“Very well,” Silence murmured. “Let’s see what else we can discover.”
Across from the study was a closed door. Silence gently pushed it open, expecting a little sitting room perhaps.
The room took up the entire south side of the house and was lined with French doors that let in the sun’s rays. A vast carpet covered the floor in muted shades of cream, apricot, and grass green, and scattered here and there were comfortable groupings of plush chairs and polished tables. The walls were lined with honey-colored wood, and everywhere there were books. Big books, small books, books on tables, books laying open as if abandoned by a recent reader. Some were old with crumbling spines, some looked so new they might never have been read, and all were illustrated.
“Down!” Mary said, and Silence absently set her on the floor.
This room was so elegant, and at the same time so comfortable. It was as if Michael had taken his library at the palace and made it something a person might actually want to spend time in.
Days in.
Silence looked around in wonder. By the window was a simple wooden stand with an enormous book opened on it. Silence went to it and looked down. An azure butterfly lay on the page, trembling and delicate, and almost alive. Carefully she turned the page and found an exotic black and white striped butterfly.
This was his butterfly book, she realized. The first book he’d kept. The one that had taught him that there was beauty in the world. She’d found Michael’s treasure, the heart he’d kept hidden.
She looked up and saw that at the top of the walls, where it met the ceiling, the wood had been carved. Butterflies cleverly flew all around the room.
“D’ye like it?”
She spun and was unsurprised to see Michael standing in the doorway, Lad by his side. “I do. It’s… wonderful.”
He smiled and nodded at the windows where Mary stood. “Mary wants to see the garden.”
“There’s a garden?” Somehow the information made her want to smile, as well.
“There is in summer. It’s not much more than bare earth at the moment.”
“Oh, can we see?”
In answer he crossed the room and opened one of the French doors. Outside a paved terrace separated the house from a garden. Low evergreen hedges demarcated earthen beds, most of them barren.
“Look.” Silence crouched over the nearest bed. Someone had planted crocuses and they had spread on their own, like a living carpet, spilling into the lawn. Their delicate purple petals fluttered in the spring breeze.
“Bye!” Mary said. She crouched in mimic next to Silence and pointed one stubby finger at a small, azure butterfly, sitting on a crocus.
The butterfly startled at Mary’s gesture and floated up, drifting on the breeze, its wings sparkling blue and bright in the late afternoon sunshine.
Silence watched it, enthralled, and then her eyes met Michael’s.
A corner of his mouth cocked up. “Welcome home, m’love.”
MICK GAVE A last tug to his neck cloth and scowled at himself in the small mirror over the dresser. His rooms at Windward House weren’t nearly as ostentatious as those in his palace, but he had kept one thing the same: his bed here was just as big as the one in his palace. He glanced around his rooms. It had taken him years to outfit this hidey-hole, this refuge where no one knew him as Charming Mickey O’Connor, and at first he’d felt foreign in this house. After all, he wore different clothes, used a different accent. He was a different man here. But somehow over the years, that different man had become merely another facet of him. Now he felt nearly as comfortable wearing Michael Rivers’s staid clothes as he did Mickey O’Connor’s flamboyant costume.
So if revealing his other identity to Silence wasn’t the reason for his present nerves, what was? He’d supped every meal with Silence over the last week. There was no reason then for this missish skittishness.
He cursed and thrust himself away from the mirror. No reason, and yet here he was delaying by playing with a plain neck cloth—he who usually wore silks and velvet!
Mick strode out of his room and down the hall. Bittner had already announced supper and Cook did hate it when he was late. But that was not what made his pace quicken. It was the thought of seeing Silence again. Mick snorted. Oh, he had it bad! Like a lad with peach down on his cheeks with his very first tart.
Except that if Silence were a tart, he’d be much more sure of what to do with her. No, he’d had to go and fall for a respectable lady. A lady with swirling hazel eyes that hid secrets he wanted to spend the rest of his life exploring.
Mick paused outside the dining room to catch his breath. And now he’d brought her to his secret hidey-hole that only Harry, of all his men, knew about. He was exposing himself, he knew. Ah, well, and he couldn’t even regret doing it. She and the babe needed to be hidden while Harry did Mick’s bidding in London and this was the safest place.
With that thought he opened the door to the dining room.
Silence was already inside, sitting primly on the right hand side of the head of the table. She wore a simple blue and white print gown—one that he’d had sent up to her, for she’d fled her brother-in-law’s house with only the clothes upon her back. It gave him a satisfied feeling to see her in clothes that he’d provided for her and he smiled as he prowled down the length of the room toward her.
She met his gaze steadily though her cheeks stained pink. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d join me, Mr. Rivers.”
He cocked his head. Had he imagined her emphasis on his assumed name? “And leave a lovely lady like yourself alone? I think not.”
“Humph.”
He sat and looked at her. “How is Mary Darling?”
“Fast asleep after playing and having a bath,” she said. “The nursery is lovely.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“Rose and Annie are obviously practiced nursemaids, and what is even better, they seem to like Mary, and she them.”
He grunted. “It would take a hard heart to turn away from my Mary Darling.”
A smile curved the corners of her lips. “You didn’t seem too enamored of her when you first met.”
“She has a forceful personality, as do I. We just took a bit to get to know one another.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “I think your Irish has mysteriously disappeared from your speech, Mr. Rivers.”
No, he’d not imagined the emphasis. He shot her a warning look as Mrs. Bittner entered with a steaming dish.
The housekeeper bustled around the table serving roasted chicken, boiled vegetables, jellies, and fruit. A little maid trailed behind her, acting as acolyte to the service.
“There now,” Mrs. Bittner exclaimed when the table was laden. “Will you be wanting anything else, sir?”
“Thank you, no,” Mick murmured.
The housekeeper nodded in satisfaction and left with the maid.
“Will you have some chicken?” Mick asked as he reached for the dish.
“Yes, please,” she answered quite politely. “Are you in disguise here?”
He ought to have known she wouldn’t let it drop.
He gave her a wing and some breast meat. “Not exactly, but I find it… useful to have a place where I’m not known as the pirate Mickey O’Connor.”
She waited until he’d served himself and then tasted the chicken. “Then you’re a simple English gentleman when you’re at Windward House.”