Page 56 of Hazard a Guest
“Joe!” came Freddy’s voice, frantic and shrill. “I need to speak to you.”
Joe sighed, dropping his head onto Ember’s, his hands already thoroughly lost under the pajama top she was wearing.
“Come in, then!” Ember shouted back, clearly shocking both men. “But I won’t be held accountable for what you see!”
There was a very long silence behind the door. Then, after a beat, “I’ll give you both a moment.”
Joe muttered something unintelligible into the crook of her neck before rolling off her. She hoped, silently, that it had been a particularly naughty curse word, even if she couldn’t make it out.
It made Ember laugh, despite a healthy amount of good-natured resentment toward Freddy in that particular moment. She slid off the bed with a sigh and looked around for her dress, which was immediately proffered, along with her stays, by Joe’s hands.
When he’d had the time to fold and sort the clothing away, she did not know, but she also didn’t feel surprised that he’d managed it. She was perfectly capable of lacing up her own stays and pulling on her own dress, especially this one that she’d chosen last night, but it was so tempting to walk him through it that she couldn’t help but feign helplessness.
It was maybe the only time in her life she’d pretended to be less capable than she actually was.
“How many colors …?” he had started to ask, before shaking his head with a press of his lips, deciding that such a thing would be better discovered later.
She pulled the dress over her head just as Freddy finally lost his patience and burst in, looking more harried than absolutely anything other than a fire or a loose bear in the halls could possibly merit.
He didn’t even seem to notice Ember’s unlaced dress or the state of her hair, launching instead into his announcement like itwas causing him physical pain to keep it in, even opposite Joe’s strangled sound of protest.
“The mail’s come!” he shouted. “From London!”
“Well,” said Ember. “I suppose that’s it for us, then. The mail’s come, Joe. We’re all going to die.”
“Alas,” he replied mildly.
Freddy looked fit to combust, his pale blue eyes flying from one of them to the other and back again and finding not a whit of the reaction he’d hoped for.
“It’s your damned Portuguese patron, Cresson,” he burst out, clearly reaching fever pitch. “He’s … he’s gone and … and!”
“And?” Ember pressed, leaning forward.
Freddy turned to her, wild-eyed and apparently grateful. “And proposed to my mother!”
There was a beat of baffled silence.
“Had he not already done that?” Ember managed to say. “I thought that happened over a year ago.”
“It didnot,” Freddy snapped, the air clearly falling out of his sails at alarming speed now that he’d gotten it out. He stumbled forward and found a stool to sit on, dragging it out from its place by the adjoining washroom door. “Not officially, anyhow.”
Ember blinked at him. “Right,” she said. “Well, I’ve got to start my day.” And to Joe, she said with a final press of her hand, “Godspeed with that,” before she made her exit.
She felt herself grinning all the way down the hall and wishing, passively, that she’d thought to steal that pajama shirt on her way out. She’d have liked to add that to her collection.
If anyone she passed, servant or lord, noticed her state of disarray, they did not show it. It was, as Ember often suspected at events like these, simply not as interesting as whatever mischief the passersby had gotten into themselves.
She was going to have to come up with an explanation for Hannah, though. That little spark of a girl was going to demand all manner of sordid details for why Ember did not come to bed last night, and she was not entirely sure she had a convincing falsehood to deliver to her.
She had met Lady Bentley a handful of times and liked her very well. She also thought Dom Raul was damn good-looking and quite the charmer besides. So good for both of them, she decided. She’d send a gift!
Marriage need not always be a shackle.
She should send a gift to Raul anyway, she reasoned, for all he’d done for Joe, whether intentional or not. Maybe he’d like his own set of silk pajamas?
She chuckled to herself, arriving at her room and pushing the door open. The room was, mercifully, empty. Only Ember herself and that Ace of Hearts she’d tucked into the vanity mirror were present to observe her state of disarray.
“Well,” she said defensively to the card Mr. Withers had chosen for her, “you’re dead, aren’t you? I couldn’t wait around forever.”
