Page 15 of If a Lady Lingers

Her gaze landed on Whitby, and she stopped. A grim expression darkened his face. He was anything but excited about the site visit.

And Whitby being anything but excited wasn’t at all like him.Especiallyabout the house.

For heaven’s sake, he’d practically bounced every time he’d visited her home to learn what new progress had been made, see any new designs, and discuss with Papa whatever problems had cropped up at the house site. Whitby still believed that Elias Daring was overseeing the project, making all decisions, and simply delegating instructions to Daisy to pass along to the builders. On the days when he hadn’t visited—which weren’t more than a handful since the project began—Whitby had sent a flurry of notes, which often had nothing to do with the house at all. So many notes that Daisy had felt he’d been right there in the room with her anyway.

Whitby had always been overly enthusiastic and exuberant about every detail, no matter how small, right down to the boot scraper on the front step that he wanted to match the door knocker. At first, a part of her thought he was pretending to be excited about the house simply because she was excited about it. But the more she came to know him, the more she realized that being excited was simply Whitby’s natural state. Fish swam, birds flew…Whitby grinned and bounced.

But today, he wasn’t at all grins and bounces. He simply wasn’t himself.

Something was wrong. Concerned, she lowered the plans. “You don’t think it’s grand?”

He rolled an uncertain glance at the exposed studs and beams of the half-finished walls, the floors whose gaps between the planks allowed views all the way down into the basement, the ceiling that was just as open as the floor. His brow arched apprehensively. “I think I’m standing on a bunch of sticks piled over a hole in the ground.”

“No. You’re standing in your bedroom.” With a reassuring smile, she rested the plans against a section of wall boards and tapped her finger on the sheet. “Right here.” She nodded toward the far wall—er, at what would soon become a wall. “That end of the room is going to be walled off for your dressing room, complete with one of those shower tubs we talked about.”

That didn’t ease his frown, which bothered her more than she wanted to admit and twisted the tiny muscles in the pit of her stomach. She wasn’t used to Whitby with any other expression except a bright smile, and his behavior worried her.

“There are no windows at that end of the room,” he grumbled. “How am I supposed to have enough light to get dressed?”

“With this in the ceiling.” She pointed at the sketch. “It’s called a skylight. We’ve added a false façade to the roof so no one can see it from below, but it’ll let in just as much light as a regular window. We’re putting one here in your dressing room and another over the stair hall to light the center of the house.”

With a noncommittal grunt, he put his hands on his hips and surveyed what he could see of the house.

“Just think of it, Whitby,” she cajoled. “In the evenings, after a long day, you’ll be able to soak in a hot bath while watching the moon and stars overhead. Then you’ll go into your sitting room through that connecting door to enjoy the fire and a glass of your favorite brandy before retiring here into your bedroom.” She gestured a hand toward the sitting room, a space that was completely his and off-limits to the boys who would be living with him. However, she’d taken her own initiative to design a connecting door between it and the bedroom on the far side of it. After all, someday he would marry, and that bedroom would become his wife’s.

Whitby with a wife—an unexpected pang jolted inside her at the thought. Oh, it couldn’t be jealousy!

She bit her lip.Couldit?

Not daring to let herself contemplate that, she forced her attention back to the plans. “I know it’s hard to imagine what the finished house will look like when it’s still just a skeleton like this, but please do try. We need to start making decisions about the interiors.”

In the past, when her father had completed his plans for clients’ houses, he’d brought the men and their wives to the sites for visits. He’d wanted them to be part of the process from the very beginning. So it was only natural that Whitby would have his own site visit. She’d brought him here under the pretense that she was only relaying information between the builders and her father, but in truth, she wanted to do what her father had done in the past and show Whitby the progress that was being made. The way a real architect would for a client.

She was beginning to think that was a mistake.

“Trust me,” she assured him. “Once you envision the final details, you’ll feel much better about it.”

The house was still a hollow shell, granted, but it was quickly taking shape. The builders needed to know in which direction to head when they finished the structure, which would be soon, and so Daisy needed to get started on the final touches. The end of the project would be here before they realized it.

Another pang pulsed through her. This one she recognized. Regret…that the project would soon be over and she’d no longer have reason to see Whitby every day. Heavens! Had anyone told her three months ago that she’d feel this way, she would have said they were mad as a hatter. But that’s exactly what had happened, and the completion of the house would be a bittersweet moment.

She cleared the emotion from her throat. “So let’s focus on finalizing the details for the interiors.”

He gazed out the wide opening where a bay window would eventually go, then down through the gap in the floorboards to the hole of the basement beneath them. “Let’s focus onfinishingthe interiors first.”

“Unfortunately, we can’t put off making these decisions much longer. You have to decide what kind of windows and doors you want, what finishes, what plasterwork. If you want any built-in shelves, closets, or alcoves. If you want wooden stairs or marble.” She gave a silent sigh and rolled up the plans. Judging from his reaction, she didn’t care about any of that, so she appealed to a higher authority. “I need to tell Papa what you’re asking for so that he can write out instructions for the builders.” She forced a smile. “Otherwise, you’ll have a townhouse without a staircase.”

His mouth twisted, not swayed by her argument or her attempt at humor.

“Whitby, you have to trust me when I tell you that the construction is going remarkably well.” She rested her hand on his arm. His bicep tightened reflexively beneath her fingers, and her breath hitched. She had to swallow before she continued, “I know it doesn’t look like much now, but you have to envision the final house and how wonderful it will be.” She flashed him a smile. “Few people have the stomach to see how sausages are made either, but in the end, people love them.”

“I don’t have a sausage.” He gestured at the nonexistent window and frowned. “I have a hole.”

“The windows will be put in as soon as—”

“And I have an architect who’s been lying to me.”

Slowly, she dropped her hand away and forced a tight smile. “Papa hasn’t lied about the process. You’re just nervous about—”