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 encouraged further. “Follow me inside and let us talk in the parlor.”
She sensed hesitation in him, and she released his arm, dismayed at her breach in conduct right out in the open.
Only when she gave him space did he stand, but he followed her as she led him to the front stoop.
“I’m not usually so prone to clumsiness,” she lied, wondering at her innate need to explain her ineptitude to this stark and monumental stranger. “I’ve misplaced my spectacles somewhere in the glasshouse, you see, and I had an extra pair, but they were…” A wave of nerves gathered on the horizon, threatening to tumble over her, and she firmly forged on before it could wash her away. “Well, that story is rather why I’m in need of you.”
“You need me to… help you find your spectacles?” He sounded genuinely baffled, and Felicity worried that he might be a little daft. His measured speech could connote a lack of cognition rather than an abundance of it.
“Tell me, are you here in answer to my advertisements in the paper, or did one of your colleagues I contacted refer you to me?”
“The paper…” His answer almost sounded like a question.
But at least he was literate.
Felicity climbed the eight steps to her grand door and pulled the bell that would summon her staff. “Did you bring references?” she queried, glancing back at him.
He lingered on the walk, one foot cautiously landing on the bottom stair. His hand gripped one of the points of the wrought iron gate, and she wondered if he could simply snap it in twain.
It was odd to have him looking up at her.
His hand went to his pocket. “I— do not have references on me.”
Something in his voice tugged at her heart. Beneath his almost absurd profusion of brawn. Beneath the innate malice that seemed to roll from his shoulders in palpable waves. Even beneath the shards of gravel and glass in his sonorous voice.
Lingered a note she couldn’t define.
It echoed from someplace so abysmal she might have imagined it. But to her, it felt like his every word— innocuous as they’d been— was laced with lament.
With fathomless desolation.
She had the strangest notion that this was quite possibly the loneliest creature she’d ever met.
Felicity had always been aware of what a ridiculous human she was. And yet, she stood in front of a dangerous man, awash with the same feeling she suffered when Balthazar, her ancient Labrador, silently begged for scraps of her supper.
“Do not let that distress you,” she rushed to appease him. “I’m forever forgetting or misplacing things. We can still have our interview and you can give me your papers at a later time.”
The door swung open and rather than her butler, it was young Billings, the coal boy, who blinked up at her. “What happened to you, miss? Are you all right?”
“Oh nothing, I’ve been in the garden and the rear entrance was locked.” She swept inside and reached behind her to untie her apron and hand it to the lad. “Will you please summon Mrs. Winterton to chaperone my first interview of the day?”
“Mrs. Winterton inn’t here, miss,” the lad informed her. “She left a note saying she ‘ad to take an early train north to see to her bruva… or was it her uncle?”
“Oh, dear. I hope it’s not serious.”
“Dunno, miss. Do you want me to summon Mrs. Pickering?”
Felicity looked over her shoulder to find the man had not followed her up the stairs. “Don’t bother Mrs. Pickering from her breakfast, but when she’s finished, she might join us in my personal parlor where I’ll be making inquiries regarding qualifications for the position.”
“Yes, miss.” The boy scampered off, trailing the long ribbons of her apron in his wake.
She turned to the man who’d not moved from his spot. “If you might forgive the impropriety of the two of us spending a moment alone together, we could begin our conversation,” she suggested. “My housekeeper will join us directly.”
“Men like me have very little use for propriety.”
The way he said that sent little shivers skittering along her skin. For some inexplicable reason, she hoped Mrs. Pickering didn’t hurry her breakfast. Indeed, she found herself very much liking the idea of being alone with this man.
Which made absolutely no sense.
Felicity was possibly the most skittish woman of her acquaintance, especially in the company of men. And this one, this mountain of masculinity, was possibly the most imposing fellow she’d seen since… well, in at least a year.