Page 31

No one else seemed to care about the room. Mr. Bowles was reading a book by the light of the window, and Mrs. Bowles had stifled more yawns than Clara could count.

Mr. Cole occasionally glanced in their direction, giving his opinion only when forced, but he looked as if he’d rather be trudging through a winter storm than decorating anything at the moment.

“Honestly, have you no pride, Mr. Cole?” Miss Bowles teased, batting her cow-like lashes up at him as he answered another question from her indifferently. “This will win us the competition, you know.”

“And what, pray tell, shall be our prize if we do win?” he countered, coming up to stand near the ladder where Clara had been standing only a moment before. He moved it back and forth absentmindedly. “An extra helping of pudding?”

“I would think her ladyship would concoct something far more appealing,” Miss Bowles said coyly. “Perhaps some reward for our group? Time alone?”

“Indeed,” he mumbled.

He walked away to avoid Miss Bowles’s ever-encroaching body and walked past Clara in the process with a muted comment. “Then I shall attempt even harder to lose the competition, if that is my reward.”

Clara bit her lip to stop her smile.

Something had come over the gentleman that afternoon. Before, he’d flirted his heart out with Miss Bowles. Now, he very clearly could not stand the sight of her. But why? What had changed in him?

She wasn’t prideful enough to think it was herself.

“What do you think of this, Mr. Cole?” Miss Bowles continued, pointing out the various ways the bough could be placed about the room—some trimming the bannister of the balcony, others draped across the small tables, even more adorning the backs of chairs.

“I think I haven’t the eye for finery, I’m afraid,” he replied simply.

“Nonsense.” She rested a hand on his arm, which he promptly removed by walking to straighten a bough of hawthorn that didn’t need straightening. “What of last night?” she asked.

“What of it?”

“Your cravat,” Miss Bowles said. “The stain you made upon it with the white soup. I’m still convinced you imagined it. Anyway, if you haven’t the eye for finery, how could you have been so concerned with a single white spot on your white cravat?”

Mr. Cole’s eyes flashed to Clara’s, but she swiftly averted her gaze.

Her arms were burning once again as she held up the bough Miss Bowles had instructed her to do a few minutes before, so she lowered them with a stifled sigh.

She was far too busy to be wasting her time doing this. Not only did she have this room to dust and freshen up—along with countless others—but she and Harriet still had to clean out the hearth for the Yule Log that evening.

“It is not the same cravat today, is it?” Miss Bowles asked, coming up to stand right in front of Mr. Cole. She pressed a finger rather brazenly down his cravat, and his brows knit together.

Clara felt like she might be sick all over the library’s carpet. She really didn’t want to have to clean that up, too, however, so she swallowed it back.

Nothing like being forced to endure observing another’s flirtations.

An unexpected deliverer came in the form of Mr. Bowles clearing his throat from across the room, and Miss Bowles seemed to have her sense knocked back into her.

Still, she smiled, smoothed down Mr. Cole’s cravat, then walked away. “At any rate, if it is the same cravat, it looks spotless to me,” she said with a little smile.

Mr. Cole visibly relaxed the moment she moved out of his space. “It is not the same. But do you know what is strange? After it was returned from the laundry, a new spot had formed in place of the old one—and this one far more visible. Isn’t that remarkable?”

Clara’s cheeks warmed. She turned away with a smile on her lips, though the tips of her ears still burned as she listened.

“You no doubt have an incompetent maid to blame for that,” Miss Bowles said pointedly. “It really is a wonder her ladyship allows it to occur.” She turned back to Clara with a scowl. “No, no, you must hold it higher. Honestly.”

Clara took to holding the bough high above her head again near the shelving.

“To the left,” Miss Bowles directed.

Clara moved to the right.

“Are you daft? The left.”