Page 29 of One Night to Remember
The corner of his mouth twitched. “This is a smithy, not a bakery.”
It also wasn’t a tea garden, but the man made an impressive cup of tea.
“Where is everyone?” In her experience, most smithies stayed open from dawn to dusk.
“I gave everyone a few hours’ free time so we could work on your brother’s curricle without distractions.” He clinked the edge of his cup against hers as if toasting with champagne. “To winning?”
She raised her cup in answer, unable to hide her grin. “To winning.”
The wicked promise in his slow smile warmed her to her toes.
When she finished her tea, she placed the cup back on the tray and reached toward the pile of aprons.
“Going to crawl around the ground in a gown again?” he asked.
She slid him a vexed look. “Have you a better suggestion?”
“You tell me.” He gestured to a small pile of clothing stacked on a three-legged wooden stool. “Want to borrow some trousers?”
She stared at him for a long moment, trying to work out his intent. Was this a jest, a farcical situation set up for him to be able to laugh at her? Or had the impossible man somehow seen straight into her soul?
His blank expression gave no clue.
“Y-yes,” she said hesitantly. She would very much like to borrow some trousers.
He motioned to a folding screen in the corner of the shop, likely guarding a chamber pot. “I’ll wait for you by the curricle.”
With that, he lifted the tea tray and disappeared back through the rear door.
Felicity made her way toward the borrowed clothes and lifted them to her nose. Freshly laundered. Smartly folded. This had been done with just as much care to detail as the tea tray had been. The items even looked like they might fit.
Delighted, she hurried behind the folding screen, hoping to be out of her dress and into the trousers long before Langford returned.
Most days, fancy gowns felt like Felicity’s battle armor. Patched trousers and a smudge of oil on her sleeve made her feel like there was no war to fight. Like she was precisely where and how she was supposed to be.
These trousers were a bit wide in the waist and snug in the hips. The white linen shirt was far too loose and the brown jersey tunic a little too long.
She hadn’t worn clothes this comfortable in years.
A creak and the sound of a door latching back in place indicated Langford had returned to the smithy.
Suddenly shy and nervous, she forced herself to step out from behind the folding screen.
Langford did not rake a disdainful gaze up and down her mannishly clad frame or smirk at a subpar attempt to blend in. He simply raised his brows with polite interest.
“Better?”
“I feel like myself again,” she confessed.
A satisfied smile reached the corners of his eyes.
“Giles Langford.” He held out his hand. “Giles to my friends.”
She placed her hand in his and gave a firm shake. “Lord… Felicity.”
He burst out laughing. “Little Lord Felicity, is it? I’ll remember that.”
“I actually do answer to ‘Felix,’” she confessed. And tohe. Andhim. Masquerading as a little brother had been the key to her survival. Learning how to be a lady had begun with learning how to be female again. And learning what to do with stays… like the ones she’d left discarded behind the folding screen. The back of her neck heated. “But plain Felicity will do.”
