Page 2 of Courting Trouble
“You are a wonderful sister. And I…I’m not…”
She began to fade then, unable to feel the warmth of the afternoon sun, even though it still alighted on her face.
And then she heardhisname.
Titus Conleith.
It brought her back to life, if only for a moment. She clawed at Prudence, begging for him. Pleading. Knowing it was too late.
Yes, she deserved to die, and worse.
Because long ago, she’d broken a boy. A beautiful boy with a true heart and a pure soul.
That sin had been unforgivable.
And she’d spent the last decade paying the price.
The Coal Boy
London, November 1865
Titus Conleith had often fantasized about seeing Honoria Goode naked.
He’d been in an excruciating kind of love with her since he was a lad of ten. Now that he was undoubtedly amanat fourteen, his love had shifted.
Matured, he dared wager.
What he felt for her was a soft sort of reverence, a kind of awestruck incredulity at the sight of her each day. It was simply hard to believe a creature like her existed. That she moved about on this earth. In the house in which helived.
That she was three years his senior at seventeen years of age was irrelevant, as was the fact that she stood three inches above him, more in her lace boots with the delicate heels. It mattered not that there existed no reality in which he could even approach her. That he could dare address her.
The idea of being with her in any capacity was so far beyond comprehension, it didn’t bear consideration. He was the household boy-of-all-work for her father, Clarence Goode, the Baron of Cresthaven. Lower, even, than the chambermaid. He swept chimneys and fetched things, mucked stables and cleaned up after dogs that ate better than he did.
When he and Honoria shared a room, he was beneath her feet, sometimes quite literally.
One of his favorite memories was perhaps a year prior when she’d scheduled to ride her horse in the country paddock and no mounting block could be found. Titus had been called to lace his hands together so Honoria might use them as a step up into her saddle.
He’d seen the top of her boot that day, and a flash of the lily-white stocking over her calf as he’d presumed to help slide her foot into the stirrup.
It was the first time she’d truly looked at him. The first time their eyes locked, as the sun had haloed around her midnight curls like one of those chipped, expensive paintings of the Madonna that hung in the Baron’s gallery.
In that moment, her features had been just as full of grace.
“You’re bleeding,” she’d remarked, flicking her gaze to a shallow wound on the flesh of his palm where a splinter on a shovel handle had gouged deep enough to draw blood. Her boot had ground a bit of dirt into the wound.
And he’d barely felt the pain.
Titus had balled his fist and hid it behind his back, lowering his gaze. “Inn’t nothing, miss.”
Reaching into her pocket, she’d drawn out a pressed white handkerchief and dangled it in front of him. “I didn’t see it, or I’d not have—”
“Honoria!” her mother had reprimanded, eyeing him reprovingly as she trotted her own mare between them, obliging him to leap back lest he be trampled. “To dawdle with them is an unkindness, as you oblige them to interaction they are not trained for. Really, you know better.”
Honoria hadn’t said a word, nor did she look back as she’d obediently cantered away at her mother’s side.
But he’d retrieved her handkerchief from where it’d floated to the ground in her wake.
From that day on, it was her image painted on the backs of his eyelids when he closed them at night. Even when the scent of rose water had faded from his treasure.
