Winterberry Fire: A Silver Foxes of Westminster Novella (Winterberry Park Book 2)(15)

Tim shrugged. “Thewlis’s store had a bunch of them brought in from a greenhouse in Cornwall. They’re supposed to be for decorations for the Valentine’s Day dance, but he let me buy one.”

“How kind of him. And how kind of you.” She glanced up at Tim with her head still tilted down, which she hoped would produce just the right, flirtatious image to spur him on to more.

“Ada, I—ouch!” Tim surged forward to take her hands, but ended up pricking himself on one of the rose’s thorns.

“Oh, are you all right?” Ada skipped back to set the rose on a small table beside the sofa, then rushed to Tim. “You didn’t cut yourself, did you?”

She grabbed his hands and turned them up to inspect them. The intimacy of the move brought them even closer together. They both paused, their eyes met, and it was as though the air had filled with an electric charge.

“Ada,” Tim began. “I hope you know how much I look forward to the time we spend together.”

“Yes,” Ada whispered. It felt like a silly answer, but all she wanted to say to him, about everything and in answer to every question he could have asked her, was yes, yes, yes.

“I’ve been thinking about ways we could spend more time together,” Tim continued.

“I’d like that,” she said. Any moment. Any moment now, he was going to ask her to the dance.

“I think about you all the time,” he went on. “Sometimes even during lessons, when I should be concentrating.”

“I know,” Ada laughed. “I mean, I find myself doing the same thing. Thinking of you, that is.” She glanced shyly up at him.

He burst into a charming, modest smile. “Things have been so chaotic at the school lately.”

“Oh?” Ada fluttered her lashes. He was going to get around to asking her to the dance soon, wasn’t he?

“And it has had me thinking that I need help.”

“Help?” She did her best to keep her expression neutral. What did his classroom have to do with the dance?

“I thought, perhaps, another teacher would make my burden lighter and my life more enjoyable. In so many ways.”

The heat in his eyes doubled, but Ada felt herself deflating. “Another teacher,” she said, trying to keep her smile and remain positive. “Yes, I suppose that would be helpful.”

“And I was thinking,” he started, leaning closer to her, “that—”

The sound of whistling floated in from the path leading up to the cottage’s front door. Ada gasped. Tad. She’d know his whistling anywhere.

“Oh, no.” She pulled away from Tim, scanning the room desperately for any kind of escape. In the rush of being with Tim, she’d forgotten that she’d asked Tad to meet her. If he saw her with Tim, not only would it break his heart, it would give him a reason to go to Mrs. Musgrave to have her sacked. And while she wasn’t certain Tad was the vindictive type, a broken heart could lash out in unexpected ways.

The cottage was small, only two rooms. The main room contained the living area where she and Tim stood and a small kitchen in the back corner. There was a kitchen door leading out to the overgrown vegetable garden, but Ada would never be able to make it through before Tad burst in on them. And she didn’t think she could bear either for Tad to see her with Tim or, worse still, for Tim to think that she had arranged a clandestine rendezvous with another man, even though she had.

“What is it?” Tim asked, glancing toward the front door. “What’s the problem?”

Ada scrambled for an explanation that didn’t involve admitting to Tim she’d arranged to meet another man alone. “Um, I’m not supposed to be away from the big house,” she said, which was partially true. “We have so much to do. If anyone from Winterberry Park were to see me here, I’d be in trouble.”

“Then quick.” Tim grabbed her arm and turned her toward the bedroom door. “Hide.”

Ada nodded. “You need to hide too,” she added as she bolted for the bedroom. There wasn’t any other way that she could see. She shut the bedroom door behind her and searched for escape. The windows seemed a likely option.

But before she could even think of wrenching open one of the windows above the bed and climbing out, she heard Tad exclaim something indistinct in the main room. Which meant he could hear whatever she did in the bedroom. There was no way she could open the window in time. Worse still, the bedroom door hadn’t latched, and was slowly swinging open again.

Ada glanced desperately around the room. There was no way out that didn’t involve her facing a heap of trouble she didn’t want to face. The only thing for it was to drop to the floor and slide herself under the bed. She’d hide there with the dust until it was time to come out.



Tim watched Ada dive into the bedroom, his heart beating in his throat. The last thing he wanted was for her to lose her position at Winterberry Park dishonorably, even though he intended to coax her out of working as a maid so that she could come teach at his school. Really, he wanted more than that, but one thing at a time.

“Hello there.”

He snapped back to the door as the tall, rather dim footman he’d given his letter for Ada to the other day strode in.

“Oh, it’s you,” the man said. He stepped farther into the cottage, glancing this way and that as though he were searching for something.