“Perhaps you should use the kitchen downstairs in the back room until you start to show a profit.”
“I am rethinking this,” she said, giving him a start. After all, she’d signed a contract. “We should have soft cushioned chairs in here so ladies will stay longer, drink more chocolate, and eat more confectionery.”
He smiled at the image of her customers growing larger as they lingered in the dining area eating sweets. But it was no joking matter that she was focusing on the details of decoration and not the great expense of putting in a sink and an oven.
“With your current revenue from the shop, will you be able to do everything you wish to do up here?”
She was staring toward the front windows, lost in thought, and he could admire everything about her in silence for a long moment. At last, she turned.
“Wool gathering,” she said with an apologetic tone. “I was imagining those three-tiered serving dishes, not silver but porcelain, with our confectionery and some biscuits on all three plates. I wonder if we ought to hire a pastry chef, apâtissierif I am to be specific, to make proper desserts or if Mother will think that strays too far from our primary purpose. Would people expect to buy the pastries in the shop downstairs the way they do our confectionery after they eat them up here?”
He thought she was asking a rhetorical question as happened often in the courtroom, but by her attentive expression, he realized she was awaiting his response.
“I suppose you could offer in your dining area more than what you sell downstairs. If I am in a restaurant or café, I never expect to be able to buy anything on the menu to take home with me.”
“That’s true. So our shop could remain as it is below, with perhaps another sales counter up here.”
She turned around and went through the arched opening. “I think the stairs from below will come out somewhere about there.” She gestured to the right-hand wall, then she clapped her hands. “It is so exciting.” In the next instant, she looked practically distraught.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, taking a step closer.
“To think, not one of my family even knows about this yet. Only you.” She glanced at him. “I know it’s not your place to say,” she hesitated, “but you don’t think I’ve made a mistake, do you?”
His heart sank.God, he hoped not!
“I think you have a good head upon your shoulders, and if you think your shop has the necessary funds to expand, then it probably has.”
Probably.He took another step toward her. She ought to back up. She didn’t, so he veered away to pace the length of the room and come to a stop where she’d indicted the stairs would be.
“It’s a very good idea to have a staircase put in, not simply for the ease of your customers in the shop below, but also in case of fire.”
“Yes, I hadn’t thought of that.” This time, she seemed to be drawing nearer. Irrationally, Charles flattened himself against the wall.
“What on earth are you doing, my lord?” she asked, a small smile on her face.
“Doing? Why, nothing?”
“You look as though you’re in some distress,” she said. By the glimmer in her eye, she was doing it on purpose. He relaxed.
“You know as well as I do we shouldnotbe up here alone.”
She nodded. “But we are.”
“Then we should keep a few feet apart,” he suggested.
This statement was met with her laughter, bubbling and contagious. He laughed, too, although he wasn’t sure why.
After a moment, he asked her that exact question. “Why are we laughing?”
“Because I find it ridiculous that adults cannot be trusted. I know if we were discovered, it wouldlookbad. I understand about appearances. Yet to suggest we need to stand apart when no one is watching as if you truly think you might be overcome and pounce upon me,” she began, then shook her head, dislodging a soft brown tendril that he itched to tuck behind her ear.
“It’s not foryourprotection alone,” Charles pointed out.
Her beautiful eyes widened as did her smile. “Oh I see! You are concerned I might be unable to help myself.” She moved even closer. “I might be so overcome by your extraordinary magnetism that I cannot be held responsible for pressing myself against you.”
And she did precisely that, brushing her shapely frame against him, while he gritted his teeth.
For pity’s sake!
