Cloudy With a Chance of Marriage Read Online Free PDF Page B

she felt regrets about what couldn’t be. Because the evening had been unlike any she’d ever known. Diverting, joyful.
    With many plops .
    She thought back to the sheer exuberance she’d felt dropping those bags of water. And before that, the dancing between the flaming candelabra, surrounded by men in grass skirts.
    Hector would have hated every minute of it.
    But thinking of him again made Jilly’s chest tighten with fear and loathing, so she closed her eyes and clutched her coverlet close, only to slip into a dream about coconuts and drums.

 
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    The next morning, a slant of sun—real sun—peeked through Stephen’s window. He felt as comfortable and lazy as the ship’s cat that used to sleep on top of his charts on his desk in his cabin.
    “Late to bed, late to rise,” he said out loud, his humor fully restored in spite of his rejection by Miss Jones the evening previous, “makes a man—”
    Makes a man what?
    Happy?
    Relaxed?
    He threw off his quilt, and—
    The bed promptly collapsed on the floor.
    What the devil?
    Thoroughly jolted, he was now at a ridiculous angle, his head down, and his feet up. Gingerly, he rolled off the side of the mattress. He’d just bought the frame from a well-respected furniture dealer. It was sturdy and new, of the finest maple.
    He leaned over to examine the legs at the top of the bed. Good God, they’d fallen through the floor! Two floor planks had given way. No doubt the gaping hole accounted for the shouts coming from below in the breakfast room, where Pratt, his former ship’s cook, had been charged with the daily morning chore of frying up a rasher of bacon and several dozen eggs, as well as toasting a loaf of bread and making a pot of tea.
    Stephen froze, wondering if his legs were to go through the ceiling next. Carefully, he walked over the seemingly sturdy planks to the door of his bedchamber and looked back at the slanted bed.
    Odd, that. Very odd.
    He shrugged. Nothing he could do about it at the moment. Might as well have breakfast, if there was any left that didn’t have plaster in it.
    “You’ve got woodworm in a beam.” One of his friends winced as he looked up at the hole in the ceiling through pince-nez missing a lens; it had been lost last night in a playful brawl on the roof. “One rubbery creature fell on my toast.”
    Gad.
    The other men looked near to being sick.
    “I’m sure it’s only in that portion of the beam,” Lumley added, his face rather green and his eyes a bloodshot red. “Otherwise, we’d be seeing it everywhere. And we haven’t.”
    Stephen eyed the row of beams above his head. The others, if in good condition, would support the ceiling very well, but his chest tightened, nevertheless. “The executor of my cousin’s will told me the house was worn in places, but one doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I’d planned to have it inspected at my leisure.”
    Another friend added a few dollops of brandy to his empty teacup and drained it. “I’m sure it’s fine. Except for that one beam, it appears in excellent shape.”
    Frying pan in hand, Pratt was none the worse for wear. Always impeccably groomed, this morning he wore one of his more intricately embroidered waistcoats when he slid three eggs and a side of bacon onto Stephen’s plate. “No house is, what you call, perfetto, ” he said, kissing the fingertips of his right hand, where several large golden rings sparkled.
    The whole table seemed soothed by his smooth Italian accent.
    “It’s nothing I can’t take care of.” Stephen picked up his fork and looked round the company as if daring anyone to disagree.
    “Aye,” whispered one dapper fellow who’d had both eyebrows shaved off but didn’t know it yet. “If I were you, Arrow, I’d hire a reputable carpenter, the best in London.”
    There was a low, miserable chorus of assents.
    Stephen was aware none of the men at the table had done an ounce of hard labor in their lives. They were all