facts she’d previously missed.
Walls were not broad and warm and covered in wool. They didn’t smell of cedar chips and expensive tobacco.
And they certainly didn’t have thick hair that gleamed like onyx glass.
With a horrified squeak, Felicity retreated several more paces as the impossibly wide man turned to face her.
He moved deliberately, she noticed, like a mountain or an ancient oak, as if taking care where he arranged his uncommon bulk in a world full of small and fragile things.
Normally, Felicity would be frozen on the spot, her mouth open like a demented fish as she searched her blank thoughts for something, anything to say to a stranger in these awkward and embarrassing circumstances. She’d be wishing the tiny grave between them was big enough for her to disappear into.
Perhaps forever.
She’d berate herself for her blindness, her clumsiness, and her inarticulate nature.
But something about the way the man stood in front of her, mute and quite unnaturally still, gave her the time to cobble a sentence together.
It seemed he, too, was frozen in place, stymied into silence by her inelegance.
“Oh, do forgive me for startling you, sir!” Though she’d put distance between them, she reached her hand toward him in a timeless gesture of mea culpa. “I wasn’t minding my step. Did I soil your coat? Did I cause you any harm?”
She squinted over at him— or, rather, up at him— and yearned for her spectacles.
Because of the extremity of her nearsightedness, she had to stand indecently close to people to make out their features without optical assistance.
She’d have given anything for them now.
As it was, she could make out no more than an impression of the man rather than an exact vision of him. He was all darkness and brawn, like a storm cloud of strength even in the rare brilliance of this morning. She found it difficult to distinguish between the sharp black of his suit and coat and that of his hair, which meant he kept it longer than was fashionable.
His eyes were deep— too deep to ascertain color at this distance— his mouth charmingly crooked, his neck and jaw wide.
Felicity wanted to step closer, to truly take the measure of him. But to do so, of course, to a man to whom she’d not been introduced, would be the height of impropriety.
And people on this street watched her family for any misstep.
Especially since the myriad of scandals recently heaped upon their good name.
Upon the “Goode name,” as it were.
“It is I who should beg your pardon.” His reply rumbled in fathomless echoes over the stones with a depth she’d rarely before encountered. His accent was measured and cultured and only a little… off? Like he’d spent some time elsewhere besides London, and it’d imbued his speech with the barest exotic tinge she couldn’t quite place. “I shouldn’t have been lurking in your archway.”
“Not at all,” she rushed to soothe him. “I ran into you. I was trying to save my—” She gestured to the ruined aloe. “Well, it’s not important. A lost cause, that. I’m spared aggravation and failure by this collision. I really should be thanking you.”
He assessed her for a moment longer than was appropriate.
Felicity couldn’t read thoughts from his blurred features, but an air of expectancy hovered in the silence. As if he waited for her to say something in particular.
She wished she knew what.
Then it struck her, and she put her hand to her forehead in self-reproach. Of course, he was the first of her plethora of meetings today.
“You’re early, I think.” She winced. “Or am I truly so late?” Her hand unconsciously reached for the timepiece on her bodice above her breast. Not finding it, she smoothed her palm down the line of her body. “My watch was somewhere— I swear I attached it to my apron when I— Oh drat! Have I lost it as well?”
He distracted her with a strangled sound, something between a cough and a groan. Instead of replying, he sank to his haunches and reached as if to gather up the shards of clay pottery at his feet. “I’ll clear this and take my leave—”
“On no, please do not bother.” She rushed forward and took his arm, tugging at it with both hands, gently urging him to stand.
It didn’t escape her notice that she couldn’t span the thickness of his arm with both hands. Nor that the muscles hardened to granite at her touch.
He didn’t look up at her.
“This is easily swept into the bins,” she