He abruptly released her, taking a step back, as if he’d been scalded. “I didn’t—” His face was stricken. “Did I hurt you?”
She straightened her sleeve. “Not at all. But I don’t care to be manhandled. And I won’t tolerate anyone taking liberties with Bertie. You should have told me you intended for him to meet the other dogs. I’d have been there to help. You can’t just—”
“He’s fine. He’s…happy.”
Clara stared up at Mr. Cross. A creeping feeling of confusion dulled her outrage.
Was something wrong with him?
She hadn’t noticed it in the stable. She’d been too focused on Bertie. But now that she thought of it, she realized Mr. Cross had faltered over his words there as well, his sentences short and riddled with uncomfortably long pauses.
Was it a speech impediment of some sort? A newly banished stutter? Or was it something more insidious?
Mr. Cross turned a dull red about the collar. “He’s fine,” he said again, his voice gone gruff. “That’s…that’s all.”
Guilt twisted in Clara’s bosom. Good lord, she’d hurt his feelings. Embarrassed him. And he didn’t deserve it. Not from her. She was a guest here. A stranger.
As he turned to go, she laid a hand on his sleeve. He stopped immediately, as if her touch had turned him to stone. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to scold you.”
Mr. Cross’s eyes met hers.
“You must understand,” she said. “Bertie is my first dog. All I have, really. And I’m terribly afraid that I won’t be able to care for him properly. To protect him. I’m in no position to—”
“It’s all right.”
“It isn’t. You’ve been nothing but kind since I stormed into the stable this morning and interrupted your work. A demanding lady with a pampered pug. It exceeds caricature.”
“You weren’t…” His jaw tightened. “You’re not.”
“That’s very kind of you to say, but I know I can be demanding at times. The trouble is, I never realize it until afterward. An unfortunate failing, to be sure.” She dropped her hand from his arm. “Is Bertie truly all right? The other dogs didn’t bully him, did they?”
A shadow of a smile edged Mr. Cross’s mouth. So faint, she might have imagined it. “Come,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
Miss Hartwright followed Neville into the hall, shutting her bedroom door behind her.
He slowed to accommodate her pace. “Paul and Jonesy liked him. They didn’t bite or growl.”
“Well, that’s something.” She folded her arms at her waist. “And what did Bertie think of them?”
“He didn’t notice them.”
She huffed a short laugh. “I can well believe that. He doesn’t seem to notice much of anything these days.”
He guided her not to the main staircase, but down a narrow corridor in the opposite direction. It opened onto a set of curving stone steps.
The servants’ stairs.
Miss Hartwright gave him a questioning look.
He shrugged. “It’s easier.”
Easier for him, anyway. It saved him from running into anyone. From having to talk. The servants he passed along the way rarely engaged him. Unlike the Abbey’s guests, they hadn’t any time for conversation.
Miss Hartwright didn’t seem to be interested in conversation either.
At least she was no longer upset about her dog.
It hadn’t occurred to him that he was being high-handed by introducing Paul and Jonesy to Bertie. He’d been trying to be helpful. To do her a service. The idea that he’d put any animal in danger was so far from the truth as to be laughable. But how was Miss Hartwright to know that? She was a newly arrived stranger. A lady who didn’t know him at all.
He went down the narrow steps ahead of her with an ease born of familiarity. When she didn’t follow, he looked back, brows raised in question.
She was poised at the top of the stairs, her skirts clutched in her left hand, revealing a glimpse of sturdy leather half boots—and a rather trim pair of ankles. “If you wouldn’t mind?” She extended her right hand to him.
He hesitated for what seemed an interminable length of time. And then he took her hand, engulfing it carefully in his. He was grateful the staircase wasn’t properly lit. Had it been, she’d have no doubt marked the heat that rose in his neck and face. He felt it everywhere, that peculiar warmth, as if he were a furnace that had been stoked with a sudden shovelful of glowing coals.
It was unsettlingly intimate. Bare skin to bare skin. But Miss Hartwright didn’t appear to notice it at all.
“I don’t know how a lady is meant to navigate such stairs in the present fashion,” she said. “My skirts are as wide as the steps.”
An image of the Abbey’s housemaids in their smart dark dresses and white aprons formed in Neville’s mind. Miss Hartwright was equally smart and starched. Neat as a pin, in fact, in a long-sleeved gray dress with a form-fitting bodice and a set of delicate buttons that marched from her impossibly small waist all the way to her collar.
But unlike the dresses worn by the maidservants, Miss Hartwright’s skirts were full, standing wide over layers of petticoats and crinoline.
“The housemaids don’t…” Neville faltered. “They…” He tried and failed to get the words out. It was impossible when his thoughts kept drifting to the sensation of Miss Hartwright’s slim hand clasped so snugly in his.
“Their skirts aren’t quite like mine? I daresay they aren’t. It wouldn’t be very practical.”
“N-no.”
She stepped down after him, clutching tight to his hand.
It was two flights before they reached the kitchen. A line of evenly spaced gas wall sconces lit the way into a cavernous room with a stone floor and a long wooden table and chairs. A footman was seated there, absorbed in polishing the Abbey’s collection of silver. Nearby, Cook stood in front of a steaming pot on the stove, talking loudly to one of the kitchen maids.
At the opposite end of the room, a fire roared in the hearth. Bertie was asleep in front of it, along with Paul and Jonesy.
Miss Hartwright dropped Neville’s hand as she crossed the floor to her dog. Her steps were brisk and purposeful. Though small, she wasn’t weak or timid, he didn’t think. Not in the normal course of things. And if she required assistance—as she had on the stairs—she seemed to have no qualms about asking for it.
Neville flexed his fingers. He could still feel the delicate curve of her hand cradled in his. The sweet, uneasy warmth of it. As if she’d branded herself on his skin, leaving an indelible mark.