She didn’t even make it all the way to her feet before she lost her balance. Harry dropped the clothing and reached for her, sure she was about to pitch right into the fireplace. It was a mistake. The minute his hands touched that silky skin, he was flooded with the shock of pure lust, the kind that only haunted the darkest of nights. He shook with the effort to control himself. He inhaled the almost exotic scent of open air and spring and…was that cinnamon? Although how she could smell like Christmas cookies, he couldn’t figure.
She was perfect, crafted for sensuality, with lush curves and tiny ankles, and the most delicious breasts he’d ever seen, full and high and crowned with soft pink nipples. And she was, God help him, a natural blonde. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off that nest of curling hair that made him itch to take her. Throw her to the floor, right there on the cold tile and the scratchy horse blanket, and bury himself so deep in her that he would never find his way back out.
He was panting, sweating with the effort to keep hold of his perilous control. He swore he could smell the arousal rise in her, a faint musk that incited images of conquest. Now, he thought, looking into eyes so wide and dark he thought he could fall right into them. Here.
He saw it in his head: tangled limbs and encroaching shadows, and the shock of satisfaction in those great, dark eyes. He heard it: harsh breathing and escalating moans as he pleasured her with urgent hands and a rock-hard cock. Deeper. Deeper. Harder, until she screamed, she screamed, there in his arms, on the floor, on the cold stone floor before the flicker of an unnecessary fire.
He had no recollection of pulling her to him, didn’t remember taking hold of her hair to pull her head back to give him access to her. He didn’t even know how her mouth opened beneath his, but it did. He kissed her, hard, deep, ravaging her mouth as thoroughly as he would her body. He felt the flush of her aroused skin against him, those full, firm breasts swelling against his chest, her belly welcoming against his rampant cock. He rubbed against her; he imprisoned her in iron arms; he sated himself on the taste of honey and cinnamon in her mouth. He cupped her bottom in his big hands, dragged her closer against him, and he thought of holding her down, of tying her down, of forcing her down, so he could take his fill of her. So he could control her, keep her, quiet any protest from her.
Except she didn’t protest. She wrapped herself as tightly around him as he did her. She whimpered, but the sound was one of need, not fear. She opened and accepted him, met his tongue with her own to tangle in a dance of pure erotic pleasure. And it wouldn’t have stopped until they were both naked and sated if Harry hadn’t, at the last moment, heard the gasp of distress from the doorway.
He didn’t know how he did it, but he yanked himself away. Gasping as if he’d been running, he pushed her toward his cook, who was standing there with a look on her face he hadn’t seen since he’d been caught in the barn with one of the local girls when he was fifteen.
“I brought some clothes,” he rasped, turning away. “Get her into them.”
And then he stalked out the door into the teeth of the storm.
Sorcha’s legs couldn’t hold her up. With a whimper of distress, she simply folded back down onto the floor.
What had happened? How had she come to feel this disordered? She’d been sitting there on the floor, curled up in that torture of a blanket, trying to collect warmth from the fire, when she’d heard him behind her. It hadn’t occurred to her that he would react so. After all, naked wasn’t a state a fairy was unfamiliar with. It was natural so, a way to better enjoy the delights of Mother Earth, every inch open to the breeze and the sun and the mist of the morning. Mortals didn’t seem to see it the same way.
Mortified, Sorcha curled back into herself.
“I’m reet sorry I left, child,” the cook said behind her. “But who’d know the master would think to…to…”
Sorcha didn’t lift her head from where it rested on her bent knees. “That isn’t the way mortals usually greet each other, then?”
The cook seemed to have nothing in her but a sputter.
It wasn’t the feel of him against her that troubled Sorcha. She was a creature crafted for pleasure. It was one of the dearest joys of her world to join in physical delight. It was a sacred ritual, wedded to the praise of the seasons and the joy of rebirth. And she had discovered joy in his arms, indescribable and unmatchable, something she’d never known, not even on the highest holy day when the fires burned on the hills and the fairy folk danced for the new year. But she’d seen something in his head that wasn’t right.
Not joy. Not comfort. Fury. Aggression. Self-loathing. She couldn’t tell exactly; evidently that gift was muted in this other world. Back in her land, she would have seen every image, heard every thought. Here she just got impressions. And those impressions frightened her. They’d frightened him.
“Coom now, child, get dressed,” the large woman urged, pulling Sorcha to her feet. “You’ll catch your death of cold if you don’t.”
Sorcha managed a smile, even as she considered what she’d seen and heard in the man’s heart. “Ah, don’t be after worryin’ yourself. Fairies never fall ill. At least not in the way of mortals. We only pine if caught too long away from our home.”
As she would surely pine if she couldn’t find the Dearann Stone and get it back to her mother.
“Well, you’ll not be pining away in my kitchen. Get thee dressed now.”
Sorcha considered the pile of material the woman had picked up from the floor and shook her head. “I do thank you, Mrs. Thompson. But I’d like my own clothing back, please. That’s my attire. Picked on my naming day.”
“And not made for a Yorkshire November. Besides, it’s still wet. Now, here. Wear this at least till yours dries.”
Again the woman proffered the pile of clothing, and Sorcha couldn’t think how to refuse. It seemed so important to her.
“Ah, it’s the denim, then, is it?” she asked, reaching out to take the folded pants. “I recognize it, so. Didn’t my sister’s consort wear it when he visited? He’s mortal, too, a great handsome one altogether, and was fierce attached to the things.”
The cook helped her step into pants and then raised her arms to settle a soft concoction of lamb’s wool over Sorcha’s chest. “Now, then, get those shoes on,” she said, rolling pants and sleeves up at least three times each to fit Sorcha’s smaller frame.
Sorcha took a moment to acclimate to the clothing mortals wore, so heavy she couldn’t feel the air around her. But warm. Warmer than the fire. Almost as warm as the man’s embrace.
No. No, she couldn’t say that in all truth. Nothing could match the scorching heat of his mouth on hers.
“I thank you,” she said to the woman as she stared at the shoes. They seemed hard and unyielding, and that wasn’t a feeling fairies could tolerate. “But no. I can’t separate myself more from the mother.”
The woman just stood there with the shoes in her hands, making that funny little “Eeee” sound in her throat. “What about socks?” she finally asked, and held up little foot snoods of brightly colored cloth: red and blue and green.
Sorcha smiled. “Aye, I think those might be nice.”
She’d no sooner gotten them onto her feet and noticed how much warmer the stone floors were through them than the man returned. His hair was wet, as if he’d dunked it in a trough, and his posture was rigid. She heard the loathing in his mind again, the hot frustration, and she wondered at it.
“My grandmother would like to meet you,” he said without preamble.
“Eeeee,” the woman said again, sounding doleful.
Sorcha looked at them both and realized that they still didn’t believe her. She probably shouldn’t be surprised. After all, it wouldn’t be a test if it weren’t to be difficult. “Sure, I’d be that happy to see her. Can you be after tellin’ me her name?”
He looked chagrined at that. “It seems introductions haven’t been made, have they?”
“Now, that’s not true at all,” Sorcha said. “I’m known to Mrs. Thompson here, aren’t I?”
Mrs. Thompson looked even more dour than he did at the information.
“I am Harold Wyatt, Earl of Hartley,” he said with a stiff little bow. “My grandmother is Beatrice, Lady Waverly. And you?”
“Ah, so it’s the titles we’re sharing, is it?” She tilted her head, well acquainted with court etiquette. “I am the Princess Sorcha, Daughter of Mab, Queen of the Tuatha de Dannan.”
“Well, this just gets better and better, doesn’t it?” Mrs. Thompson said with a sly grin.
“I’ll handle it,” Harold Wyatt snapped. “Now, if you don’t mind, it’s getting late and Gran isn’t the most patient woman on earth.” He held out a hand toward the doorway. “Shall we?”
Sorcha slid the fairy purse into her pocket, but they didn’t see her. Then she turned to follow.
“Should I trust you?” Mrs. Thompson demanded, evidently of Harold Wyatt, hands back on her hips.
He gave her a glare that should have melted the woman’s hair. “Thank you for your concern, Tommie. We’ll be fine.”
“It might not have impressed itself on you at the time,” she answered, “but the girl has a fairly lethal-looking knife strapped to her leg.”
Harold Wyatt shot Sorcha a sharp look.
“It’s for use against the Dubhlainn Sidhe,” she said. She was about to reassure him that that kept him safe, as well, but found herself hesitating. Didn’t the Dubhlainn Sidhe specialize in fury, terror and aggression? Could that be the fairy blood that flowed in Harold Wyatt? And what if it was? What should she do?
For now, all she could do was follow as he led the way up a set of narrow stairs. Not that she’d ever climbed any before. They were such a mortal invention. Fairies simply flew, if they needed height. But there would be no flying in this place. She could feel the weight of disbelief weigh her down. Not to mention the closed-in space. Sure, it took her breath. Or was that the power of the man who climbed ahead of her?
“I’d appreciate it if you don’t encourage my grandmother,” he was saying, his voice echoing oddly up the way.
“Encourage her how?” Sorcha asked, reaching out to run her hand along the wood rail, the only familiar surface she’d met in this cold stone place.
“She wants to think that this is all real. She’s spent her life listening to it, after all. Her husband spent all his life trying to prove it, and then his son and daughter-in-law after him. I can’t force her to face reality—it would be too cruel. But for God’s sake, don’t go telling her about fairy places and fairy spells and crap like that. She’s a proud old woman, and I won’t have you making fun of her.”
Sorcha stopped between one step and the next. “I don’t understand. What would I be makin’ fun of?”
Harold Wyatt whipped around on her, and there was such a heat in his eyes. “The idea that her grandfather was a fairy prince. She believes it, so it’s what she told the movie people, and they’ve created a whole damned industry from it. Well, he wasn’t. He was probably a gypsy or an Irish horse trader who bamboozled a vulnerable heiress. But that just isn’t as good a story, is it?”
A fairy prince. Sorcha could barely keep silent. Could she be right? A Dubhlainn Sidhe prince could easily have made off with the Dearann Stone. And there had been no strange disappearances from the Tuatha in the last few centuries. Was that where this Harold Wyatt had inherited his darkness?
“And where is this grandsire of yours, who thought himself royalty?” she asked.
He looked a bit taken aback. “Good Lord, he’s been gone for at least sixty, seventy years.”
Sorcha slumped a bit. Ah, it would have been too easy, any other way. It would have been nice, though, to simply confront the man who claimed to be a fairy and ask if he knew where the Stone might be. She wanted to be home, so. She wanted spring to come again. She didn’t want to spend the rest of eternity in this bleak gray-brown world being tormented by this tormented man.
“And you think this is what I should say to her?” Sorcha asked. “That her grandfather was a liar?”
He shoved an agitated hand through his hair. “No. God, no. Just don’t tell her you’re the Princess Sorcha.”
“Then I should be the one to lie?”
His glare was uncomfortable when he turned it on a person. But such pain there was in it, he probably didn’t even know. Sorcha so wanted to lift a hand to that rough cheek in comfort. “Yes,” he said, his voice taut and furious. “If you think you’re lying, I don’t care. Say hello, tell her how nice it is to meet her and then leave. I won’t allow anything more. Do you understand?”
Sorcha tilted her head, as if that could help her comprehend him better. “What have they done to so hurt you so, maneen?”
He stiffened as if shot. “Hurt me? Nobody’s hurt me.”
“Ah, but I think they have. Your heart is in turmoil, and I think it gives you no rest. Is it such a fearsome thing to think fairies live?”
“It’s foolish.”
Except his voice said more. It said dangerous. Frightening. Heartbreaking.
Sorcha shook her head. “Then it’s sorry I am, Harold Wyatt, Earl of Hartley, for you’ll never know the peace I think your grandmother does with just that bit of belief.”
For a long moment he couldn’t seem to answer. He just stood there on the step above her, his hands out as if to brace himself with the walls, a tower of anger. Sorcha knew, though, that he would not hurt her. He only wanted to hurt himself.
“Don’t. Encourage. Her,” he grated out, and turned back up the stairs.
And Sorcha could do nothing but follow.
Sure, she didn’t know what she’d expected of this grandmother of his, but it wasn’t the woman who greeted her when Harold threw open the door onto an ornate, overstuffed, over-hot room. She was a wee bright thing, an apple doll in silk and tweed, with a face like a bean tighe and a spirit like fire, and she sat like a queen in the center of her realm. Sorcha was smiling before they were ever introduced. She wanted nothing more than to curl up at this grandmother’s tiny feet and rest.
The dog on the old woman’s lap would have none of it. It started to bark the minute Sorcha crossed the threshold.
“Mab!” the old woman snapped.
Sorcha whirled around. “Where?”
“What?” the lady demanded.
The door was empty of queens of any kind. Sorcha let her heart rate settle.
“Gran’s dog,” Harold Wyatt said with a curious curl to his lip. “Her name is Queen Mab.”
Sorcha was startled into a laugh. She turned back to peer with delight at the little ball of excitable fur. “Ah, I wouldn’t be tellin’ herself that, if you don’t mind. I’m not sure she’d think it was quite an honor.”
“Herself?” the woman asked, her voice too big for her little body.
Sorcha couldn’t help but smile. “The queen.”
“Well, girl,” the old woman said, tapping a gnarled hand on the arm of her chair. “What do you have to say for yourself?” Unaccountably, that was when Sorcha really took note of the chair the old woman sat in. Intricately carved, it rose a good six feet behind that little gray head, a great throne for this little ruler.
“Ah, Goddess, can it be?” was all Sorcha could think to say, breathless with wonder at the deep, dark gleam of wood. “Could I touch it, do you think?”
“Touch it?” the woman asked. “Good heavens, whatever for?”
Sorcha couldn’t wait for permission. She stepped forward to run her hand up the side of the chair that had been carved in the most ancient celtic designs: mythological beasts wrapping endlessly onto themselves and surrounded by knotwork.
“And who wouldn’t want to honor the spirit of black bog oak?” she breathed, tracing the living lines of ancient races. “A magic, rare wood it is that carries the record of generations in it. The very memory of my people.” She closed her eyes for a moment, as the recollection of all those centuries washed through her fingers along with the spirit of him who had raised it and decorated it. She opened her eyes, tears crowding her throat. “Oh, a great heart must have crafted this.”
Harold Wyatt almost came at her. But Sorcha didn’t attend to him. She’d put tears in the old woman’s eyes and it wasn’t what she’d meant to do.
“Oh, please, Gran,” she begged, hand out. “I’m sorry.”
“Her name isn’t gran,” Harold Wyatt barked.
His grandmother waved him off. “Oh, Harry, don’t be such a stick. I like her calling me gran. And you must call Harry by his name, too. Understand?”
Sorcha smiled. “Harry? Ah, a much more friendly name altogether, isn’t it?”
The little woman laughed like a clap of thunder. “And Harry needs all the friendliness he can get, girl. That’s the truth.”
Sorcha nodded, not exactly sure what the problem was to begin with. “You’ll accept my apology, then, Gran?”
“Apology?” the little woman barked, straightening to an impossible rigidity. “For what? For telling me my Nicholas had the hands of a genius? That the gift he gave me for my wedding day is beautiful? Well, it is. And there’s nothing wrong with your saying it. Now, sit down, child, and tell me your name.”
“It’s Sorcha,” Harry said, easing a bit closer.
“I didn’t ask you, Harry,” Gran snapped, then pointed Sorcha to one of the spindly-legged chairs that had been placed across from her. “Sit down, Sorcha. You look demmed silly in those socks.”
Sorcha obeyed and perched herself on the chair before lifting her feet for consideration of the bright, happy colors that encased her toes. “Sure, we have nothing like this where I live,” she said, wiggling her toes.
“And where is that?” Gran asked.
Sorcha’s head snapped up. She caught Harry Wyatt’s glare out of the corner of her eye and ignored it. Instead, she let her focus return to her feet.
“Not…nearby,” she said with a smile she hoped disarmed as she rubbed at the odd blue material of her pants. “It’s terribly sorry I am that I’ve intruded on your privacy.”
“You’re Irish,” the woman said, as if it were an accusation.
Sorcha actually smiled. “After a fashion, so I am.”
“Well, good. That accent’s a breath of fresh air around here.”
Sorcha wanted so badly to ask, Where? Where is here?
It was as if the old woman had heard her. “This is Yorkshire,” she said. “England.”
Sorcha’s spirit deflated a little. Ah. England, where the faerie had suffered so from disbelief that they’d all but vanished. No wonder her mother had warned her.
“Do you like it here?” the old woman asked. “In this house?”
Sorcha opened her mouth and tried to lie. Oh, yes. It’s grand. All stone and…stone. The truth of it was, the place was beginning to suffocate her again. She felt hot, restless with the loss of the earth beneath her feet. Even the glorious aura of the chair didn’t soothe her. “I’m not used to something so big, sure. It’s fierce large, isn’t it?”
“The stone walls bother you?”
Goddess, was that a knowing light in those old blue eyes? Sorcha felt worse by increments. “Ah, well, they…” But she couldn’t think of a good lie.
The old woman laughed, an oddly young sound. “Oh, I know my grandson told you to humor me. Don’t worry. All I wanted to do was see the color of your eyes.”
Sorcha couldn’t look away from her.
Harry’s grandmother nodded her head, her face seeming to glow. “They’re green, aren’t they? Like spring grass in sunlight. I had a feeling they would be.”
Sorcha looked over at Harry, but he was watching his grandmother as if she’d suddenly hissed and spat.
“Your eyes are blue,” Sorcha softly said to the old woman.
She got another bright, winsome smile. “I know. I inherited none of the blood, it seems. Except for my way with horses. Like Harry and his cousin. But Harry has the eyes, doesn’t he?”
He did. Fairy eyes.
The old woman believed her. The old woman who might just be as pixilated as a mooncalf. Sorcha’s heart sped up. She was still feeling disoriented, suddenly cold in this furnace of a room, even as something dripped down her back, but she tried her best to pay attention to what Harry’s grandmother was saying.
“My Nicholas and I were first cousins, you know.” Gnarled hands stroked the fanciful wolf’s head that bared its teeth from the end of her chair arm. “The families intermarried like the Romanovs. Harry’s parents were second cousins or some such. But grandfather sired the lot of us, so the bloodlines are strong.”
“Gran,” Harry Wyatt protested, coming to his feet.
“It’s my story,” the old woman informed him without looking away from Sorcha. “I assume you’ve not seen the movie?”
“Ah, no. I’m afraid not.”
The old woman nodded, as if expecting that. “No matter. His name was Cathal. That’s all we know. He took my grandmother’s name, since she was a hereditary baroness. Nothing unusual there, if you’re marrying up.”
“Except he wasn’t,” Sorcha said. “Cathal is a royal name.”
The old woman had a smile like a sprite. “A prince of the blood, she told me. After he died, of course. Couldn’t admit it while he was alive. He would have been a circus freak. But if you knew him, you just…knew. He was…” Her voice drifted off, her attention away, back to earlier days, magical days, Sorcha thought. The old woman’s face grew younger and it was something poetic.
“Gran,” Harry Wyatt said, his voice softer than Sorcha had ever heard it. “Mary’s here. It’s time to rest.”
Another old woman entered the overcrowded, over-hot room, another descendent of magic, Sorcha thought, although she didn’t know what kind. Almost as small as Gran, but with wrinkled skin the color of the bog oak and wisdom in her mien.
“Look at her eyes,” Gran said without looking away from Sorcha.
The other woman bent to pick up the dog named Mab and straightened to smile at Sorcha. “You’re right,” she said to the old woman. “But I knew you would be.”
Ah, there was music in her voice, like wind through trees. Sorcha smiled. She wished she felt better. She would love to quiz the two women before Harry dumped her back outside. She wished…
“It’s settled, then,” Harry’s grandmother announced as Harry pulled a wheeled chair out from behind a screen.
“What’s that, Gran?” he asked, lifting her as easily as a child and turning to settle her into the chair.
It was then that Sorcha saw how wasted and small her legs were, how limp. It made her sad for this vital little woman who must once have walked her realm like a force of nature.
Gran was smiling like a hawk. “She’s staying.”
Harry Wyatt almost dropped her on the floor. “No, Gran. She’s not.”
Sorcha should have protested. Should have apologized. But suddenly she couldn’t seem to form words. She was hot again, so hot she thought the mortal clothing would suffocate her. Her head hurt, as if somebody had turned a vise on it.
“Harold George Cormac Augustus Beverly,” Gran snapped. “You would dishonor the legendary hospitality of the Wyatts?”
“And the Waverlys. She doesn’t belong here.”
“And she belongs out in that storm?”
Sorcha was sure she could hear it, roaring around the house and drowning out the voices. Her head itched again. A pressure was building and she couldn’t breathe.
“I’ll drive her to Hartley. She can stay at the Green Man.”
“No, Harry. She won’t.”
“I’ll be fine altogether,” Sorcha protested, thinking how tinny she sounded, how she should fight to stay here, where a fairy prince might have lived. Suddenly she didn’t have the energy. “I’d be grateful for my own clothing, though. It was given to me on my naming day….”
Both of them turned on her, obviously ready to shout at her.
She forestalled them when the pressure became too much. Too much. Ahhhh…
“Chooo!”
Her head exploded. Then the world simply disappeared, and she felt the floor hit her face.
Gwyneth Adderly was a very modern British girl. She didn’t mind when people called her self-made, because she was. She’d made it through school on scholarships, since her parents lived on nothing more then the memories of past glories and prestige. Her great-grandfather had been a viscount and a good friend of the Duke of Windsor. It had been enough for her parents to live on. Not her. She’d parlayed her schooling and drive into an associate partnership at a futures trading firm.
It was what had brought her together with Harry. Both of them had chosen to live in the real world, not the fantasy one inhabited by their elders.
Just like his grandmother, another relic who preferred to live in a highly imaginative past. Gwyneth’s family had gauged themselves by royalty. Harry’s had relied on fairies. It was enough to give a modern girl the hives.
Gwyneth always paid her obeisance to the old girl, though. After all, Harry seemed to dote on her. Today, though, Gwyneth wasn’t feeling quite up to fairy stories and noblesse oblige. She was still shaking from the near miss she’d just had on her way up the drive. She’d been pushing her way through an ugly autumn storm all the way up from London, only to have it get unaccountably worse the minute she’d passed through the gates to Waverly Close. And then, as she’d swept around the long curve by the oak copse, a person had run right out in front of her car. She was sure of it.
She’d seen him quite clearly. Dark eyes, pale, pale hair, lithe and otherworldly, he’d appeared out of nowhere, all but running right under her bumper. Except he hadn’t. He’d leapt out of the way. Straight up. Over her car.
She’d obviously been mistaken about that last part. After all, she’d stopped the car and stepped out, just to make sure, only to see nothing but the empty lawns that swept up to the gray stone of the Close. She checked the car’s bonnet, but it was unmarred. She could almost believe she’d imagined it, except for what she’d seen in his eyes, just for that flashing moment when he’d turned to her. Something compelling. Something frightening. Something that upended her firm pragmatism in ways she couldn’t explain.
The minute she got to the front door, she reported the incident to Sims, the Wyatt butler.
“A…man in the park dressed like…Robin Hood?” he asked, his round, red face a bit slack with the obvious effort of maintaining his poise.
Gwendolyn focused on shaking the water from her umbrella before handing it to him. “Yes. Robin Hood. What part of that confuses you?”
“Why, nothing, miss,” Sims said with a quaint little bow. “I will alert the archers immediately.”
Gwyneth glared at him. “Make fun all you want. But what if the idiot ends up dead in the park and the Earl is blamed?”
“He will, in turn, I’m sure, blame me for allowing such a miscreant to invade his property.”
Gwyneth glared at him. “And so he probably should, you old goat.”
She didn’t wait for more. Instead she turned for the great stairway, trying not to shudder at the dreadful murals that wrapped around the walls and all the way up the stairwell. Fanciful trees, prancing gray horses and flowers in a thousand shades. Oh, she wished she could get her hands on this mess. But it was just another indignity to be suffered in the name of survival. There would be hordes of guests tramping through the state rooms soon, all paying for the privilege of seeing the home of the Fairy Prince. Which meant the murals had to stay.
Not one of them would survive above the ground floor, though. That she vowed. She would not spend the rest of her life surrounded by fairies, even if they were painted. This was a historic site, one that deserved elegance and dignity, and she was damned well going to see that it got both.
“It’s an Adam masterpiece,” she growled out loud as she climbed the steps. “Not Bilbo Baggins’s house.”
“Indeed, madam,” she heard sotto voce from Sims below her. “I fear Mr. Baggins would have been quite lost here.”
“I heard that!”
“Of course you did, ma’am. Haven’t we all commented on the superhuman quality of your hearing?”
She leaned over the railing to fire a challenge back at him, to find him conveniently gone.
Snotty bastard. Just because he’d been born here and was the latest in generations of Waverly dependents, he thought he could say just what he thought. Especially since Harry had put him in charge of the new staff they’d hired to prepare for the masses.
Ah, well, she thought, sliding her hand up the sleek mahogany banister. This was what happened when modern English girls met the price of fantasy.
But that was a matter for later. For now, she needed to get past those bizarre walls on the ground floor and reassure herself with Harry’s blessed pragmatism. She sprinted up the steps, already knowing exactly where she would find him at this time of day. She even prepared the delighted greeting she’d give the old baroness. There was no reason to hurt the old woman with any home truths, like the fact that her family had ruined a once-proud country estate, not to mention an even prouder family name.
But she and Harry were about to change all that. That thought inspired a true smile just as she reached the half-open door to the baroness’s rooms.
“Good God, Harry,” she heard his grandmother bark. “What did you do to the gel?”
Gwyneth pushed open the door to find Harry on the floor in a rather inappropriate embrace with a small blonde woman.
“Yes, Harry,” Gwyneth echoed. “What did you do to the girl?”