I sighed, looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds, and mentally apologized to all my girly bits for getting them worked up over nothing. “Next time I won’t let there be any interruptions,” I promised them, and with a muttered oath grabbed my nightgown, Alden’s shirt, and my slippers, and donned them all while making my way downstairs to the kitchen.
“Ah. There you are. I was looking for you.” Lady Sybilla emerged from a door once I’d made it downstairs, causing me to jump and clutch Alden’s shirt, which I’d put on over my nightie. She eyed me with a critical look. “That garment is inappropriate.”
“Yes, I know it is, I’m sorry, but—”
“You will get chilblains in the library dressed like that,” she continued, just as if I hadn’t spoken. Waving an imperious hand, she added, “Adams! Bring me the coat Sir James bought in Saint Petersburg.”
The equally ancient old woman who I suspected was more of a friend than an actual servant to Lady Sybilla sucked her teeth at me, then disappeared into the gloom of their shared sitting room.
“That’s really sweet of you, but it’s not necessary,” I explained, trying to do up the buttons on Alden’s shirt. “I just threw this on when Vandal said the kitchen was on fire. If you don’t mind—”
“Here it is, your ladyship.” Adams’s voice came from beneath a mountain of fur the size and approximate texture of an Irish wolfhound. The fur was projected toward me, and with Lady Sybilla watching me, disapproval dripping off every wrinkle, I took the horrible coat.
“You would be unable to do your work if you were to take ill. Put it on, gel.”
I sighed to myself and, with a disgusted wrinkle of my nose, slid into the beastly thing. It smelled of long-dead animal (what was it? badger? plagued wolf? yeti?), mothballs, and something vaguely skunky, and I swore to myself as I tottered under the weight of it that I was going to ditch it as soon as I was out of sight.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t until I reached the kitchen door. With a little wave down the long hall to Lady Sybilla and Adams, silently watching me, I pushed open the kitchen door and entered what I figured would be a room full of smoke.
It wasn’t. But that was only because the pantry door had been closed, so only a bit of smoke had leaked out.
“Is the fire... ack.” I stopped to hack and wheeze. Although the small window a good six feet up the wall had been opened, the room was still hazy with smoke. I coughed a couple of times, and asked hoarsely, “Is the fire out?”
“Yes. We’re just checking the wall to see if the fire reached it.” A shirtless Alden, his chest glistening with sweat, and black with soot, pulled out a bin of what looked like potatoes, and stacked it with a collection of assorted kitchen paraphernalia. He knelt and felt the wall. On the other side of the pantry, Fenice, clad in what I thought of as Renaissance Faire wear of black leggings, ankle boots, and some sort of leather jerkin, was one-handedly trying to toss foam-laden items into a large black trash bin.
“Here, let me do that,” I said, hurrying forward. “Your shoulder must be hurting like hell if you were trying to put out the fire on your own.”
“It wasn’t that bad, and I had an extinguisher,” she said, nodding to where a home fire extinguisher sat in a stack of blackened cardboard and charred wood. “It was just the flour bin, although how that caught on fire is beyond my understanding.”
“It’s the house,” Alden said, sliding his hands along the wall. “It hates me, and would rather self-destruct than have me repair it.”
“Heh.” Fenice shoved a soot-stained wad of wet paper towels into the trash can. “Still, I wouldn’t mind if you—goddess above and below! What are you wearing?”
“I think it’s part of a Russian wolf,” I said, struggling out of the monstrous coat.
Alden glanced over to me, his expression turning to one of horror. “That looks like a dead musk ox. Where did you get it?”
“It’s not mine, if that’s what’s worrying you. I don’t do fur. Lady Sybilla forced it upon me because she was under the impression I was dashing off to work in the library clad in nothing but my nightgown and yourshirt.” I dragged the coat over to the wall where pegs held various gray and faded aprons, and hung it on one of them. The peg promptly fell off the wall, taking the coat with it. I pretended I didn’t notice. “What can I do to help?”
An hour later Alden and I dragged ourselves up the stairs to our rooms. I paused at the door of mine. “I think I’ll take a shower, since I’m supposed to start work soon. I’d ask you if you want to join me, but the shower is small, my skin itches like crazy because I think that musk ox had mange, and I never really did get into the idea of sex in a shower. I mean, it’s slippery in there. Someone could fall.”
Alden gave a short bark of laughter, but didn’t meet my gaze, a sure sign he was feeling awkward again. I thought about just letting him cope with that—after all, it really was not my problem to constantly be fixing. But then the memory of what a nice time we’d had before the flour bin caught on fire returned, and I strode over to him, grabbed his head with both hands, and kissed the living daylights out of him.
His mouth was as hot as I remembered, and spicy, due to the package of cinnamon candies that Fenice had offered us (evidently she was addicted to them) while we were cleaning.
“You taste like gingerbread,” I said into his mouth, growling a little when he dug his fingers into my hips and pulled me up tight against his groin.
“Are you sure you don’t want to shower together?” he asked, his eyes changing from shy to passion-filled in an instant. It made me warm just seeing how much he wanted to continue our previous activities. “We could pick up where we left off.”
“Tempting, very tempting, but it is my first day on the job, and I hate to be late because I was having mind-blowing sex. I mean, that’s a pretty good excuse for being late for most things, but Fenice and Vandal already think we’re a couple, and I don’t think we need to reinforce that. Because this is just...” I made a vague gesture.
“Consenting adults indulging themselves?” he said, releasing my hips.
I bit the end of his nose. “Exactly. We’re just scratching a mutual itch. Right?”
“Right,” he said, nodding.
“Tonight, however, is another matter.” I waggled my eyebrows at him. “Assuming you’re up to it.”
