Page 9 of Hazard a Guest
Nothing immediately looked amiss. His plants had been watered, his bookshelves had been dusted. He did note a new rug, which was well, as the old one had been fraying before he left.
What did surprise him was that the reading desk looked well-used, an assortment of books stacked on it with two lying open with paperweights in their spines. He looked a little harder, trying to identify them, but couldn’t place the colors of the binding.
Were they new?
He looked back at the shelves again, his brows rising. They did look fuller than he’d left them, he realized.
“The rug?” Freddy guessed, a nervous bent in his voice. “I know it’s a little bright, but I thought the dark blue would suit all the blue books on your shelves.”
“No, I like it,” Joe said, and meant it, watching how the cloud-filtered sunlight bounced off the woven threads of the new rug. “It looks nice. Suits the room.”
“Oh,” said Freddy, clearly thrown off balance by the approval. “Oh, good. That’s good, then.”
The breakfast began to vanish in segments: the yolk mopped up by bread, the apple butter relished between oats. The coffee they refilled.
“I’ll have to tell the Murphys you’re back,” Freddy said, handing Joe his refreshed mug. “But I’ll take the sofa, obviously, until I can get out of here.”
Cresson blinked at him. “There’s no rush.”
“It’s all right,” Freddy soothed, shaking his head. “I always knew you’d be coming back.”
Cresson squeezed his teeth together briefly, conjuring his patience. “I said there’s no rush, Lord Bentley. And I mean it.”
And at that, the other man smiled. He smiled and said, “I’ve told you a thousand times, Cresson. Call me Freddy.”
Joe narrowed his eyes, opening his mouth to say something back, but was caught off guard by a rapping at the door. He looked at Freddy in surprise but got only a shrug in return.
“I’ll get it,” Freddy said, “but for what it’s worth, I haven’t been inviting people over.”
“I wouldn’t care if you had,” Joe answered to a room that was already empty.
The jostle of the chain and the click of the door latch got him up off the couch, dusting oats from his legs and attempting one last stretch. He wasn’t fit to greet a guest like this, in his sea-splashed trousers and shirtsleeves, but he couldn’t help but feel a little curious about who might be knocking on his door.
“It isn’t a good time,” Freddy was saying from beyond the kitchen, his voice low and urgent. “I really can’t— Oh, for Godssake! What could possibly be this important?”
A voice came in answer, a feminine Irish lilt that would have frozen Joe in his tracks if he hadn’t been rounding the corner at that very moment, his fingers tucked firmly into the sleeve bunched up around his elbow in an effort to tighten the hold.
He stood there in full-body paralysis as she turned to see him there, momentarily distracted from whatever pain or vengeance she had come here to deliver unto Freddy.
“Mr. Cresson?!” she exclaimed, looking truly shocked to see him there, in the home that he owned. “Grace to God, is that you?!”
She was staring at his open collar, untied down to the center of his chest. Those gleaming golden eyes blinked, traveling over to more and more unseemly features on his person.
“This must be a bad time,” she announced, snapping her head around to glare at Freddy.
Freddy threw his hands in the air.
“Please, no,” Cresson managed to blurt out, dragging her attention back, dragging those eyes back. “No, I won’t interfere. I’ve only just arrived.”
“You certainly have!” she clipped back, as though that sort of agreement made any sense.
“Ember, please,” Freddy tried again, though at this point Joe wasn’t certain he knew what the other man actually wanted her to do.
“No, this is good. This is perfect!” she declared. “A barrister’s advice and observation will stop me from making a display of myself.”
“You?!” Freddy gasped with theatrical sarcasm.
“Mr. Cresson, if you don’t mind,” Ember Donnelly said to him. “Can I steal a moment off you? Just a moment, I promise.”
