He turned a slow circle in the center of a parlor that was so blue, it appeared to be submerged underwater. Blue walls, blue furnishings, blue rugs. Every known shade. He’d been held in the underwater room for more than a half an hour. His coat and gloves and hat had not been taken. Tea had not been offered. Unless he was mistaken, he’d been shown inside by agardener.
Up and down the main corridor, doors opened and closed, but no one looked in. A scrum of four or five small dogs, little more than scuttling puffs of fur, roamed in and out en masse, alternately sniffing at his boots or barking.
I should have brought my sword, he thought, leaning against the indigo wall. Another dog admitted himself into the room and tapped over to him on sharp, tiny claws. Man and dog studied one another.
“By definition,” Cassin recited to the dog, “golden opportunities feel rare and different.” The dog barked once.
His own Barbadoes venture was nothing if not rare and different. He could allow for some strangeness in order to be granted the same.
“And the villagers didn’t blanch when I asked for W. J. Hunnicut,” Cassin continued to the dog. “Perfectly happy to give directions. No one batted an eye.”
This wasn’t entirely true. The villagers in nearby Pixham had known the surname Hunnicut, but they seemed oddly clueless about the illustrious “W. J.” It had been the first of a growing list of inconsistencies. But the house to which he’d been directed was grand and the grounds expansive. Inside, the art on the walls was valuable, the furnishings fine. The gardener had shown appropriate deference when Cassin presented his card and introduced himself as earl. All of it amounted to precisely what the advertisement had claimed: Here lived an investor with so much money he was looking for new and diverse ways to spend it. If Cassin’s reception had been odd, he had turned up unannounced. With no letter of introduction. He’d caught the old man off guard.
Then again, I am a bloody earl,Cassin thought. And an earl called with no forewarning.
“Begging your pardon, my lord,” said a cheerful voice from the doorway. Cassin turned.
It was the gardener, extending his hand to the corridor. “Sorry to keep you waiting, my lord. Right this way, if you please. And allow me to take your coat and hat.”
Cassin hesitated two beats, exchanged glances with the dog, and followed the man out of the room.
CHAPTERTHREE
The surprise arrival of the unidentified man allowed Willow precious little time to prepare. What would she say? In what tone? Would she sit behind the desk while he sat across, like an applicant? Should they both sit in front of the desk? Should she take down notes? These were left unconsidered as she sprinted from her workshop to the kitchen door. She bolted up the servants’ stairs and around the corner into the library, scrambling behind the desk and running her fingers through her loose hair. She was still winded when she heard Mr. Fisk’s voice in the corridor.
There was a mumbled thank-you, scuffling, a small trio of barks, and then, time stopped.
The next moments played out in Willow’s mind with a strange mix of sharp clarity and prolonged slowness, almost as if the earth had stopped spinning, and for a time, life unfolded with a glacial, almost backward, progress. Only her heartbeat raced.
The man was tall—taller than Mr. Fisk, taller even than Willow’s brother, Phillip, a rarity indeed. His hair was light brown, streaked with blond by the sun. He wasn’t smiling, but his mouth was broad. His nose was substantial—a man’s nose, not terrible. Not terrible at all.
She blinked, struggling to keep her face neutral. How silly it had been to worry about where everyone would sit. The struggle now was simply not to stare.
His expression was calm, cautious but not self-conscious. He scanned the library, taking in the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the windows that overlooked the garden, the giant book of animal husbandry opened on a stand. His profile was strong, with a hard jaw, eyelashes thick enough to be seen from across the room, hair that just touched his cravat. His coat was a fine, claret-colored wool that stretched over broad shoulders. On his lapel, he wore a small ivory ribboned pin, arranged like the whorl of flower petals. Willow stared at it, her designer’s eye captivated by any flourish that introduced dimension or personality.
When finally he looked to the desk and then to her, he froze. Willow felt her breath catch. His eyes were a strange pale green, the color of worn copper, weathered with age. Tingles prickled down the back of her neck.
Far too late, Willow remembered her own appearance. She wore a simple blue day dress, one of many she favored on days spent in her workshop. Her hands were bare. She’d managed to smooth back her thick, unruly mass of auburn hair, but without the scarf, it hung unbound down her back. She looked to Mr. Fisk, hoping for some signal. Too wild? Inappropriate? Ridiculous? The seasoned servant stared benignly down the corridor.
Willow looked back to the man. It occurred to her suddenly, uselessly, that he looked almost exactly like every daydream she had never allowed herself to spin, the hero of fairy tales that happened to other girls. To girls who would grow up and marry and have children and become the loving matriarch of large families of their own. Girls who were not her. The pinpricks on her neck dulled and began to slide, one by one, into a burning pile in the pit of her stomach.
Willow pulled her gaze away. Blank parchment was stacked on the edge of the desk, and she slid a piece before her and took up the pen.
“Good afternoon,” she managed. A rhetorical greeting. Perhaps he would not answer. She was not prepared to hear the sound of his voice.
Mr. Fisk stepped forward then, whistling to shoo her mother’s dogs into the corridor. “May I present Lady Wilhelmina Hunnicut,” he said.
Willow looked at the servant, looked at his extended arm, looked at his tweed gardening jacket. Of course they had not rehearsed this moment; they had not even discussed the possibility of a moment remotely resembling this.
Willow bit her lip and struggled to compose the next reasonable thing to say. He had not replied to hergood afternoon.He had done little more than stare.
She was just about to say “How do you do?” when Perry, her lady’s maid, bolted into the room. Four dogs returned in a wave at her feet.
“Begging your pardon, my lady,” the maid said. Perry had nervous habit of tugging at her cap, her apron, and the frazzled curls at the base of her neck. “Mr. Abbott said I was wanted in the library.” She waved her hands in front of her face as if the room was filled with smoke. “I was just in the middle of washing your stockings, and I said—”
“Thank you, Perry,” said Willow. “You may take a seat near the door, behind Mr. Fisk.”
Perry made a surprised little gasp. Rarely, if ever, was Perry invited to take a seat.
