come out from behind the façade of Osterley. “I wager I know the ins and outs of this house better than you do.”

“You most certainly do not. I grew up here. I have spent four years restoring this place.”

“You took it at face value.” She waved her hand dismissively. “I was the one who actively explored it when I visited.”

“There is no way you know this house better than I do.” His nose went up in the air again, making her giggle. He looked at her then, and met her eye, and the challenge within them.

“All right,” he countered. “How do you propose we settle this?”

*  *  *

“Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred!” Felicity counted, peeking out from between her fingers. She spun in a quick circle, her eyes flying to the now far-past-cold tea tray, its biscuits decimated as fuel for their war.

It was the fifth round. She had found him twice, and he had found her twice. There was a fifteen minute time limit to searching. This would be the deciding go. Unless of course, she thought with a smile, Harris lost again and demanded that the competition be best of seven.

Her eyes spied a small crumb trail—currant muffins leading to the door to the servant’s staircase . . . the one that went either up to the attic or down to the kitchens. Harris had stuffed a muffin into his mouth as she had begun counting, she remembered. Her smile grew wider.

“Ready or not, here I come!”

*  *  *

Harris could hear Felicity as she moved through the tight space. The rules said that any room in the house was within limits, and the attic was definitely a room, and definitely within the limits. He had no idea how he had found her so soon, but he strongly suspected the servants were acting as her eyes and ears. Perhaps that was how she had found him so quickly twice before, he thought peevishly. It had taken him near enough to the fifteen minute mark to find her both times—once curled into a ball in the copper bathtub, currently not in use in a storage closet, and once hiding so securely underneath a desk, only a spare ribbon peeking out around the edge gave her away. And he strongly suspected she had left the ribbon out intentionally.

Regardless, he never expected to see her up in the attic already. She emerged from the close doorway, lined with old boxes, wooden furniture, a cradle, and a spinet, and came into the main space. She carried a candle, as there were no windows up there. Rain still pounded against the roof, but luckily it was a solid structure and no water seeped through.

“Hello?” she called out, a slight tremble in her voice. She was either slightly frightened by the surroundings or a little cold. The way she pulled her shawl tighter over her shoulders made him suspect the latter.

“You led a crumb trail to servant’s staircase,” she said aloud again, her voice braver now. “And since it only goes down to the kitchens—and we’ve already hidden there—and up to the attic, you have to be here somewhere.”

He felt a smile cross his lips. Blast it, but she
was
more familiar with this house than he. He had to acknowledge she had a certain skill at this game. But there was no way she would find him wedged into the large cabinet, behind old crisscrossed candelabras and rocking horses, hidden against the opposite wall of the attic. Unless she managed to sniff him out again, through some kind of witch’s sense.

He thought he had her as she moved past him. Witch’s sense or no, she made no move toward his cabinet. And for a moment, he felt safe.

She turned then, and he held his breath. Spying her in the candlelight through the brief gap of the cabinet door, he could have sworn that her large, dark eyes met his. For a heart-stopping moment, they held with his . . . but then she moved on. Her attention turned to a large figure covered by a white sheet. If he recalled correctly, it was a suit of armor, worn by one of his more battle-ready ancestors, but she didn’t know that.

Perhaps she didn’t know the house as well as she thought.

She pulled the sheet down with a flourish, crying, “A-ha!” as she did so. He could feel the disappointment come off of her in waves when it was only the expected suit of armor, its metal dully reflecting the light from her candle. She whirled then, looking around the dark space. A petulant frown on her brow. He couldn’t help it then. He laughed.

Just a low chuckle. It was a slip. But she was just so damned adorable, looking for him in the dark attic, clutching her candle like the heroine in that terrible novel. Fortunately, that chuckle did not give him away. Instead it came out sounding like an echo, like the remnants of a ghosts whisper. And by Felicity’s reaction, she was thinking the same thing.

“H–Harris?” The candle in her hand shook slightly. “Is that you?”

He held still in the cabinet. Felicity took two steps backward, turning to move quickly back past him and toward the door.

Suddenly, Harris had what a marvelous idea. All he had to do to scare the wits out of Felicity was brush a hand across her shoulder without her seeing. She was already fleeing the attic. He need only reach his hand out and catch her as she moved past him . . . in three, two, one . . .

His hand had barely grazed her shoulder when she whipped around, and in the dark, must have really only seen a single hand emerging out of the ethereal plane, because she screamed bloody murder, dropping the candle to the ground and snuffing the light.

“Shh!” he tried, unfolding himself from the cabinet as quickly as the cramped space would allow. “Felicity, ’tis I! It’s Harris!”

The screaming abruptly stopped. “Harris!” she cried, her breath coming in strange gulps. Her eyes grew, if possible, wider in their relief. “Oh thank God, it is you!” She wrapped her arms around his waist, like she had when she was a reckless, loping child. Then, before the shock of her movements could be processed by his mind (if not his body), she pulled back in his arms—for indeed, strangely his arms had come to wrap around her back—and walloped his shoulder.

“How dare you frighten me so!” she cried, and even in the dimness of the attic, he could see the pretty little scowl on her face. “That was unconscionably cruel. I thought you were a . . . a . . .”

“A ghost?” he offered, and she walloped him on the shoulder again.

“A varmint.”

“A varmint?”

“An oversized rat or squirrel. Or some other nasty woodland creature that enjoys a good attic.” Her chin came up, and Harris felt himself smiling. Hell, he felt it to his toes.

“You really didn’t think I was a spectre?” He could feel her warmth beneath his arms. He knew he should loosen his grasp. He knew he should put some distance between them, but at that moment, he was smiling at her, and she was looking exasperated at him, and Harris could not move his arms for the life of him. And he didn’t want to.

“Of course not. That would presume that I think ghosts are real, you ninny.” Apparently done walloping him, she placed her hands lightly on his shoulders. “And besides, a ghost would not make me nearly as ill at ease as a varmint. They have tails . . . and teeth.”

She wrinkled her nose at him, and he chuckled lightly. But he was all too aware. His body was coursing with the knowledge that he and Felicity Grove were
embracing
.

He was shocked to find her in his arms, but more shocked that he liked her there. And by the look in her eyes, by the touch of her hand against his arm, by the way she leaned against his hands . . . she liked it, too.