The Dress of the Season by Kate Noble Page A

came out.
    After a moment held in time of simply staring at each other, Harris Dane, Lord Osterley, gave a short, proper bow, and left the house.

Chapter Nine
    I cannot lose you, too.
    Those words haunted Felicity, all the way home.
    What had he meant by them? What had he meant by that kiss?
    After Harris had so formally excused himself from Felicity’s house—what must have been mere minutes, but felt like an eternity to a bewildered Felicity—Peter Black knocked on the door.
    “Here you are Miss Grove!” he cried happily, shaking off his wet cap in the foyer. “Lord Osterley said you was. We have the carriage ready to take you back to the river.”
    And they did. Peter snuffed the fire in the fireplace. A closed carriage with thick, sturdy wheels was pulled around and conveyed her to the river. She was rowed across with an umbrella for protection—luckily the river was passable now; the rain was tapering off and the current, while strong, was easily overcome by Peter and another burly man who had been working on the bridge. On the Croft Park side, there was another carriage waiting for her.
    Harris was nowhere to be found.
    The trip was far too short for Felicity to sort through all of her feelings. They overwhelmed her. Numbed her to the elements, and to the looks she received from Mrs. Smith and Johnson the steward when she walked through the front door.
    The only thing that she could puzzle out of her strange state, was that if her feelings were this jumbled, this strong . . . what must Harris’s be?
    She knew him. Knew him in all his iterations. And knew that those different versions of himself fought each other. But over what? Over her?
    She was a duty to Osterley, a recently returned friend to Harris, and . . . something else entirely to that man who had walked, dripping with rain, into her family house and kissed her senseless.
    I cannot lose you, too.
    As she sat in her room, drying herself by the fire, a single thought solidified in her mind.
    He felt for her, she realized. Something deeper than obligation, and deeper even than childhood friendship.
    And she . . . she felt something deeper, too. Deeper than gratitude, deeper than friendly good humor.
    But what?
    That was the question. One that would not let her rest until she knew the answer.
    *  *  *
    “What did you mean?”
    The voice came from the doorway to his study. He did not turn. Harris was by his own fire—indeed every chimney of Croft Park was pumping out smoke. He still dripped with rain, but his greatcoat had been surrendered to the butler and Mrs. Smith was fussing over tea.
    Felicity was safe. That was good.
    His reaction to finding her . . .
    That, had been very, very bad.
    He’d lost control of himself and of his emotions. He’d let her see . . .
    “What did you mean, when you said ‘I cannot lose you, too’?” Felicity stepped into the room as he turned to her, keeping his face expressionless. She looked up at him earnestly, seriously.
    Harris turned to Mrs. Smith. “That will be all, thank you,” he dismissed her. Stern as he was, he did not miss the kind look Mrs. Smith gave Felicity on her way out the door.
    “You have the staff wrapped around your finger, I see,” he drawled. “They were terribly worried about you, you realize.”
    “What did you mean by it?” she persisted, taking another step forward. Her hands were held placidly in front of her, she came to him with a forthrightness that belied any flirtation, any coquettishness that had been her arts for the past few years.
    “It doesn’t matter, Felicity,” he said on a sigh.
    “Yes, it does.”
    “No, it doesn’t,” he said sharply, holding himself back from yelling. Bleakness filled his soul, and before he knew it, he was telling her . . . everything. “It doesn’t matter to you, does it, that everyone is gone. It doesn’t matter to you that I cannot bring them back. It doesn’t matter to you that their loss is my fault.”
    She