Page 48 of The Subtle Craft of Courting Kate

“Five minutes, Hodges,” Elliot pleaded. “It’s a favor for Kate, after all. You wouldn’t want me to disappoint her, now, would you?”

That frown deepened into a glower as Hodges let a few seconds pass in tense silence. “Five minutes,” Hodges allowed finally with a taciturn edge to his voice as he tugged at the lapel of his dressing gown.

Blessed relief. Elliot felt his chest shudder with it as his breath sighed out. “You’re a good man, Hodges,” he said as he made for the stairs, the bounce in his step taking him up two at a time. “I’ll give you an answer as to the tea on my way out.”

Darkness descended as he reached the upper floor. To the right as he arrived upon the landing, a faint light glowed through an open door somewhere down the hall. The library, he assumed, given that no other room was likely to be occupied at such an hour.

Elliot proceeded down the hallway and poked his head in the open doorway. “Kate?”

No response. The library was not large—perhaps a quarter of the size of the one at Longthorpe Manor. She ought to have heard him. Had she gone off to bed already? No; there was still a lamp lit upon a low table. Surely she would have thought to extinguish it rather than to leave it burning unattended.

“Katie?” he called again as he stepped into the room. A hint of movement to the right drew his eye. There, in the small sitting area arranged in a corner—a cluster of silky sable curls tumbled haphazardly over the arm of an overstuffed chair. There was a low rustle of fabric, as of someone shifting restlessly, and then…a soft snore. Light and rhythmic, hardly more than a hum.

Elliot eased closer, rounding the back of the chair. It had practically swallowed her up within it, but for her bare feet, which dangled above the floor. She had nodded off in the middle of a book, her hands resting upon the pages open before her. Her head lolled to the side, cradled against the back of the chair as a mass of curls tumbled over her shoulder and down over the high arm of the chair.

A single hairpin—which looked as though it had been intended to secure that dangling curl away from her face—instead weighed it down against her cheek, hopelessly tangled in the shining lock it had been meant to constrain. Piled high upon the table beside her were a number of books; the romances she favored. A dozen at least. Surely she’d not thought to get through all of them in a single evening? Or had they simply not met with her approval?

The book open on her lap and half-obscured beneath her hands, however, appeared to be some wretched overblown Gothic horror novel. Curious that the romances had all been discarded. Perhaps something about them had hit a little too close to home to make them comfortable reading on this particular evening.

Her face was softened in sleep, those expressive brows smooth and without even the slightest crinkle set between them. Her chest rose in deep, even breaths, breasts swelling beneath the rich velvet of her dressing gown. Probably this had been amongst the things that Rebecca had taken her to be fitted for—and it had been a good choice. The sumptuous deep blue fabric suited Kate’s complexion, made her skin glow with sunny warmth against it. There was a nightgown beneath it, surely, but the only evidence of it was a tiny scrap of lace near the hem, near her bared ankle.

“Katie,” he said gently as he reached out to disentangle that hairpin from her hair. “You cannot sleep in a chair. You’re going to give yourself an awful crick in your neck.”

She didn’t twitch so much as a muscle in the gentle embrace of sleep. Utterly unbothered, completely unaware of his appearance. That curl, freed of its weight as he tucked the pin into his pocket, sprang up once again to drape over her brow. The book, too, produced not even the slightest movement from her as he tugged it from beneath the press of her hands and closed the cover to set it with the others upon the table.

Five minutes, Hodges had said, and Elliot didn’t doubt that the man would come looking sooner rather than later. The book was burning a hole in his pocket. Of their own accord, his fingers brushed back that dangling curl and tucked it tightly behind her ear. Hell.

“All right, Katie, up you get.” It took effort to wedge his arm behind her, to pry her melting spine away from the back of the chair into which she had sunk. More still to find the bend of her knees past the swathes of soft fabric that encased her. He hadn’t expected her to sleep through the lack of finesse in it, the awkwardness with which he was forced to lift her from the chair.

But she did. Exhausted, probably, from the late nights she’d lately endured. She slept straight through the muffled curse he uttered as he maneuvered from a crouch to a stand—she wasn’t as light as a feather; that was certain. She slept through the tilt as he shifted her to a more comfortable position, through the none-too-gentle fall of her head from his arm to his chest. Through even the ticklish slide of her loosed dark hair halfway across her face.

She snored lightly, her warm breath puffing out against his chin. One arm curled up against her chest; the other left hanging down. Where would Mrs. Norris have put her up? Not the front bed chamber, he decided, with its proximity to the street and the accompanying noise of the city that went along with it. The rear, overlooking the garden, which would be far more palatable to a woman accustomed to the quiet of the countryside. Bright, open, airy, and, conveniently, not too distant from the library.

Three minutes on the outside left. Elliot headed for the door, turning to slide through it so that he didn’t knock Kate’s feet against the door jamb. The rest of the skeleton staff in residence had likely retired for the evening some time ago, but any sudden noise might bring someone down about his head.

The door at the end of the hall had been left ajar, and he nudged it open further with the toe of his boot. Moonlight flowed in from the window, painting the room in silver. And, yes, here were the trappings of Kate’s life, strewn about the room. The discarded gown she had worn earlier in the evening draped over the back of a chair. A book left upon the nightstand. A hairbrush upon the vanity, and a tangle of ribbons beside it.

The bed had been made earlier in the day, bedclothes turned down in advance of her return. He picked a careful path through the obstacles that lined the floor—walking boots left out near the chair; dancing slippers discarded carelessly—and made his way to the side of the bed. Bent at the waist to lay her head upon the pillow, to slide his arm out from beneath her.

At last she stirred, jarred toward consciousness by the touch of her bare feet to the cool covers beneath her. Her lashes fluttered, lifted, dark eyes blinking drowsily in the shadowed room.

“Elliot?” she asked in a sleepy mumble as he drew the covers up around her.

“Shh. You fell asleep in your chair.”

“Oh.” Her arms lifted in a stretch, tense and trembling, and one hand smothered a massive yawn. That tension evaporated with a sigh as she snuggled her cheek into her pillow, lashes lowering again.

One minute left. Elliot dug in his pocket, slipped free the volume he’d brought. “Here,” he said, as he tucked the book beneath her pillow, hidden from sight. “That book you asked for. I brought it for you.”

“Mm,” she said in the dreamy voice of someone once more on the cusp of sleep, a hairsbreadth from tipping right back into it. “Thank you.” She flopped onto her side, sliding one hand beneath the pillow as if in search of the book—and relaxed once more, lost to the world.

Elliot smothered a chuckle behind his hand. There; he’d done what he’d come for. And still his fingers reached out to smooth her tangled hair away from her face. “Sweet dreams, Katie,” he whispered into the soft silence that blanketed the room as he turned to go.

Halfway down the stairs, he crossed paths with Hodges, who slanted him a suspicious glare from beneath the furrow of his grey brows. “Thank you, Hodges. I’ll be round for breakfast,” Elliot said cheerfully as he sauntered by.

Hodges issued a gruff grunt. “And the tea?”

“Not necessary,” Elliot replied as he reached the foyer and headed for the door. “Kate’s gone off to bed.”