Page 12 of The Spinster's Secret Scoundrel
“I should,” Thierry agreed.
“If you go out the back way, and down the hill, you’ll make it to the Cock and Bull without being seen.”
He nodded once. “An important consideration.”
“You have no idea.”
“I’ve some understanding. It’s never a nice feeling to be on the wrong side of village gossip.”
“Thank you,” she said in a voice scarcely audible above the clattering of dishes.
Thierry caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger. Ada’s gaze locked with his, and she had to swallow down a thrum of yearning. Once, she’d given in, and it cost her everything she valued. She wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
Still, she was tempted.
“Tis I who thanks you.”
Ada jerked away. “Thank me in coin, Thierry.”
There was a long pause.
“Let me do the washing up. Then, I’ll go,” he said.
Thunder rolled overhead. A fresh blast of rain battered the windows.
“Looks as though you’ll be staying,” she sighed. “But you must leave at first light.”
THIERRY
WALKING ON EGGSHELLS
Thierry had awoken in any number of odd places in his lifetime. In dank ship’s hulls, on jostling wagons, in beds redolent of perfume.
On one occasion, best forgotten, in a ditch.
He couldn’t for the life of him remember how he wound up in a wrought-iron bed with clean linens and a fluffy down counterpane. Alone.
Ada.
He sat bolt upright.
Sun blazed through the gauze curtains. They were made from fabric in a print that had fallen out of fashion before his birth, yet the shabby little room was neat and comfortable.
He was supposed to be gone from here.
Why hadn’t she woken him? Cast him out onto his arse as he so richly deserved after almost drowning her yesterday? Not to mention kissing her. Twice.
Thierry would’ve liked to do more than kiss. Alas. Miss Naughton was not a woman to be trifled with. Wary, with a potential for violence if a man didn’t tread carefully. He liked that about her. Kept things interesting.
Venturing into the hallway, he heard a tiny scraping sound and a low hum. An odd scent filled his nostrils. A mixture of something baking and…paint?
He pushed the door open to discover Miss Naughton hunched over a rough table scattered with a dizzying array of objects. They made no sense. Eggshells, some broken. Bits of muslin, glue, and a small palette of glossy paint, with tiny brushes laid out on rags.
A workshop of some kind. He couldn’t see her face, though he didn’t need to in order to comprehend her concentration. On bare feet, he padded silently into the room.
On a wooden rack shaped like a tree—little more than shaved sticks branching out of a center post—hung egg ornaments.
“What the devil?” he breathed.
