Bath Belles Read Online Free PDF Page A

week at Bath one day.”
    Mama and Esther exchanged a perplexed frown while Mr. Desmond honored me with a quizzing smile, to confirm that I had properly interpreted his opinion of dull Bath.
    “What price are you asking?”was his next question.
    “Six thousand pounds,”I suggested tentatively, watching to gauge his response.
    He nodded, neither delighted, dismayed, nor surprised, and said, “May I see the bedchambers?”
    “Yes, they’re upstairs,”I said, and we walked from the safety of the saloon.
    “A novel idea,”I heard him say in a soft voice as he paced behind me. “And—just a suggestion, Miss Haley—firm up your tone when you give the price. That doubtful glance is an invitation to the unscrupulous purchaser to haggle you down. What would you really take?”
    “Six thousand pounds,”I said much more firmly.
    “That’s better!”he complimented.
    I was overly conscious of him behind me, following me up the stairs, down the hall. I was on pins and needles waiting for him to say or do something outrageous, but he just walked into each chamber, looked all around at ceilings, windows, wainscoting, personal clutter. I saved the master bedroom for the last, as it was the finest. A picture popped into my head of Mr. Desmond’s mistress lounging at her ease in Graham’s bed. She was a voluptuous blonde in a white lace peignoir. I disliked the image intensely. “No one using the master bedroom?”he asked.
    “Not at the moment, but it would do equally well for a mistress’s bedchamber, don’t you think?”I gave him a bright, impersonal smile.
    The sparkle from his laughing eye only hit me at an angle as he turned away to hide his face. Even the partial view made me realize I had strayed into suggestive waters. “Yes, indeed. What has sex to do with a bedchamber, after all?”He laughed lightly and strolled over to punch the mattress with his fists. “This is a demmed hard mattress.”
    “Mattresses can easily be changed.”
    “Oh, I like a good firm mattress. I’m an active—er,sleeper.’’
    I refused to be bullied into embarrassment by this creature, who was trying his best to discomfort me. “There is some interesting carving on the wooden fireplace,”I pointed out. He walked to it and ran his fingers over the flowers and birds. “This also is not the work of Adams,”I said, for him.
    “Nor of Grinling Gibbons either, though it’s not too crudely done,”he allowed. He turned back and surveyed the room at some length. “This is not bad.”
    “I think she’ll like,”I said.
    He picked up on it at once. “She?”
    “Your—your wife,”I said, coloring briskly.
    “Ah, yes, my wife, of course. She would no doubt like it immensely, if she existed.”
    I showed not an iota of interest in his marital status, though I would relay my finding to Esther. “It would be ideal for a bachelor as well,”I replied.
    “Ideal? It hardly complies with the highest perfection to be attained in bedchambers, but it is not bad. May I see the attic? Above the bedrooms, I expect?”he asked archly.
    “Very likely. I haven’t been to the attic yet myself. I dread to think what state it is in.”
    We went along the hall to the attic stairs. The most notable thing about the attic was that it was extremely cold. Mr. Desmond noticed my shiver and immediately drew off his jacket and hung it over my shoulders. The size of his shoulders was not much diminished nor the shape much changed by the removal of the jacket. The face, though, took on a bolder expression.
    “That’s not at all necessary. I can get a shawl,”I protested. But I was grateful for its warmth.
    “Aren’t you afraid I’d pilfer from your attic if you left me alone?”he joked.
    “I doubt you could get any of those trunks into your pocket.”There wasn’t much but three trunks up there.
    “Who knows what might be in them? Bags of gold, for all we know.”As he spoke he went forward and tried the lids. They were all locked.
    “I