Page 8 of Courting Trouble
With an ecstatic elation, Titus drank in the sight of Honoria sitting up on her own. She was still ashen and wan, her eyes heavy-lidded and her lips without color.
And yet, the most beautiful sight he’d laid his eyes upon.
Her fingers worried at the burgundy ribbon in her hair, stroking it as if drawing comfort from it.
Was it his imagination, or did a dash of peach color her cheeks at the sight of him?
He already knew he was red as a beet, swamped in the blush now creeping up his collar.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Every word he knew crowded in his throat, choking off a reply.
“Yes,” the Baron chuffed, taking his shoulder and firmly steering him backwards. “Expect our gratitude in remuneration, boy. I’ll call for you to come to my office tomorrow to discuss the details. There’s a good lad.”
The door shut in his face, and he stared at it for an incomprehensible moment. From the other side, the Baroness’s voice grated as she asked the doctor if Honoria might be well enough to attend the garden party at the palace three days hence.
Titus dropped his head against the door and closed his eyes.
She’d looked right at him. Hadseenhim for the first time. Did she remember any of the previous days? Had she heard anything he’d said to her? Sung to her?
She’d thanked him.
And he’d said nothing. His one chance to actually speak to her and he’d choked.
And then he’d been shut out like the inconvenience he was. To them, the Goodes, he was still a nobody. Nothing. They would never think about him after today unless the dog shat upon the carpets and someone needed to clean it up.
Would she? Would she come to him? Had she noticed him, truly? Not as a servant or a savior but as himself…
One question haunted him as he dragged his feet down the hallway, back to the mews, his hand curling over the memory of her skin.
Would he ever get to touch her again?
Four Years Later
“Ido believe someone is dead beneath your greenhouse,” Amanda Pettifer said with no real concern as she pulled the curtain back from the carriage window. “That’s quite a structure for merely a Baron’s home. Why, it’s as long as your stable walls.”
Honoria Goode didn’t miss Amanda’s latent jab at their rank. As the daughter of a viscount, she needed, upon occasion, to put them in their place. It wasn’t the most pleasant virtue for a friend to have, but neither was it uncommon among their class.
“Let me see!” Prudence lunged over Amanda’s lap to peer out the carriage window as they clopped in beneath the mews. “Holy Moses! You’re right. A man’s legs are sticking out from beneath as if the structure landed right on him. What if he drowned in that puddle of muck he’s in? Someone should do something, Nora! Oh…no…wait. The legs are moving. All is well. At least, Ithinkit is.”
“I’m glad our welcome party isn’t a corpse.” Secretly pleased that her sister Pru still used the nickname she’d gleaned at finishing school, Nora marked her page and closed her book. She’d never liked the name Honoria. It was stolid and plain, belonging more to a nun or a suffragist than a debutante. Nora sounded much more sophisticated, she thought. Tidier, even.
Though Amanda Pettifer was Nora’s age at twenty, she and Prudence—almost three years their junior at seventeen—were thick as thieves. Likely, because they both shared a penchant for mischief and misbehavior.
They’d all bundled into the carriage from the Green Street Station, anxious to arrive home. Nora’s coming out ball was in three days, and there was so much to be done. She couldn’t help but become almost overwrought with anxiety at the thought.
The carriage trundled to a stop in their Mayfair courtyard as she swept aside the curtains to see what all the hullabaloo was about.
Along the wall of their extensive stables, tucked into the square behind their grand row house, Mrs. Fick’s glass and wrought-iron greenhouse glinted with the colors of the setting sun.
Indeed, sprawled in a shallow mud puddle from a pit dug beneath the foundation, were two long male legs clad in filthy trousers. As the girls all watched, the legs bent and splayed indecently as mud-caked hands appeared and clasped the underside of the structure. Then, with a serpentine struggle, the entire body of a man shimmied on his back from beneath.
Before sitting up, he reached back under and retrieved several work tools.
“Good lord, Nora, he’s all but naked,” Prudence gasped.
The young man hauled himself to his feet and smoothed his muddy hair before scraping some of the muck from his torso and flicking it onto the ground.
