She moved towards the chair but then stopped, her heavy woolen dress swinging against her ankles. “Where will you be?”
He gestured to another chair, further back in the dining room. When he saw her concern, he reassured her. “I will bring the chair to the fire.”
She nodded, taking his glass from him as she sat, giving him the opportunity to use both of his hands to move the chair over.
He placed the stiff-backed wooden chair closer to the fire and took his glass from her, taking a hefty swig, nearly emptying it. He looked at her expectantly.
“You’re not saying I should—” she mimed tossing the glass back, as he had done.
“Ja,” he said, his rumpled golden hair somehow adorable and not at all making her want to hate him for being pretty.
“Young ladies shouldn’t,” she protested before feeling very stupid about explaining what proper British ladies did as she sat in a Swiss inn at the foot of the Matterhorn. She was doing the extraordinary. She was full of daring. So with a smile, she tossed back the brandy with a swift motion. The apple liquor burned delightfully down her throat.
He laughed and clapped for her. “Brava!” He finished his glass and then poured another for both of them. “Warms you up for the temperature and for the conversation.”
“I have to warm up for the conversation?” She watched the liquor spill into her glass.
“Maybe my English is not so good after all,” he said.
“I suppose not. I don’t even know your name. We should at least be introduced.” Was she flirting on purpose? There were so many times she’d been accused of flirting that she didn’t even know the meaning of the word anymore. Scandal sheets reported that she flirted if she shook someone’s hand, or laughed at a joke. She flirted when she did what every other young ladydid, but ifBad News Brewerdid it, the action was somehow imbued with extra meaning.
“Do we need names right now?” he asked.
“So I know what to call you? Better than ‘O! You there!’”
“Is it?” he asked, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing them at the ankles.
Justine noticed his thighs. She was not a person who noticed men’s thighs. But his were powerful and as thick as her waist. This was a man who could build you an inn. Her mouth was unexpectedly dry, so she sipped again at her brandy, steadying her breath.
“If I know you, then I must treat you as a guest, and not as a ghost roaming the hotel at night.” He chuckled to himself. “I want to be off-duty, just for these hours.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She had never served anyone, never worked. She was obsequious to exactly no one, and planned on keeping it that way. But to live a life of service, whether a maid in a big home or in a simple Swiss mountain inn, had to take its toll somehow. “Then that’s fine. Or as my American friend might say, ‘O.K.’”
He pulled his chin back and looked at her askance. “What does this mean? The two letters together?”
Justine shrugged, another gesture she wouldn’t have used if they had been properly introduced and not been drinking brandy in front of an open grate of an enormous iron stove where she could discreetly admire his very pretty thighs, the open vee of his shirt, the way his leather braces clung to his shoulders. “No clue. But she says it all the time. I believe she means it as something like ‘yes,’ but not as formal or certain of a yes.”
The man pursed his lips as he looked into the fire, considering the new Americanism. “Interesting. I will try it. Maybe it is a useful thing. Yes, but with a circumstance.”
“Exactly. ‘Yes, but I have opinions.’”
“O.K.” He tried it out.
She grinned. “O.K.”
He clinked his tiny glass to hers, and the crystal rang out in the dining room, a clear sound that seemed loud enough to raise the dead. “O.K.”
“Cheers,” Justine said, and dashed back the second mouthful.
“Good,” he said approving of her intake. “More?”
Justine eyed her glass. There wasn’t much in a single pour, but she was already sensing the delightfully warm tingle in her toes, and it probably wasn’t the fire making her feel that way. “I really shouldn’t.”
“Bah,” he said, bringing the bottle over to pour her another. “My ghost, please, another.”
“I’m the ghost?” Justine said, holding her glass out. “You’re the one who should be the ghost. You speak the language and all that. I only came down from my room, innocent as can be.”
“Innocent? We are drinking the good apple brandy. Mein Onkel will be upset if he thinks a ghost drank the whole bottle.”
