Her fingers tightened on the untouched glass of wine. Heaven help her, maybe she should send him on his way tonight, however likely he was to stumble into a snowy ditch and perish from the cold.
“You’d be wrong, Miss Carr,” he went on, as if her world hadn’t changed in an instant with a man’s smile. “My brusqueness does my practice no harm at all. I have a well-earned reputation as a temperamental genius. The upper crust are quite convinced it’s de rigueur to have me stomping around their houses, shouting about improvements.”
Actually she could imagine he was good at his job, if not with his clients. Something about him suggested confidence and competence. And however much he looked like a prizefighter, there was the evidence of that mouth and those adept hands to indicate there was more to him than brute force.
She didn’t look at the letter. “But what are you doing here? And why on earth is Dr. Black employing a fashionable architect? He never comes to Fraedale. I haven’t seen him since my mother’s funeral five years ago.”
Mr. Hale shrugged. “Perhaps he wants to use the property more often. Perhaps he wants to sell.”
Sell? That terrifying possibility sent every other thought fleeing from her mind.
“You’ve gone very quiet,” Mr. Hale said in a worried tone.
There was no earthly reason he should care about what happened to her. They’d just met, and she’d hardly set out to endear herself. But as she set down the letter, she raised a troubled gaze to his face. “This is my home. I have nowhere else to go.”
Chapter 3
“Curse me for a clumsy blockhead,” Joss said roughly, desperate to banish the desolation dulling Miss Carr’s lovely blue eyes. “Please forgive me for speaking out of turn. I have no idea what my godfather intends. He didn’t tell me. He just asked me to look at the house to see what alterations and repairs it needs.”
“Your godfather?”
She sounded shaky, and he didn’t like it. He liked it much better when she stood up to him. He nudged her wineglass toward her, and this time she did take a sip.
“He and my father went to Jesus College at Oxford together.”
“Is your father still alive?”
“Yes, he and my mother live in Sussex.”
She didn’t look quite so lost anymore, thank God. “What are you doing in wildest Yorkshire over Christmas? Don’t you want to be with your family?”
Not when they plagued him every minute God sent about finding a wife. That was the problem with happily married couples. They wanted everyone else to be happily married, too.
Joss had long believed that he was too gruff and uncouth to arouse the matrimonial ambitions of any well-bred maiden. But it seemed the combination of an earl for an uncle, the fortune he’d inherited from a great-aunt, and his thriving, if unconventional architectural practice more than made up for the deficiencies in his manners. His mother had devoted the last two years to producing a stream of eligible girls, who turned up eager to impress him. So far, all the candidates had been suitable, pretty, and as dull as bad Palladian architecture.
He was sick to the stomach of chits who giggled and stammered and batted their eyelashes at him. Miss Carr had done none of those things yet. By Jove, perhaps if he got desperate, he should marry her.
“Now you’ve gone quiet,” she said, sounding worried.
Joss summoned a smile and reached for the bread and meat she’d cut for him. “I’ve got six brothers and sisters, and a crowd of nieces and nephews. Nobody will miss me.”
“But you might miss them,” she said in a small voice.
Right now, looking at this pretty girl, he couldn’t imagine why he would. This pretty girl who seemed to have nobody in the world to care for her.
Curiosity ate at him. How had this jewel of a woman ended up here, hidden away from the world?
While he was perfectly prepared to break social rules and ask intrusive questions, he wasn’t ready to keep her up when she looked so tired and drawn. And distressed.
How he regretted mentioning that Uncle Thomas might sell the house. Perhaps his godfather wanted to turn this isolated pile into an example of the fashionable gothic purely for his own pleasure.
But Thomas Black rarely left Oxford, and never unless he absolutely had to. During his years in business, Joss had developed a sixth sense about his clients and their intentions. Something in his godfather’s letter hinted that his sudden decision to renovate his neglected property indicated an end of some kind.
“Oh, I shouldn’t be sitting here like this.” She jumped to her feet and began to clear the table. “Let me show you to your room, sir.”
Miss Carr seemed determined to treat him as her better, when he suspected she was his social equal in everything but fortune. She certainly sounded like his social equal, with that low, precise voice. “Don
’t you think we’ve progressed beyond sir?”