His For Christmas (19 page)

Authors: Fiona Shin

BOOK: His For Christmas

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Better than being mistaken for an idiot.

She continued to stand there, wringing her hands. “I…”

The smell of the rose soap emanating from her freshly scrubbed and glowing skin and the smell of the stew with the buttered bread was driving him mad! What in bloody hell was it going to take for her to leave him in sweet, blessed peace? “Well, don’t just stand there, woman! What do you
want
?”

She flinched and Elliot wanted to bash his face on the desk. Not that it would hurt much; there was too much paper strewn about.

“I’m sorry,” she said, voice clear, but he caught the trembling note at the end of her syllables and felt even worse, if that was even possible. “I know this is not the most ideal situation for anyone here.”

Not the most ideal situation? What an understatement.

She seemed to be waiting for a reply, so he grunted and managed to fake a piercing interest in an exchange of property between two farmers outside of town. Dull reading, to say the best, but she needn’t know that.

“I…” she started and then shook her head, her cheeks coloring in a most fetching way. “Never mind. I’m sorry to have disrupted you in your duties, Mr. Whitley.”

“Elliot,” he growled. “Just Elliot.”

Her answer was adamant. “I could never. You are Mr. Whitley to me.”

And when she closed the door behind her and he heard her receding footsteps, he didn’t know why the bloody hell it disturbed him so much, the fact she refused to call him by his first name.

***

After that positively disastrous meeting with Mr. Elliot Whitley, Ivy made sure to be seen as little as possible by the man with a face of an angel and the temperament of an enraged bear.

Not that she blamed him.

After all, he hadn’t asked for her. Hadn’t asked for any of this.

But if that was so, why had he been so kind to her on the first day?

He had truly seemed like an angel in disguise and Ivy couldn’t count her blessings enough.

Now, every time his gaze fell upon her, his dark brows furrowed down and his sinfully beautiful lips curved downward as if the very sight of her made him feel ill.

She discussed this a week later with Mrs. Chang as they shelled peas in front of the small grate in the kitchen. “He hates me, doesn’t he?”

The housekeeper shot her a curious glance. “That’s a passing strange thing to say. Especially the way you two have been acting since you arrived.”

“But he wasn’t always unkind to me,” Ivy pointed out. “When I woke up…I…”

She blushed and ducked her head to hide it.

But Mrs. Chang was too observant. “I imagine you look quite different now.”

Now, feeling cleaner and somehow lighter than she ever had, Ivy managed a smile, although it did not come easily to her. “Does he truly begrudge my intrusion?”

“Don’t call it that.” The older woman tilted her head to one side. “I’m getting older. I’ve told Mr. Whitley; he would do well to hire someone to help me from time to time, but he just doesn’t want to. If we put out an ad, we’d have a line of women stretching from the front door all the way to the edge of town.”

As though that were a surprise. For all of his bluster and dark demeanor, Elliot Whitley was a very handsome man. And relatively well-to-do, if one were to surmise from the growing pile of documents on his desk. “Was he ever sweet on anyone?”

Mrs. Chang plunged her hands back into the large bowl of peas. “That’s certainly not for me to say. I don’t hold much with gossiping.”

“But you do it all the time!”

She laughed softly under her breath. “Very well. But I don’t care to gossip about my employer. He’s a fine man and it’s a shame none of the girls can see past his face.”

Secretly, Ivy thought it was a shame for Mr. Whitley as well. If only he shed his peaceful, neutral facade and let them see the gruff interior that laid within, he wouldn’t have to worry about beating the women off with a veritable stick.

“Will you go to the gathering tonight?”

Ivy shook her head. When she was at the general store the day before, she saw a gaggle of women approximately her age and older, talking and laughing about the so--called dance and gathering at the assembly hall. None of them gave her any notice beyond the cursory one that unmarried women are apt to give to those they deem to be rivals. No one recognized her as the homeless waif lurking in alleyways, and she had been relieved.

“Well, why ever not?” asked Mrs. Chang with an incredulous look. “Look at you! The menfolk will be tripping over each other’s feet to offer for your hand.”

A comforting thought, that. The thought that she could find a way to get out of Elliot Whitley’s hair.

“And when they find out I am the homeless woman who slept in doorways and begged for scraps?” she asked quietly. “How many would still want me?”

Mrs. Chang was still. “Do you think they would care?”

“Wouldn’t they?”

The sound of the fire crackling in the grate reigned supreme for a while as Mrs. Chang regarded her with calm, infinitely deep eyes. “Is it like that, then? You won’t even give them a chance?”

Ivy clenched her hands so tightly, her knuckles went white. “There is no chance to be had. I have nowhere to go. When I left home, I had everything I needed in two carpetbags.”

“What happened to them?” The housekeeper commenced shelling peas, the sound of the pods nearly inaudible over the crackling fire.

The memory was enough to make her cringe. “I was an idiot. My maid decided to come with me. We had grand illusions about settling in California and carving out a kingdom.”

Mrs. Chang hooted in derision. “Is that so? Where is this maid, now?”

Ivy stared down at the thick scar on her wrist, a wound caused by broken glass when she fled from a pair of drunken men who wanted…her. “I don’t know. When I came back with the tickets, she was gone. With our belongings.”

The housekeeper clucked her tongue. “Don’t you worry, girl. She’ll have what’s coming to her. The Lord does move in strange ways, mark my words.”

The very idea Adeline could…heavens, they had grown up together! “I had no idea she could be so mercenary. She could’ve been my sister.”

“Aye, well, it’s always the ones who are closest that hurt us the most.”

Mrs. Chang stood up then, dusting her hands, the bowl of peas safely placed on the scarred, wooden counter. “Well, now that’s done, don’t you think there’s enough time to turn a beautiful girl into a beautiful woman?”

The idea of willingly walking in the midst of the people who had once looked at her with scorn and disgust was enough to make her sway on her feet. “No, please, that’s entirely unnecessary.”

All those people staring at her, gawking as though they could not believe their eyes.

This was something she had grown used to in New York.

But there she was used to the beauty, the elegance she had inherited from her mother.

But here…here…they would see only the dirty, homeless, stealing waif.

Mrs. Chang’s dark brown eyes widened and she held out her hands, almost as if to catch her. “My dear, what’s wrong? You look like you’re going to be ill.”

And this time, Ivy could not keep the tears from spilling forth. She hadn’t cried in the past few weeks, too weak and tired of weeping. She was ashamed to do it in front of a woman who had taken her in, treated her better than anyone else since her parents passed away.

“I am sorry,” she whispered, mouth clamped shut on the sobs that were sure to abrupt. “I am so very sorry, Mrs. Chang. But I would like it very much if I didn’t go.”

The housekeeper brushed the tears off Ivy’s face with a rough palm. “Hush now. Do stop crying. If I knew it would disturb you this much, I wouldn’t have even thought of asking. Do forgive me. It was thoughtless. Of course, you wouldn’t want to go.”

Ivy choked on her embarrassed laughter. “No, there is nothing to forgive. How could you have known? Just the thought of being surrounded by people who spat at me, giving me looks of disgust every time they walked past me…”

If Bertrand were here, he would’ve laughed himself into his grave. Once the toast of Seneca gentry, now reduced to asking for handouts and sleeping outside.

Mrs. Chang sat back down heavily, the breath leaving her in one whoosh. “Well, if you aren’t going, perhaps you can help with some knitting?”

Knitting over dancing.

Standing indoors in front of a warm fire with someone who seemed to enjoy her company over standing in a somewhat drafty building surrounded by people who would stone her as soon as they found out the truth of her existence.

It really wasn’t hard.

Ivy pulled out the wooden basket of yarn and began to knit.

It was, after all, the very least she could do.

Chapter Four

They
were
alone.