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“So.” Miss Pendleton cleared her throat. “The water heated here and the tub sitting below.”
He could almost see her stepping out of veils of steam, like Aphrodite emerging from the foam. He would always long to see her so. Wasn’t there some myth like that? With the goddess Diana, he remembered. But that story hadn’t ended well. The young man who caught sight of Diana bathing had been transformed into a deer and torn to pieces by his own hunting dogs. Not the thing at all.
“Quite revolutionary,” he said, and was stirred by the brilliance of her answering smile. Who would have imagined such a heady mixture of beauty and ingenuity and sheer competence? Not he, until he met her. Daniel became aware of a bouquet of interested faces gazing at them from the doorway. “Where does one buy a bathtub, I wonder?”
“The Prince Regent’s staff will know,” she replied.
The spark of mischief in her blue eyes, and the murmurs of awe from the corridor, told Daniel she knew exactly what she was doing.
“Shall we go and survey the attic?” she asked. “Find the best site for the water tank?”
“I could do that, miss,” said Henry Carson. “No need for you to bother.”
“I like to have a firsthand view of everything,” she replied.
“Of course you do,” said Daniel.
This earned him a sharp glance, but he hadn’t intended any sarcasm. “Very wise to make sure of every detail,” he added. He fell in beside her, thinking this was far more amusing than bending over fusty documents.
They shed the servants as they went back through the kitchen, but Tom asked to come along and “see how it all works.” And so they found a second lantern for him to carry, and the four of them walked upstairs together and into Frithgerd’s extensive attics.
“We want the end nearest the kitchens,” Miss Pendleton said.
Combining Daniel’s knowledge of his home with periodic looks out a window, they found the appropriate location. The roof dipped lower here, and the flooring ran out to show exposed rafters and great crisscrossing roof beams. Henry Carson declared this just as well. “We need to see what sort of supports we’ve got to work with,” he said. “Water’s right heavy.”
Miss Pendleton walked out onto a rafter, showing no sign of apprehension.
Daniel couldn’t restrain himself. “Be careful.”
“My balance is secure,” she answered. “I think there’s sufficient room for the tank in this spot, Mr. Carson.”
The man made his way out to join her. He held up his lantern, surveyed the area, and nodded. “No beams to be cut obviously. Floor to be reinforced first. This ought to do it.”
“Splendid.” She tripped back as if the surface below her was perfectly solid. “We should make a list of tasks.”
A groan escaped Daniel.
Miss Pendleton laughed. “Yes, Lord Whitfield, another list. But I shall have charge of this one, and every task will be well done.”
He had no doubt of it at all.
* * *
Penelope drove back to Rose Cottage bursting with high spirits. There was nothing like the feeling of getting things done—planning, arranging, approving the result. In a few weeks, Lord Whitfield would have his new tub. Such luxury, a whole room just for a bath. She could see it in her mind, with him standing in the steam like a statue of a Roman god. Gloriously unclothed. She flushed but refused to dismiss the idea.
They’d had baths—the Romans, not the gods. Though perhaps their gods had them as well? She had no idea. Penelope laughed as she drove her gig up to the barn. Her mind was flitting about like a flea.
Kitty emerged from the house. The two dogs came out with her, Penelope noticed. She’d let them in again. “Mr. Foyle’s gone out,” Kitty called as Jip and Jum pranced over to greet her. “He walked off with Mrs. Hart and left me here all alone.” She came over to help Penelope unharness the horse and tend to him. “I might have been killed by robbers,” Kitty said.
“There are no robbers hereabouts.”
“We don’t know that, do we? They’d be stealthy.”
“It’s a very safe spot.” Penelope set the water bucket where the horse could reach it. “So Foyle escorted Mrs. Hart home?”
“No, they went to some sort of talk at the chapel. About missionaries in Africa.”
“Foyle did?”
