Page 27 of House of Thorns
Olivia smiled and joined her father as he sat at the table, his eyes locked unseeing out the window.
“Good morning, father,” she murmured and dropped a kiss on the top of his head.
He didn’t move. Not that she expected him to. He never responded to her this early in the day. He stayed within his silent shell until Mrs. Lambert guided him to his piano.
“Take this, lass,” Mrs. Lambert pressed a thick slice of bacon wrapped in a bannock into her hands, still refusing to look at her breeches.
Olivia chuckled and stepped out into the fresh morning air.
The rain from the night before made everything appear clean and bright. She ate quickly, dusted her hands on the back of her breeches, then dragged the ladder from the back of the small fenced yard to prop against the side of the townhouse.
The clay tile weighed more than she liked and balancing it on her shoulder while ascending the ladder was far harder than it had looked when she’d watched the roofer before. Still, while it was very slow going, she finally succeeded in shoving the tile onto the lip of the roof and glanced around.
She groaned.
From the looks of the roof, there were at least five more broken tiles—maybe more.
Scowling, she descended, grabbed the hammer from the print room, then returned to the roof to knock the first cracked tile free. Her arms were already beginning to ache when she pulled out the last broken piece and kicked it off the roof, letting it slide down.
She paused and wiped sweat from her forehead. She was fortunate, truly, that her roof wasn’t a steep one, but even so, she slipped more than once as she dragged the new tile into place.
By the time she’d finally finished settling the tile into place, sweat dripped from her brow and stained the back of her shirt. One tile.One damnable, infernal tile.She’d spent the entire morning on the thing, and from her newfound perch, she could see at least a dozen that truly needed replacing.
“Damn it all to hell,” she swore under her breath. She wasn’t usually one to swear, but if ever a situation required it, this one certainly did.
Feeling inexplicably better, she swung her leg over the roof’s edge, located the ladder rung with her foot, and began to climb down.
A few feet from the ground, hands startled her from behind, locking themselves nearly under her arms onto the ladder rails.
She gasped in surprise, lost her footing and fell back, colliding at once with a man’s hard chest.
“My apologies,” Nicholas rumbled in her ear. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Against her will, her heart pounded with excitement even as her temper flared. She whirled as his hands slipped around her waist, effectively caging her in his arms.
“I could have broken my neck,” she snapped, flaring her nostrils.
“Hardly.” He grinned. “Not when I’m right here.” He lowered his lashes, strangely thick dark ones even though his hair was blond.
She frowned in an effort to clear her thoughts and added acidly, “Or sprained my ankle.”
“You were on the last rung,” he murmured, his lips still quirked upwards in amusement. “And may I point out, Ididcatch you, did I not?”
He pulled her closer then, as if to underscore the declaration.
She felt the heat of his hard chest, mere inches from her breasts. Her heart leapt into her throat, and for the briefest of moments, she wanted him to kiss her again.
Then, sanity returned. This man soon would—or should—wed her cousin.
Gathering her brows into a frown, she broke from his grasp.
“Women should wear breeches more often,” he murmured as she stepped away.
Startled, she glanced up. “That’s a scandalous thing to say,” she retorted, trying her best to ignore her racing pulse.
“Why?” he asked with a lazy lift of a brow. “The garment befits them quite admirably, I must say. Surely, there is nothing wrong with admiring the female form?”
He had a way with words that thrilled the blood. Determined to ignore him, she asked bluntly, “Why are you here?”
