Diana Palmer - Noelle

Then as she gained the hall, it occurred to her that she had no dress grand enough to wear to a society dance. Most of her clothes had been at home in Galveston when the flood struck, and there had never been very many. Since then, she hadn’t had any money to buy fabric to sew new things, and her plain skirts and blouses would hardly do for a large social gathering. Andrew wouldn’t want to be seen with her in anything she had in her closet. He was impeccable in his attire and expected everyone around him to be equally elegant. He had, in fact, been pointedly critical of her few dresses. What he had to say about her overalls was better left unsaid, and she did her outdoor work when he was out of town.

But that wasn’t her only problem. Andrew watched her at the table when she ate, grimacing when she didn’t hold her fork right, when she forgot to put her napkin in her lap. Often he grimaced and she didn’t know why. She had no knowledge of proper table manners, although she tried to emulate the others at table. She wished she knew how a proper lady was supposed to behave.

Even if she had, it didn’t solve the problem of the dress. She didn’t have one that wouldn’t disgrace him. So she wouldn’t be able to go with him, after all. And it felt as if her heart would surely break.

Andrew’s handwriting was atrocious, Noelle thought as she sat before the Remington typewriter at the big oak desk in the study, trying to make out the scrawls on pieces of paper as she typed up his brick orders. She was still slow, but at least her work was professional-looking. Her spelling skills were adequate, and actually much better than Andrew’s, she mused.

She was peering down at the pad and didn’t notice the door open until she heard the knock of Jared’s walking stick against it.

She looked up, startled. “Hello,” she said shyly.

He moved into the room, leaving the door open. “What are you doing?”

“Andrew’s orders needed typing up, and he was going to be out this evening,” she said, with a faint smile.

He didn’t smile back. “And I thought slave labor had been outlawed,” he drawled.

She stiffened in her chair, looking as starchy as her high ruffled collar. “I most certainly am not slave labor,” she said haughtily. “I’m doing Andrew a favor, that’s all.”

“How often do you do this favor for him?”

Every other night, but she wasn’t telling him that! “It’s little enough to do, since I’m not paying room and board.”

He leaned heavily on the stick. “You aren’t naive enough to think my stepbrother pays the bills?” he taunted.

She flushed to her hairline. It embarrassed her that she was living on Jared’s charity. And certainly she wasn’t doing his typing.

Her scarlet blush made him feel guilty. His lean hand shifted against the cane. “That wasn’t kind of me, was it?” he asked. “You earn your crust of bread.”

She brightened. “Thank you. I could…type for you, when you open your office, if you like,” she offered.

His eyebrows levered up. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He would have an office, surely, but in New York, he and Alistair had employed a male secretary. He wasn’t certain that it was quite respectable to offer the job to Noelle. Or that he’d want her that close.

“We can discuss that some other time,” he said. He moved toward the desk, so that he could see her handiwork on the white sheet of paper. He took out his glasses case and perched his reading glasses on his nose. He leaned forward and frowned. “You’re very accurate,” he said.

She hadn’t seen him in his glasses before. They seemed to emphasize all his vulnerabilities. They softened her toward him even more. “You sound surprised that I can spell,” she said, with an impish grin.

“So it seems.” He reached down to pick up one of the forms, his arm brushing her shoulder. She stiffened, and his eyes narrowed. He didn’t like her reaction. “Are you afraid that I might contaminate you with my touch?” he asked. His smile was mocking as he met her startled green eyes. “My taste runs to women, not to little girls playing dress up.”

She was flustered. “Such a thought never crossed my mind,” she exclaimed breathlessly.

“Not even with Andrew?” he taunted.

“Andrew is different,” she said. He rattled her. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “He’s young and—and brave and kind. He’s very kind,” she repeated.

“Oh, certainly. He’s everything I’m not,” he said dryly, and took off his reading glasses with a quick, efficient movement of his hands.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You meant it.” He leaned heavily on the cane, his eyes biting into her averted face. It irritated him that she didn’t think of him in the same category as Andrew. He could remember women looking at him with fascination, awe, even fear. But Noelle was the first to see him with eyes of pity. He’d noticed it even more when he’d had on his glasses. He wondered if she’d pity the man he really was as much as she pitied the distorted persona.

She shifted delicately away from contact with his long legs. “You’re a good deal older than I am,” she said.

“I see,” he drawled. “I’m an elderly, crippled ruin who needs to be offered warm milk to help him sleep?”

She flushed. “Mr. Dunn!”

He laughed. “When I think of the old days, and how women looked at me then…” he said half to himself. “Perhaps I am old, and growing fanciful, because I can’t remember a time when I needed admiration from a marmalade kitten!”

She stood up, too close to him and too angry to care. “I’m not a kitten!”

He deliberately moved closer, threatening, taller and broader than he’d seemed on first acquaintance. At such close range, he towered over her slender form. He smelled of cologne and soap, and she was surprised that she didn’t find his nearness intolerable. He was too old, a cripple, citified…

Her eyes lifted and were swallowed whole by his. She couldn’t have imagined feeling frozen by a look, but he had her as helpless as if he’d roped her. She looked into those piercing pale blue eyes and couldn’t seem to stop looking, while her heart thrust into her throat and her legs seemed to tremble.

“Your face is red,” he remarked in a colorless voice. His lean, elegant hand moved to her face and slowly tucked a strand of her hair behind her small ear.

The touch was electric. Andrew’s similar contact had made her smile. Jared’s fingers made her blood race through her veins, made her mouth swell, made her eyes dilate. The contact ran through her like a lightning flash.

Jared, who knew women, watched her unexpected reaction with an almost clinical scrutiny. He smiled slowly to himself. So she thought she’d given her heart to Andrew, did she? Apparently she was untried and untouched. The thought galvanized him. His jaw clenched and his eyes looked briefly violent.

Noelle moved backward and dropped into her chair, retreating from him. His eyes were hypnotic, threatening. “Don’t…” she whispered.

“Don’t what?” he asked in a new tone, and without moving.

She swallowed. “I—I don’t know,” she faltered. “You—you looked as if you might strike me.”

He slid his eyes to the frantic, rhythmic ripple of the lace at her throat. “I haven’t ever raised my hand to a woman,” he said, placing the slightest emphasis on the last word.

Her fine auburn brows drew together. “Or to a man?” she asked absently, implying that he wasn’t a fighter at all.

His face closed up into an impassive mask that gave away nothing. “I noticed you watching my grandmother at table,” he said abruptly. “You don’t know proper table manners, do you?”