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Chapter 21
Simon exhaled as he signed papers upon papers of documents regarding the Kensington horse-breeding venture. He looked between the piles of official documents and the letters from his promiscuous endeavors, and groaned in frustration. Oh, he should have thrown them away weeks before when he had the chance. Before Ellie discovered them.
A whole day had passed, and she had refused to see him. Perhaps she was busy, but with a Castle as entertaining as building a fort on a windy day and the hail still swirling away beneath the rising moon, it was wishful thinking.
After his intense encounter with Ellie, it was all his mind could now focus on. Never mind the piling stacks of correspondence, and never mind his crippling business; all he wanted was to have Ellie here once more, to savor her skin and her lips. He couldn’t allow himself to get too close, yet a part of him knew it was already too late.
What have I done?
He swirled his fingers in the air, whistling a familiar classical tune as he struggled to focus on the papers. There were so many arrangements left behind. Lords from London desired Hackney horses—a not so exciting breed in his opinion, with a tall, bulky figure—whereas many from Yorkshire desired colts instead.
Then he had the shameless lot, the Lords who urgently requested thoroughbred stallions for racing in order to place their bets and aggrandize their fortune. Smart, but irritating all the same. They tended to be the pickiest of the lot, while displaying the least desire to care for the animal’s wellbeing in the long term.
The door creaked muffledly, and Simon raised his eyes. It was Ellie. Standing by the doorway, wrist in hand. His posture stiffened, and he scolded himself for reacting this way. Her brown hair was braided up, with only one curl framing her face. But her dress was devilish. It was the right size and the right color, crimson, tight and revealing.
“You can enter, you know,” he said, grabbing awkwardly for his coffee to take a sip.
Nodding obediently, she sat on the chair in front of him, looking on with a puzzled expression, as if he bore the resemblance of a wraith. It was almost starting to scare him.
“I wanted to see what you were doing.”
“Working,” he quickly replied. “Since I’m locked up in the Castle, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to try and salvage this broken mess of a business. I’m not worried, though; it’s only one of many. But, Ellie, I wanted to say—”
“May I help?”
Simon paused. “Well. I don’t think you can. It’s boring business talk—finances, trade, wares. Tedious, really.”
“I want to try. I’m also locked up in the Castle, and it sounds more appealing than whatever else I have going on.” She shrugged.
“All right,” he said, “you can try.” He moved his chair back, patting his lap. “Take a seat here.”
“I can drag the chair there as well,” she said, blushing a little.
“Too suffocating.”
With a slight blush, Ellie gathered her skirts and made her way over to him, doing as instructed. For a moment, he doubted his own judgment. If he needed to focus, having her on his lap, pressed against his body, with her alluring scent reaching her nostrils, was perhaps the worst way to deal with a business.
“So, tell me,” she started, “what is it you need to do? Why is the business failing?”
“Orders aren’t being fulfilled,” he said, “and since they’re not, there are fewer orders to fulfill. I thought a way to fix that would be to fulfill the current ones and offer some free services to the others as an apology. The list is huge, of course.”
She leaned forward, staring at the papers, though he doubted she could understand any of the financial terms.
“Why don’t you try to spread? From what I see here,” she pointed at the list of orders, “most of your orders are from London, Yorkshire and Sussex. And from what I see here,” she pointed to a second one, of the unfulfilled orders, “Yorkshire is the worst. So why don’t you try…Somewhere further up North perhaps? You don’t have a reputation there.”
“Interesting. I do like the idea.”
Although he couldn’t see her face, he could sense the warmth of her skin and the perkiness of her ears. She was smiling.
“What is the business about?”
“Horse-breeding.”
She turned her head toward him, her eyes wide in surprise. “Horses? What sort?”
“We try to keep a variety. From Arab to the Irish Draught to Shir—”
“Shire? You have shire horses? Here?”
