She got two steps from the door and made an impatient little sigh, flapping her hands as she turned back to him. “No, do move! Move!”
And he did, scrambling to his feet as she rushed out into the halls.
She caught herself on the banister, looking down at Errol and Ruby, fully dressed and in conversation below her, and shouted down to them, waving her arm. “What time is it?! I overslept!”
“Good,” said Ruby, raking her eyes over Hattie’s disheveled form.
“You’ve an hour yet,” Errol told her, much more kindly, which was all she needed to hear.
She spun and flung herself back into the rooms with the announcement, finding Elias bent over a basin, mouth full of tooth powder.
“Oh, my hair! There’s no time,” she muttered, hands in claws as she stalked to the wardrobe and flung it open. “The dress!Elias, do you know how to lace a corset? Goodness, but we need a staff!”
He mumbled something in reply, which she took as assent.
“They’ll go ahead of us, now that they know we’re running late,” she muttered, pulling his new suit free and tossing it on the bed next to her gown. “I can braid my hair. Braid it into a crown. That will do. Yes, that will do.”
“Hattie,” he said, trying to soothe her, his hand outstretched.
“No!” she squeaked, ducking under it to address the basin herself. “Get dressed!”
He sighed, looking suspiciously amused by it all, and nodded.
She scrubbed her mouth out, unable to fully rid herself of the flavor of sweet tardy panic, and splashed her face three times in an effort to erase any sign at all of extra sleep. Close to the mirror, she made a point of blinking her eyes as wide as they’d go in a semblance of alertness, though she was not entirely convinced by the reflection.
And it was no fault of hers at all that the mirror caught the reflection of Elias Selwyn removing his dressing gown.
She froze, unable to move or even think for a moment as the mirror framed him from his hips to his throat, the full expanse of his broad, sculpted chest revealed to her as the velvet was peeled away. There was more of that lovely, coiling black hair, so glossy and soft across his heart and trailing down to… to…
Hattie coughed, shaking her head, and reared back from the mirror.
She could hear him rustling about with fabric but could not turn. Could not look. Her face was ablaze with it.
She looked down at her own body in the red dressing gown and decided to move as well. To focus on the task at hand.
A clean chemise emerged from the chest of drawers and she shook it out hastily before sliding the satin belt free of its knot and letting it fall away from her shoulders.
She turned her head slightly to the side as she pulled the chemise on, aware that the rustling on his side of the room had stopped. Aware and curious.
Was he watching too?
She couldn’t taste the panic anymore, strangely.
She tasted something else entirely. Smoke and salt, she thought, as the soft muslin tumbled down around her thighs.
She shook her hair out, pulling the few remaining pins from her night of sleep out and tossing them next to the basin. And she glanced in the mirror again.
This time, she could see his face. His chest was still bare, a loose pair of trousers pulled up over his hips, still open at the waist.
Hewaswatching. With what appeared to be great interest.
She shivered, her body erupting in gooseflesh as her eyes slid down the exposed planes of his body again, rendered in reflection.
They were late. They couldn’t.
They shouldn’t.
She dragged her eyes up once more to his and felt herself falter at the heat she found there. And still, she might have maintained course, if he had not moved. Had not walked around the corner of the bed and very deliberately taken a seat on the edge.
