The builder!Charles wished he’d helped her find one and hoped she had hired a reputable man. She’d said the other night he was related to Edward. That was reassuring, since the boy had a good work ethic.
Holding his arms out in front of him, he let Charlotte pile tins on his forearms before he realized the absurdity of such a precarious way to move them.
“Don’t you own any sacks or boxes?”
She paused. “I suppose that would be safer. If these hit the ground, they will dent. I can’t sell dented tins even if the contents are perfect.” She dashed away, leaving him frozen in place.
After a moment, he called out, “How are you faring, Miss Rare-Foure?”
“Call me Charlotte when we’re alone, Charles!”
Her teasing voice made him smile. Most everything about her made him feel like smiling. Somehow, she had avoided his proposal while making him feel good about their future — because she said she believed he could give her what she wanted.
His arms were starting to ache.What did she want?
She hadn’t let him reach the part of his speech when he told her he had come to care for her. He sighed.Carewas too tepid a word for the emotions she raised in him anyway.Should he have declared he loved her?Doing so seemed premature, and he hadn’t wanted to scare her off.
Who escorted someone out a few times and then announced they’d fallen in love?No one in their right mind! Only a mad man. And Charlotte wouldn’t want a mad man. With her upbringing, so solidly middle class, she would want a slow, steady blossoming relationship, and a normal man who said, “Over the past few months, I’ve fallen in love with you.”
Otherwise, he would be like one of those crazy poets, Keats or Shelley. Or like Oscar Wilde. Any of those folks who adhered to the pursuit of beauty over goodness, although Charlotte was both.Did she want one of those wild men?Like the artists Rossetti and Morris, who wrote about self-expression being more important than moral expectations, who rebelled against the restrictions of conformity and vowed their allegiance to the cult of beauty and art for art’s sake.
All of that was opposite to the pedantic life of a barrister, which was steeped in rules and laws and practical application. Especially a barrister who was also a viscount, and some might say astuffyviscount.
Finally, she reappeared.
“Sorry for the delay. Edward had folded all the delivery bags and put them away in a new place. Now I know how my mother feels when I rearrange the shelves after she’s had them a certain way for a decade.”
Placing sacks on the floor, she started to unload his arms of their cargo. When she’d put the last tin into the bags, he flexed his arms and groaned, catching her glance. Now she thought him a weakling.
“They weren’t heavy,” he explained, “just an awkward position to hold.”
“Of course. And you were right,” she said. “We have plenty of sacks to hold all these tins, and they can stay in them in the corner upstairs. They’ll remain clean and undamaged.”
“How will your mother feel about something far greater than rearranging confectionery on a shelf?” he asked her.
Her face grew serious, but she took a breath and picked up two sacks. “Unwieldy but light, as you said. Let’s take them up, shall we?” she said and turned toward the door.
When they were walking up the stairs, she added, “I believe my mother will think I’ve made the best choices for our business in her absence.”
He heard her mutter under her breath, “I hope so.”
“And you are closing the shop while the staircase is built?”
“It seemed the prudent thing,” she said. “What if a customer was hit by a piece of lumber or got sawdust in her toffee?”
“Will this in any way endanger your ability to pay your rent?” He hated to pry but it seemed an important thing to have considered.
They stepped inside the abandoned space. “I hope not. The deliveries will continue, and as long as we have that steady money, we should be fine. It’s only for a few days after all.”
They set the sacks down at the back, as far from where the builder would cut a hole in the floor as possible.
“Furnishing these rooms will also be expensive,” he pointed out.
“I’ve already started. I was telling Edward, but it was like talking to a bowl of almonds. I found the perfect table and ordered six of them. They’re in the Aesthetic mode everyone is going on about these days. At first, I was going to make the upstairs look like the downstairs, but then, when you think about all the wondrous things we can do with color and peacocks — you know how everyone is mad for peacocks! — as long as we use the sapphire blue my mother likes as an accent color.”
Dear God!Shewaspart of the wild art movement.How would he, a mundane man, ever satisfy her if she was thinking of Edward Burne-Jones and Albert Moore?She would indeed respond to grandiose declarations of passion and fanciful promises of undying love. She might expect her beau to threaten to jump off a cliff onto sharp rocks if she withdrew her favor or imagine he might set sail alone to fight in foreign wars like Byron. Charles didn’t even like going to a strange club and not getting his favorite type of brandy.
“Peacocks,” he repeated, “painted on the walls?”
