Page 9 of Courting Trouble
Amanda’s buttercream lace fan snapped open with a frenetic rip. “My,” she exclaimed huskily. “He’s built exactly like that statue of Ares in the Louvre.”
Nora barely heard their remarks, so arrested was she by the sight of him.
Amanda had the right of it. His figure could have been sculpted by the hands of a master. His jaw chiseled granite and his smooth sinewy torso shaped from marble. He was long-limbed and slender, his shoulders round and his arms corded with lean muscle. The flat discs of his chest gave way to grooved ribs and an abdomen so defined she could count the individual muscles, six in all.
She’d never seen a man like this in the flesh. Sculptors were a talented lot, to be sure, but they worked in clay and stone. A cold, lifeless modality in comparison. It could not begin to capture the jaw-dropping glint of golden skin. The line of intriguing hair disappearing into his trousers. Nor the peaks and shadows created by the grooves of muscle as he moved and flexed beneath the disappearing sunlight.
The moment the footman opened the door, Amanda accepted his hand and all but leapt out of the carriage to whistle at the workman. “You seem to have lost your clothing, sir,” she taunted.
His head snapped up as Prudence followed Amanda out of the carriage and tittered, “Mr. Fick will have to turn the garden hose on you, before all that mud dries you into a statue.”
“Let it dry, I say.” Amanda made a show of leering over at him, assessing him from head to toe. “Store him in a museum. I’d pay admittance to see that work of artregularly.”
“Amanda! What if someone heard you?” Prudence put a lace-gloved hand over her friend’s unruly mouth, though they were both giggling uncontrollably.
“What do I care?” Amanda grappled her hand away and flounced toward the door, her cream ruffled skirts fanning out behind her. “I’m to marry a short, pudgy lord who owns half of Cheshire, but I will always be an appreciator of excellent artisan workmanship. They don’t make men like that in our class, do they? More’s the pity.”
Nora was about to deliver a sharp word of reprimand when Mr. Fick, the spindly, white-haired stable master tossed a balled-up cotton shirt at the lad, hitting him square in the chest. “Oi! Titus! Make yourself decent; you’re offending the ladies!”
“Hereallyisn’t,” Amanda said huskily.
Turning, the kindly Mr. Fick bowed as Nora was the last to step down from the carriage. “Miss Goode, Miss Goode, Miss Pettifer, welcome back.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fick, it’s lovely to see you!” Prudence greeted with all her usual cheer.
Nora couldn’t bring herself to speak, gaping as she was in slack-jawed amazement.
Thatwas Titus Conleith?
He touched the shirt as little as possible as he held it away from his mud-covered skin. Shifting restlessly, his features arranged themselves into an uncomfortable frown that lanced Nora through with mortification.
“Pardon me, ladies. Mr. Fick, I’ll test the piping to see if the water pressure is returned.” His voice was deep and graveled, the register low enough that Nora had to strain to hear it. He barely gave them a curt nod, opened the door, and escaped into the long greenhouse.
“Let’s go and surprise Mama and the Pater,” Prudence crowed, peeling her hat away from the onyx curls that matched Nora’s own. “Then I’ll show Amanda to her room and hopefully supper will be ready soon. I’m positively faint with hunger. Are you coming, Nora?”
“In a moment,” she replied, barely noticing the girls’ giggling retreat.
Between the rows and shelves of vegetables, herbs, spices, and flowers tended by Mrs. Fick’s magical green thumb, she could catch glimpses of Titus through the panes of glass as he drifted deeper into the greenhouse.
“Watch your pretty shoes, there, miss.” Mr. Fick motioned to the puddle nearly large enough to be a pond. “We installed irrigation pipes into the greenhouse last week, and already one of them sprung a leak. Titus’s been at fixing it all day. Knowing you, you’ll be wanting to greet the horses before the people,” he said affectionately. “I think old Cleo is back there waiting for you.”
That drew a genuine smile from her. She did, indeed, prefer horses to people in almost all cases. “Yes, thank you.”
He blinked over at the greenhouse, then cast the retreating girls a look of veiled disapproval before taking himself off toward the servants’ entrance.
Nora waited for him to disappear inside before skirting the puddle, lifting the hem of her powder blue gown, and hopping onto the landing of the greenhouse to slip inside.
Moist air fragrant with loamy soil and herbs suffused Nora’s lungs. She breathed it in, longing for the country. The sound of running water drew her past strawberries and asparagus, basil, rosemary, coriander, thyme, even a tomato vine struggling to find the sun.
Toward the rear of the structure, fresh flowers bared themselves shamelessly, overgrowing the pathway and impeding her view. Nora had to lift a few fern fronds to duck beneath them.
She found Titus surrounded by a bevy of hanging plants, bent over a drain as he scrubbed the dirt from his hair and back with the pump Mrs. Fick used to water her plants.
“Leak is patched, I’m sure of it, Mr. Fick,” he said, shaking his hair like a dog. “Whoever installed that pipe must have been drunk or blind.” He dropped the hose to the drain and ran his hands over his face, swiping water and grit away from his eyes. “Will you hand over my shirt?”
Even after his many years in the city, he had not lost those lovely long vowels of Yorkshire.
Nora retrieved his nearly white shirt from where it splayed over a bush that had been clipped ruthlessly short, and held it over to him. She had the odd desire to keep it captive, or do something ridiculous, like hold it to her nose and test the scent. “Here you are.”
