settled into the chair near the fire, relaxing into a slouch. He took a healthy swallow and let the brandy burn down his throat. Logan would say something pithy about now. Something like no good effort goes unpunished. He was being punished aplenty. He never slept well after a race — too much adrenaline, and he never slept well alone — too much time spent with his more private thoughts. Now, both conditions would be in evidence tonight. He might have avoided the former if Jenna Priess hadn’t ruined him for the latter. Miss Last Night was more than willing to warm his bed but Jenna’s sharp tongue and chestnut hair had effectively cooled his ardor for the woman who was available. Eva? Elena? His mind and body refused to settle for her when a brighter flame burned. And burn it did, obliterating everything but itself. He didn’t know the last time he’d felt so immediately struck by a woman’s presence.
He could hardly remember Miss Last Night’s name and yet he could remember every little detail of the exchange with Jenna Priess; how the firelight had turned her hair a deep red the shade of autumn leaves in the woods near his family home; the way her sharp eyes had raked his form in a rather blatant perusal of his physique; even the small gold clip that fastened her cloak remained fixed in his memory. That was bad news for him if he didn’t stop this fantasizing immediately. Jenna Priess wasn’t for him. He had time for sex, nothing more. But she was the sort who would demand the ‘more.’ That was an infatuation he could not afford to indulge.
Hayden propped his boots up on the fender of the fireplace, his shoulders slouched in repose; hardly the posture of a champion. But why not? There was no one around to see. Celebrity had its perks, no doubt. But there were down-sides — there were fewer and fewer moments in his life where there was no one he had to impress — no women to woo, no men to court for business.
It was all fun, of course. He didn’t mind, not too much anyway. But sometimes it was nice not to be on display, nice to flirt with a woman the way he’d flirted with Jenna just because he wanted to, not because she was the local squire’s daughter and the key to unlocking her daddy’s purse. It was refreshing to run across a woman who was interesting for more than how she looked on his arm or for her daddy’s bank account.
Jenna Priess was that sort of woman for all the good it did him. She also just happened to be the sort of woman he shouldn’t mess around with. No good came of mixing business with pleasure. Hadn’t he learned that lesson already? Didn’t he bear the scars of having made the mistake? But Jenna Priess was no Baroness St. Martin and right now, that made all the difference. Besides, this was going to be a simple matter.
Hayden took a final swallow of his brandy. He would meet with the mill foreman tomorrow and afterward call on Jenna to report his findings. It was all very concise and conscientious. He’d get in, get out, help a damsel in distress to salve his own sense of obligation and Logan would approve. The plan was perfect.
As luck would have it, the reality was something less than his perfect imaginings — far from it in fact. Hayden strode through the snowy streets to the Priess home the following afternoon, roiling in anger. His findings had his emotions boiling and while that boil provided a convenient source of body heat it did nothing to conjure up friendly thoughts for the home’s inhabitants. To put it mildly, he felt taken advantage of. To put it more bluntly, he felt played. A woman had played him before and he’d thought he’d honed his instincts enough to avoid falling foul of such deception again.
He could hear Logan’s ‘I told you so’s’ already in his head. He had no one to blame but himself. If he felt hoodwinked, it was his own fault. He’d committed the eternal fallacy of men everywhere in believing that a pretty face harbored pretty intentions. Jenna Priess had some answering to do.
Hayden stopped before the wrought iron gates of the Priess house and surveyed the short drive and lawn that lay in prelude to the main home. An investigator always took stock of his surroundings before charging in. He took stock now. The Priess home was by no means on the same level as a nobleman’s estate, but it was an elegant manse for a nouveau riche industrialist.
The greystone façade rose in a dark silhouette of steep roof lines bracketed by pale winter sky above and a pristine white blanket of snow below. This end of Kendal, inhabited by the wealthy mill owners and wool and snuff manufacturers, differed from the dirtier south end with its workhouse and factory homes. Hayden grimaced. He’d spent enough time prowling the streets of York and other northern industrial cities to know how this sort of money was made and sustained. Homes like the Priesses’ were supported by the sweat of laborers.
Repetition of that reality didn’t make it any more palatable. Nor did it make his disappointment easier to swallow. He’d wanted Jenna with her sincerity and passion to be different. Apparently his usually infallible intuition had been wrong. About a woman. Again.
Hayden squared his shoulders, survey complete, and trod through the snow, leaving fresh, deep boot prints behind in his march to the door. He dropped the heavy knocker, a brass affair of a carved lion’s head, against the door, estimating the cost of such a thing as it fell. It would take two years’ salary for a mill worker to afford something as luxurious as this knocker which was nothing more than ornamental decoration to the wealthy.
The door opened, answered by a greying, dignified fellow who inquired about his business in quiet but authoritative tones. The hush of his tones took some of the power out of Hayden’s anger. “I’m here to see Miss Priess. She is expecting me.” Hayden handed the man his card and stepped inside, taking away the butler’s option to decide.
The first thing he noticed was the silence. It extended beyond the butler to encompass the entire house. There was none of the usual noise of a big home; no maids polishing bannisters and dusting mantels, no clink of silver being counted. There were a hundred casual sounds a house made and this home made none of them except one. Hayden could hear every tick of the long case clock tucked beneath the curve of the staircase.
The butler led him to a room near the stairs. Hayden could feel his anger dissipating with every step. Anger was a loud emotion. It didn’t fit in these quiet surroundings. The butler left him with the promise that Miss Priess would be down shortly and the encouragement to make himself at home. It wouldn’t be hard to do. The room was done in dark blues and creams and with all the necessary appointments of a sitting room — sofa, chairs, fireplace, a low table for serving refreshments, a sideboard with a decanter for the men, who likely made up the majority of callers in an industrialist’s home. But Hayden had no intention of remaining there no matter how attractive the room’s offerings.
Something was off. The pieces of this particular puzzle didn’t fit. Something was a lie, or someone was a liar and that liar wasn’t necessarily Jenna Priess. That did cause a spark of hope to flare up. Perhaps his intuition hadn’t failed him after all. Perhaps there was more at work here than he was aware. He wouldn’t know if he stayed tucked away safely in this room. Then again, his more cynical side asserted itself, maybe that was the function of this pleasant room with its fire and brandy and window overlooking the snowy lawn — to be so comfortable, so welcoming, one wouldn’t want to see what lay beyond the foyer.
A good investigator understood that truth was best discovered in its raw form first hand. If one waited for others to bring ‘truth’ to them, it was seldom unadulterated. Hayden took to the stairs. At the top of the landing, he picked up the sound of quiet voices further down the hall. He recognized Jenna’s. The other was hoarse and sounded as if it required effort to talk in long sentences. Her father maybe? Hayden edged towards the partially open door in time to catch the sound of a wracking cough and Jenna’s swift reassurances. He could hear the rustle of skirts and bed linens; pillows being propped, the sound of water being poured into a glass, a sigh of relief.
“There, there, take a deep breath, that’s it.” Jenna’s voice was soothing, gentle, a different variation of the tones she’d used with him. “Drink
