square in the chest. “Oi! Titus! Make yourself decent; you’re offending the ladies!”
“He really isn’t,” Amanda said huskily.
Turning, the kindly Mr. Fick bowed as Nora was the last to step down from the carriage. “Miss Goode, Miss Goode, Miss Pettifer, welcome back.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fick, it’s lovely to see you!” Prudence greeted with all her usual cheer.
Nora couldn’t bring herself to speak, gaping as she was in slack-jawed amazement.
That was Titus Conleith?
He touched the shirt as little as possible as he held it away from his mud-covered skin. Shifting restlessly, his features arranged themselves into an uncomfortable frown that lanced Nora through with mortification.
“Pardon me, ladies. Mr. Fick, I’ll test the piping to see if the water pressure is returned.” His voice was deep and graveled, the register low enough that Nora had to strain to hear it. He barely gave them a curt nod, opened the door, and escaped into the long greenhouse.
“Let’s go and surprise Mama and the Pater,” Prudence crowed, peeling her hat away from the onyx curls that matched Nora’s own. “Then I’ll show Amanda to her room and hopefully supper will be ready soon. I’m positively faint with hunger. Are you coming, Nora?”
“In a moment,” she replied, barely noticing the girls’ giggling retreat.
Between the rows and shelves of vegetables, herbs, spices, and flowers tended by Mrs. Fick’s magical green thumb, she could catch glimpses of Titus through the panes of glass as he drifted deeper into the greenhouse.
“Watch your pretty shoes, there, miss.” Mr. Fick motioned to the puddle nearly large enough to be a pond. “We installed irrigation pipes into the greenhouse last week, and already one of them sprung a leak. Titus’s been at fixing it all day. Knowing you, you’ll be wanting to greet the horses before the people,” he said affectionately. “I think old Cleo is back there waiting for you.”
That drew a genuine smile from her. She did, indeed, prefer horses to people in almost all cases. “Yes, thank you.”
He blinked over at the greenhouse, then cast the retreating girls a look of veiled disapproval before taking himself off toward the servants’ entrance.
Nora waited for him to disappear inside before skirting the puddle, lifting the hem of her powder blue gown, and hopping onto the landing of the greenhouse to slip inside.
Moist air fragrant with loamy soil and herbs suffused Nora’s lungs. She breathed it in, longing for the country. The sound of running water drew her past strawberries and asparagus, basil, rosemary, coriander, thyme, even a tomato vine struggling to find the sun.
Toward the rear of the structure, fresh flowers bared themselves shamelessly, overgrowing the pathway and impeding her view. Nora had to lift a few fern fronds to duck beneath them.
She found Titus surrounded by a bevy of hanging plants, bent over a drain as he scrubbed the dirt from his hair and back with the pump Mrs. Fick used to water her plants.
“Leak is patched, I’m sure of it, Mr. Fick,” he said, shaking his hair like a dog. “Whoever installed that pipe must have been drunk or blind.” He dropped the hose to the drain and ran his hands over his face, swiping water and grit away from his eyes. “Will you hand over my shirt?”
Even after his many years in the city, he had not lost those lovely long vowels of Yorkshire.
Nora retrieved his nearly white shirt from where it splayed over a bush that had been clipped ruthlessly short, and held it over to him. She had the odd desire to keep it captive, or do something ridiculous, like hold it to her nose and test the scent. “Here you are.”
He didn’t straighten so much as jump, his wet hair releasing a little arc of spray that barely missed her. It was the color of dark sand after the lap of a wave had been called out to sea, and it hung to his eyes in spiked gathers that dripped onto his skin.
The effect made his symmetrical features more powerful, somehow, causing the bones to etch dramatic angles that she knew would become even more stark and compelling when he was an older man.
He slicked his hair back with frantic motions before running his hand over his eyes and face once more, as if clearing the water from them would dissolve her from his sight.
The movements did things to the muscles of his arms and chest, that transfixed her into a mute sort of appreciation that should have shamed them both. He was cold,