THE PLAN
“What can I get you to drink, Miss Dupree?” Fitzgibbons asked after Battle led me to a seat, I sank down into it, and Fitzgibbons had retrieved my bag and returned it to me.
“Please call me Vivienne, or Viv, or Vivi,” I invited.
He smiled. “What can I get you to drink, Miss Vivienne?”
I guessed that would have to work.
“Amaretto sour, if you have it?”
“We have everything,” he murmured and stepped away.
When he did, I took the opportunity to look around the room.
Unlike the blue salon (but a lot like the warm woods, leather furniture and bookcases filled with books of the study), this parlor eschewed any creamy creams or light colors and was done in tones of plum. It was also the smallest room I’d been in, it trended toward the vintage side of the modern/antique aesthetic the rest of the place had going on, and it had a lot of seating.
Primarily, two Regency armchairs (four in all, a coupling at each end) upholstered in a mulberry shade flanking two Duncan Phyfe sofas upholstered in raisin were arranged around an oblong, cherrywood coffee table.
Battle had deposited me in a chair.
Prudence and Chastity took a sofa.
Temperance sat dead center of the other sofa.
Which meant, when Battle returned from working with Fitzgibbons at the drinks cabinet, he gave me my beverage and sat in the chair beside me.
He could have forced himself next to Temperance, it wouldn’t have been tough, there was plenty of room, or he could have settled in one of the two chairs opposite me. They weren’t that far away.
But nooooooo.
He sat beside me.
Maybe it was because Bartholomew had settled on his belly between our two seats.
But I didn’t think so.
“I’ll go ask Cook how dinner is progressing,” Fitzgibbons said while exiting the room.
“Thank you, Fitzy,” Temperance called after him.
Prudence clapped her hands, and everyone looked to her.
But she was looking at me. “Did you two sort everything?”
“It’s all good,” I assured her.
“Told you Battie would be a pushover when it came down to it,” Prudence replied.
I wouldn’t call him a pushover, but I didn’t share that.
I said, “Your dress is freaking amazing.”
When I finished uttering those words, her whole body froze, not to mention, the air in the room went static, though I felt some pretty extreme heat flowing from Battle toward me.
But…
Oh my God.
