Page 12 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
“In fact, you said you’d already eaten. Dinner preparations had likely begun long before you arrived home, and my staff is no doubt eager to please their new mistress.” Ian shifted several bits of correspondence aside to make room for the dinner tray a maid set before him.
“I won’t eat it,” Felicity said.
“Suit yourself. My cook is extraordinary.” He did a particularly fine leg of lamb served with mint sauce. “You’ll pardon me if I proceed with dinner without you. I often dine in my office when I find myself working into the evening.” His knife slid smoothly through the tender meat as he carved off a small bite. “Now. Tell me about this fellow who has been following you.”
An exaggerated, overly annoyed roll of her eyes. She said, succinctly, “No.”
Ian swallowed back a sigh. “Felicity—”
“For what reason would I confide in you?” she asked waspishly. “So that you might wield it against me at some future date? Should I hand you a weapon with which to steal something else precious to me?”
“For God’s sake, I didnotsteal—” He heaved an exasperated sigh anyway when she shot to her feet and strode toward the door. He seized his pocket watch to read the face. “Fifty-two minutes,” he said. “You promised me that. I don’t expect you’d much care for me to go back onmyword.”
It was cruel of him to taunt her with it, but then—she expected that cruelty. It didn’t matter whether or not he’d even meant it, for she’d already painted him with a villain’s brush, judged him guilty in advance.
She stopped, her shoulders drawing back stiffly. Turned about like a marionette pulled by invisible strings. Dropped herself back into the chair she had all too recently refused.
And sat, still and stubbornly silent, for the remaining fifty-two minutes.
Chapter Five
Felicity rose from her chair the very instant that the last of her hour of obligation ended, wordlessly turning toward the door, and this time—this time, Ian did not stop her. But then, he’d said almost nothing in nearly three quarters of an hour, since each and every inquiry he had made of her had been met with nothing but stoic silence and palpable disdain.
Eventually he had gotten the message. Had redirected his attention to his work and to his dinner, and emitted nothing more than the occasional caustic sound as he had scratched through lines upon the pages before him and scribbled his own notes into the margins. She had no idea what, exactly, he had been doing.
But she had not intended to ask, either.
The same maid who had delivered her tray was waiting when she emerged, and Felicity nearly leapt straight out of her skin to find herself ambushed with a curtsey directly outside the door.
“I’m Mary, madam,” the girl said. “I’m to show you to your room.”
Of course. It shouldn’t have irked her quite so much that he had anticipated even this. But she had been within his home only thrice now, and she couldn’t possibly have expected to find her bed chamber in a house of this size.
She tamped down on the roiling pit of anger that burned in her chest. Mary had done nothing to merit even a sharp word. “Thank you, Mary,” she managed to say.
“Of course, madam. If you’ll follow me.”
Felicity followed along in her wake. The house was larger than she had expected; the relatively modest front façade concealing a surprising depth stretching back toward what she assumed must be the garden.
“My things?” she asked as Mary led her down a hallway and stopped before a large mahogany door polished to a high shine.
“Already unpacked,” Mary said as she cast open the door and led her within. “Thereweren’t so very many of them.”
No; there never had been, Felicity thought as she stepped inside. For years as a student she had shared a small room with two other girls and a single wardrobe between them. And even when she had taken up a position as a teacher and had been allowed a room of her own, it had been quite small, with room for a half a dozen gowns at most to be tucked within her narrow chest of drawers.
“This is the dressing room,” Mary said, gesturing to a door on the left. “Your gowns have been hung up, and your nightclothes and underthings have been folded and placed in the dresser. Will you require assistance in changing?”
“No; thank you.” She’d been managing it herself all these years anyway.
“Your brush and pins have been set out for you at the vanity within the bathing room,” Mary said. “Of course if you require assistance bathing, or with dressing your hair, you need only ring. Mr. Carlisle suggested you might desire the services of a lady’s maid—”
“I won’t. I’m quite accustomed to doing for myself.” And her needs were few, besides. Only a brush to pull the tangles from her hair and a few pins to secure it into a bun. There was no need to style her hair any more ostentatiously than that. “Thank you, Mary. I don’t require anything further.”
Mary bobbed another curtsey. “Of course, madam. Breakfast is to be served at seven in the dining room, if it is agreeable to you.”
And she left Felicity alone once more, in a room that wasn’t her own, and yetwouldbe for the remainder of her life.
The counterpane upon the massive four-poster bed had been turned down, and a fire had been lit within the hearth. It should have felt warm and inviting, but the sheer size of the room made it instead feel vast and unwelcoming. Half the room was swallowed into the shadows, the light of the fire not nearly enough to beat back the unrelenting darkness. Probably it would be different come morning, with the sunlight pouring through the windows wreathing the French doors against the far wall, which likely led to a balcony.
