The Dress of the Season (8 page)

For the past week she had been stuck at Croft Park, and now it seemed that she was stuck just outside of it.

Brushing her hair out of her eyes, she headed down to the kitchens, seeking out firewood, and only wishing that she had either a book or Harris to keep her company.

Once the fire was blazing in the hearth of the living room, Felicity removed some of the dust cloths that covered the furniture and made herself a cozy spot of cushions in front of the fire. Repairing to the library, she found it stocked with an array of books that spoke to the previous tenant’s taste in seafaring adventure. She recalled that Harris had told her it was a Navy captain and his family who had rented the property, and thus settled down to read tales of the sea.

It was so boring, she was asleep in ten minutes.

Twilight had begun when she awoke, to the unmistakable sound of the front door slamming.

“Felicity!” Harris’s voice, hoarse and desperate, came with heavy footfalls. “Felicity, are you here?”

Felicity sat up, bleary with sleep but startled by the noise. She brushed her hair out of her eyes, and answered. “Harris?”

She could hear him stopping and turning, and within seconds he appeared in the drawing room doorway.

He looked like nothing Felicity had ever seen before. Gone was the staid, austere viscount, gone was the playful friend she prodded out of hiding. Now, he was a wild beast, hulking in the doorway. His greatcoat dripped with rain, his breathing coming in short, deep gulps. Water plastered his thick hair to his head and his eyes were wide and dark with rage and relief.

“Where the hell have you been?” he growled, taking three steps forward and meeting her just as she managed to scramble to her feet.

“Here—” she began, but he overran her.

“We’ve been looking everywhere for you. The woods, the lake. You said you were going to take a walk!”

“I did, I walked here—”

“It took us three hours to figure out you had gone to the river, and only then did Peter Black tell us you had crossed this morning. You could have been hurt, you could have become ill! You can’t do that, Felicity. You can’t just run off like that!” He grabbed her arms, shaking her a little in his anger. “It’s my job to keep you safe, do you understand?”

“I did not run off!” She finally exploded. “I came here. And I am fine. I even managed to make a fire by myself! Why on earth are you yelling at me?”

“Because I cannot lose you, too!”

And he pulled her to him with such fierceness, that Felicity thought her ribs would break with the force of it.

Her ribs, or her heart.

Because he crushed her to him then, his lips meeting hers with such strength and passion, it would leave bruises.

It was glorious.

Thrilling beyond measure. Water seeped through her clothes as she was pressed against him, a cool shock on her skin. His fingers threaded through her hair, holding her, cherishing her, wondrously. Rough caresses against her cheek, her jaw. Rivulets of water flowing from him to her, in a strange rhythmic waterfall of heat and power.

When he finally pulled his mouth from hers, she was too shocked to say a word, just let their breaths mingle as his forehead came to rest against hers, his hand stilling gently on her cheek. He seemed drained, lost, when he spoke at last.

“I cannot lose you, too.” This time it was a ragged whisper, a desperate truth that he had kept bottled inside for so long, it barely held form. Yet, it was there. And Felicity could not comprehend it.

“I . . . I don’t understand,” she finally replied, meekly. “Harris, I . . . I wasn’t lost.” Her hand reached up, and she touched him. Let her fingers dance with the wet locks of hair, pushing them back over his ears. It was unconscious of her—or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was because she was in his arms, and it felt right. Maybe he needed that gentleness, and she needed to give it.

But that gentle, innocent touch seemed to break something in him. The cloud over his mind, the focus that had brought him to that point, to find her, suddenly gave way to the outside world, and everything else found its way in.

He pulled back from her, released her arms as if she burned. Then he gave a short burst of disbelieving laughter.

“No . . . no, you were not lost, Felicity. I am.”

He shook his head at himself. Paced the room in fevered strides. Felicity, could only watch, shivering from the transferred wetness on the front of her clothes. He moved like a feral animal, struggling to get himself under control. Finally, he came to a stop.

He turned to address her. Opened his mouth to speak. But nothing came out.

After a moment held in time of simply staring at each other, Harris Dane, Lord Osterley, gave a short, proper bow, and left the house.

Chapter Nine

I cannot lose you, too.

Those words haunted Felicity, all the way home.

What had he meant by them? What had he meant by that kiss?

After Harris had so formally excused himself from Felicity’s house—what must have been mere minutes, but felt like an eternity to a bewildered Felicity—Peter Black knocked on the door.

“Here you are Miss Grove!” he cried happily, shaking off his wet cap in the foyer. “Lord Osterley said you was. We have the carriage ready to take you back to the river.”

And they did. Peter snuffed the fire in the fireplace. A closed carriage with thick, sturdy wheels was pulled around and conveyed her to the river. She was rowed across with an umbrella for protection—luckily the river was passable now; the rain was tapering off and the current, while strong, was easily overcome by Peter and another burly man who had been working on the bridge. On the Croft Park side, there was another carriage waiting for her.

Harris was nowhere to be found.

The trip was far too short for Felicity to sort through all of her feelings. They overwhelmed her. Numbed her to the elements, and to the looks she received from Mrs. Smith and Johnson the steward when she walked through the front door.

The only thing that she could puzzle out of her strange state, was that if her feelings were this jumbled, this strong . . . what must Harris’s be?

She knew him. Knew him in all his iterations. And knew that those different versions of himself fought each other. But over what? Over her?

She was a duty to Osterley, a recently returned friend to Harris, and . . . something else entirely to that man who had walked, dripping with rain, into her family house and kissed her senseless.

I cannot lose you, too.

As she sat in her room, drying herself by the fire, a single thought solidified in her mind.

He felt for her, she realized. Something deeper than obligation, and deeper even than childhood friendship.

And she . . . she felt something deeper, too. Deeper than gratitude, deeper than friendly good humor.

But what?

That was the question. One that would not let her rest until she knew the answer.

*  *  *

“What did you mean?”

The voice came from the doorway to his study. He did not turn. Harris was by his own fire—indeed every chimney of Croft Park was pumping out smoke. He still dripped with rain, but his greatcoat had been surrendered to the butler and Mrs. Smith was fussing over tea.

Felicity was safe. That was good.

His reaction to finding her . . .

That, had been very, very bad.

He’d lost control of himself and of his emotions. He’d let her see . . .

“What did you mean, when you said ‘I cannot lose you, too’?” Felicity stepped into the room as he turned to her, keeping his face expressionless. She looked up at him earnestly, seriously.

Harris turned to Mrs. Smith. “That will be all, thank you,” he dismissed her. Stern as he was, he did not miss the kind look Mrs. Smith gave Felicity on her way out the door.

“You have the staff wrapped around your finger, I see,” he drawled. “They were terribly worried about you, you realize.”

“What did you mean by it?” she persisted, taking another step forward. Her hands were held placidly in front of her, she came to him with a forthrightness that belied any flirtation, any coquettishness that had been her arts for the past few years.

“It doesn’t matter, Felicity,” he said on a sigh.

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he said sharply, holding himself back from yelling. Bleakness filled his soul, and before he knew it, he was telling her . . . everything. “It doesn’t matter to you, does it, that everyone is gone. It doesn’t matter to you that I cannot bring them back. It doesn’t matter to you that their loss is my fault.”

She blinked at him, shocked. “It was not your fault people died, Harris.”

“Really? I’m the one who insisted that John stay.” He met her eyes, bleary, pained. “I begged him. To come and help my parents. Long after everyone else had given up hope. And he did and they died, and then he went home and died himself.”

The sound of their breaths and the crackle and pop of the fire were the only sounds in the room.

“He’s gone because of me. Your family, all gone.”

“I never knew you thought that,” she answered quietly, after some time, her eyes on her hands. “You never talk about John. Your best friend. For some time I thought . . . I thought you blamed him for not saving your parents.” She looked up at him again. “And that was why you couldn’t stand to be around me. But that’s not it, is it?”

Her stare was so unyielding, so intense, he was certain that Felicity saw right through him, past the defenses he’d worked so tirelessly to build, to his very core. To his weakness.

“You’re afraid.”

Those simple words hung in the air, like dust in sunbeams—always there, seen only now that light shone upon them. Harris felt his back go up, defensive against the truth.

“Of what am I afraid? Of you?”

“Yes. Somewhat. Of getting close to me. Likely of getting close to anyone. Because you could lose them.” She shook her head. “Austere Osterley.”

“And you are the exact opposite,” he countered, bitterness flooding his mouth—hating it, but unable to stop it. “You flit from one experience to the next trying to find brightness and life and anyone that can distract from what is now gone. Without anyone else here, your ‘picking’ on me transformed. You’ve been
flirting
with me for the past week, trying to distract yourself from being back here.” Cruelness marred his brow. “You think I don’t see things the way they are?”

She regarded him so sadly, he thought his heart might break from it. He wanted to wrap her in his arms, to apologize for his words. But no—if she was going to pinpoint the truth, so was he.

“Yes, I have been flirting with you. But not—not
solely
—to distract myself. I can face my memories. I did today.” She took two steps closer to him, anger and ache mixed up in her eyes. “I flirted with you because when I did, miraculously, Austere Osterley dropped away and you became Harris again. And I . . . I have missed Harris. I needed him. For four long years.”

She took yet another step, closing the gap between him. “You brought me here, intending to shut me away . . . not because I wore a dress. But because you are afraid of me.”

“No,” he tried, willing himself to believe it. “Not true.”

“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” her voice became a low, husky whisper. “You don’t have to be afraid to want me.” He couldn’t look at her then. Couldn’t let his body take in what she was saying. Her breath hitched and he knew that what she said next took all her courage. “What if . . . what if I wanted you, too? Would that be so wrong? Why couldn’t we be happy together?”

“We cannot.” He said numbly, wanting nothing more than to reach out and touch that long curl of hair that ran down over her shoulder. “I am your guardian. You are my ward. Nothing more. I won’t risk your reputation.”

“Wards and guardians have come together before,” she countered. “That is the weakest of excuses and you well know it.”

“Regardless.” He cleared his throat. “It is . . . cleaner that way.”

Her chin came up. “Then why did you kiss me?”

“I . . . shouldn’t have. It was a mistake on my part. You are meant to live a life of gaiety and happiness, married off to some poor sod who will treasure you and keep you comfortable. I cannot.”

She flinched, as if struck. Tears began to threaten the corners of her eyes. She stepped back, putting space between them. It left him bereft. “If you truly believed that, you’d have let any one of my previous beaux court me and I’d be married by now.” Another step away, and another. “I was your friend long before I was your ward. Our lives are tangled up in each other so surely, there is no ‘cleaner’ way. You did not mean cleaner. You meant ‘safer.’”

“Felicity,” he tried, and she stopped. He held out his hand to her, but she didn’t move. It dropped to his side. He turned back to the fire, let himself become absorbed in its dance. “I’m going back to London tomorrow. And this . . . strange folly, this captivity we have both been held in . . . it will fade away. I promise.”

He turned, glanced back at her—but found he was talking to an empty room.

*  *  *

Felicity fled the study, her eyes drying rapidly with her resolve. That, in the study—that was merely a battle. The war had yet to be won.

She had heard every word he spoke, and she did not believe one in ten of them. But the ones she did believe—the ones about Harris leaving for London—those she knew as truth, and the consequences were too terrible to contemplate.

He would forget himself in Lord Osterley again. The walls would go back up, Harris would disappear behind them.

Well, she would be damned if she let that happen.

“Mrs. Smith!” she called out as she marched toward her bedchamber, bringing that woman to her in a trice. She had obviously been very interested in the outcome of her and his lordship’s conversation, even though she wore no sign of it in her professional demeanor.

“Mrs. Smith,” she said, as she closed her bedchamber door behind them, “I know that you made some assumptions about me when I first came here—”

“But not now, miss!” Mrs. Smith interjected quickly. “I would never presume that you were . . . wanton in such a way.”

“Good,” Felicity breathed, steadying herself. “But unfortunately, I am. Or, I am about to be.”

To Mrs. Smith’s credit, she only blinked twice.

“I . . . I know he feels for me. More than he wants to allow himself. I know you may not approve but I cannot allow him to go back to that heartless creature that brought me here.” Felicity continued, aware that she was rambling, but unable to stop. She had been so long without a mother—and the years Sylvia had been gone were important to a young woman. She needed . . . she didn’t know what she needed. Guidance? Someone to stop her?

But Mrs. Smith surprised them both by taking Felicity by the hand and guiding her to sit. “Miss, if I may be so bold,” the older lady began, her voice taking on a wistfulness that Felicity had not heard before. “I have been able to observe his lordship over the past week, and he has been more alive in your presence than I’ve ever seen in my time here. Indeed, he is very much in love with you.” Mrs. Smith looked at her hands in her lap for a moment before continuing. “It is not my place to give or withhold approval. You are a good girl, but old enough to own your own mind, and live with the consequences of your decisions. But I have to ask—what do you feel for him? In my old employ, there were never any feelings between the master of the house and all his women, and ultimately no one was happy. You have to ask yourself if you feel for him the way he feels for you, because if you do not, merely bending him to your purpose would be cruelty.”

“I . . . I don’t have a purpose,” Felicity said, confused.

Mrs. Smith raised an eyebrow. “It is no secret that you would wish to be in London, Miss Grove.”

Felicity nearly laughed. She had practically forgotten her life in London, her determination to not be left in Surrey with the threatened Aunt Mildred and without scene or society. “That is not my reasoning at all. I feel for him . . . but what is sharper is contemplating how I would feel without him.” Felicity gulped her breath. “Without Harris I would be lost. Untethered. I cannot explain it any better than that. All I know is that this past week is sharper in my memory than any other, and at the same time a hazy dream. As if without him, the world will go dull again.”

Mrs. Smith broke into a brilliant smile, one that showed her years and hardships melt away into vicarious joy. “Then tell me, Miss Grove, what I can do to help?”

Felicity smiled, setting her shoulders back with resolve.

“I need your help getting dressed.”