Page 27 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
The fine hairs at the nape of Ian’s neck lifted, and he didn’t think it had anything to do with the weather. There was something ominous about this letter, something threatening. It had to have been hand-delivered. Probably shoved through the mail slot set into the door and jumbled up with the rest when someone had come to collect it.
He’d not raised the issue just lately, because in her illness, she’d not left the house…but not too terribly long ago, she’d accused him of having her followed. And at his last inquiry, she’d refused to confide in him. Which had been her right, but—
He couldn’t protect her from an unknown threat. What manner of trouble was she in?
“Butler,” he asked, “have you noticed anything…odd within the past week or so?” If Felicity was, indeed, being stalked by some unknown party, then surely the villain must know where she was residing. So why send a letter to the school?
Butler frowned and rubbed his thumb across his chin. “Truth to tell, Mr. Carlisle, we’ve been running on a skeleton staff, since so many came down ill. I recovered enough to return to my duties only two days ago, so I’ve yet to speak with the whole of the staff just yet.”
Ian blew out a breath in relief. Surely, if anything untoward had occurred, Butler would have been informed immediately—
“Although,” Butler said, “Nancy—one of the kitchen maids—made mention that she thought we’d had a prowler a few days past.”
A shiver slid down Ian’s spine. “A prowler?”
“Most likely some unfortunate soul looking for a bit of shelter for the evening,” Butler said dismissively. “It’s warmest near the kitchen. There was no harm done, or so I’m given to understand. Nancy spooked the fellow when she went to lock the kitchen door for the night, and he vaulted back over the wall right quick.”
“Over the wall,” Ian echoed, as comprehension struck. Someone had beeninthe garden. Perhaps only inches away from an unlocked door before he’d been startled away by the presence of the staff. Butler might have no real reason to think it threatening or even particularly out of the ordinary…but then, he was unaware of Felicity’s brush with a potential villain. “My wife believes someone has been following her,” he said tightly. “I don’t know why—but I won’t take chances with her safety.”
“Mr. Carlisle?”
“I want you to ensure every door and window in the house is locked. At all hours,” Ian said. “If someone leaves the house for any reason, they lock the door behind them. Always.”
Butler’s brows drew together. “Of course,” he said.
“And if there is even the smallest suggestion of a prowler again, you will inform me immediately. Is that clear?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll inform the staff as well.”
“Do,” Ian said, and he stared down at the letter in his hand, and wondered if it was only the remnants of lingering illness which caused him to perceive the menace that seemed to seethe in the sharp slash of the handwriting across the front. Felicity would be furious if he read her private correspondence, no doubt. But her safety was far more important than her privacy.
Chapter Ten
Probably, Felicity reflected begrudgingly as she tipped her head back against the rim of the bathtub, Ian had been correct in his earlier assessment. She ought to have taken another day to recover before she had returned to work. She’d spent at most six hours at the school before she had given up the ghost and come home again, but those six hours had been amongst the most exhausting of her life.
Dorothea chafed still against her restriction to the house, and she’d made her discontent with her situation everyone else’s problem. Her sullen attitude and general surliness had left the staff walking upon eggshells in her vicinity, lest the slightest misstep provoke a flare of her outrageous temper.
Felicity found it rather difficult not to sympathize with the girl, given that she’d never quite managed to marshal her own temper, which tended to rear its ugly head more often than she would have preferred. But Dorothea’s parents had entrusted their daughter’s education to the school with the expectation that upon her matriculation from it, their headstrong daughter would be a model of ladylike perfection.
She let out an aggrieved sigh and dunked her head beneath the water, scrubbing at her scalp to rinse out the last froth of lavender-scented soap from her hair. If only Dorothea would take a lesson or two from Annabel. The two girls were thick as thieves, though Felicity could hardly credit it. They ought to have got on like oil and water, Dorothea’s stubborn abrasiveness clashing with Annabel’s quiet, gentle demeanor. But they’d been bosom friends for the last three years, from the very first Christmas they’d both found themselves boarding at the school over the holiday.
At least the Marchant debacle had been resolved. An ingratiating, nearly-servile reply from the elder Mr. Marchant—liberally sprinkled with assurances that Elias would have nothing more to do with Dorothea—had been waiting for her upon her return to the house, along with a stack of other letters. Mostly from her students or their parents, pertaining to their return to the school shortly after Epiphany.
Felicity sunk to her shoulders in the bathing tub, though the hope that the hot water would pull the tension from her muscles on its own was fading. She’d been wound tight as a spring since dinner, owing to both the strain of the day and Ian’s uncharacteristic quiet. He’d kept largely silent, up to his elbows in the paperwork he’d neglected over the past week they’d been ill, his pen flying across the pages with hardly more than a bite or two of his dinner between—nor more than a few words spared for her.
It oughtn’t to have troubled her, except that he generally made more judicious use of the hour he’d bargained for than that. But his unusual silence had been…unsettling. She’d picked at her own dinner and spent the hour sorting through her own correspondence, and the minute the hour had elapsed, she’d fled straight upstairs.
And still the tension remained. The stiffness of her shoulders unrelieved, the odd knot in her stomach unabated. As if every muscle had strung itself too tightly for comfort, near to the point of snapping altogether.
Felicity stretched out her legs, propping her feet up upon the other end of the tub with a sigh as she scraped her wet hair over her shoulder. There was no help for it—without some sort of relief, she could expect only a miserable night of tossing and turning in bed. Beside her damned husband.
A fraction of that terrible tension washisfault, besides. That horrifying spark of arousal that had kindled between her thighs when he’d palmed her breast in his sleep. The press of his cock against her bottom—damn it all; she was a healthy woman with entirely normal urges. The fact that such needs had gone unmet for some time did not negatetheir existence.
Her tiny bed in her cramped room at the school had been acceptable for sleeping, but not much else. That, coupled with the fact that the walls were rather thin and the vague fear that someone—student or staff—might have heard her had kept her personal ministrations to a minimum. But in Ian’s grand house there was no such fear. She doubted a servant would have heard a scream had she issued one, and the walls were bound to be appropriately thick.
The water sluiced down her body as she settled her shoulders against the tub and found a comfortable position. She slid one hand down her belly, through the wet curls between her thighs.Ahh. It had been too damned long.
She closed her eyes and tipped her head back as her fingers found the bead of her clitoris, circled lightly. A tiny fraction of that wretched tension in her shoulders eased, and a swirl of arousal bloomed low in her belly.
