AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh dear oh dear oh dear.” She scurried over to the sink, pausing only to look over her shoulder to say, “I have to set an example. I swore to God five years ago I would set an example. And look at me.”
He’d been doing little else all afternoon, James thought glumly, and all it had gotten him was frustration.
The front door slammed. Elizabeth jumped. “Does my hair truly look mussed?” she asked frantically.
“Well, it doesn’t look as it did when we arrived,” he conceded.
She patted her head with quick, nervous movements. “I can’t possibly fix it in time.”
He chose not to answer. It was his experience that wise men did not interrupt a lady’s toilet.
“There’s only one thing to do,” she said.
James watched with interest as she dunked her hands in a small pot of water that had been sitting on the counter. It was the same pot she’d used to wet the cloth for his eye.
The children’s voices drew closer.
And then Elizabeth, whom he had previously considered a reasonably sober and rational human being, heaved her hands upward, splashing water all over her face, her bodice, and in all truth, all over him.
Her sanity, he decided as he slowly shook the water from his boots, was a question that clearly needed revisiting.
Chapter 12
“Heavens to St. Peter,” Susan exclaimed. “What happened to you?”
“Just a small accident,” Elizabeth replied. Her lying must have been improving, because Susan didn’t immediately roll her eyes and snort her disbelief. Flinging the water had been a flawed plan, but certainly inspired. If she couldn’t make her hair look any better, she might as well make it look worse. At least then no one would suspect that her disarray was due to James’s fingers.
Lucas’s small blond head turned this way and that as he surveyed the damage. “It looks as if we’ve been visited by the great flood.”
Elizabeth tried not to scowl at his interference. “I was preparing a wet cloth for Mr. Siddons, who injured his eye, and then I knocked over the pot, and—”
“How come the pot is still standing up?” he asked.
“Because I righted it,” Elizabeth snapped.
Lucas blinked, and actually took a step back.
“I should probably be on my way,” James said.
Elizabeth glanced in his direction. He was shaking the water from his hands, and looked remarkably patient, considering that she’d
just doused him without a moment’s notice.
Susan cleared her throat. Elizabeth ignored her. Susan cleared her throat again.
“If I might have a towel first?” James murmured.
“Oh, yes, of course.”
Susan cleared her throat again, a great big hacking sound that made one wish for a doctor, a surgeon, and a clean, well-lighted hospital. Not to mention a quarantine room.
“What is it, Susan?” Elizabeth hissed.
“You might introduce me?”
“Oh, yes.” Elizabeth felt her cheeks grow warm at this obvious lapse of protocol. “Mr. Siddons, may I present my younger sister, Miss Susan Hotchkiss. Susan, this is—”
“Mr. Siddons?” Susan gasped.
