Winterberry Fire: A Silver Foxes of Westminster Novella (Winterberry Park Book 2)(6)

And Ada would fit the bill perfectly. If he could convince her to leave her position at Winterberry Park. Working for Mr. Alexander Croydon was considered something of a coup among ambitious young women in service. Ada had been raised to her position of upstairs maid from the kitchen. She might not want to give up a reliable income to be the second teacher at a ramshackle school run by a man who didn’t fit with the upper classes or with the lower. But perhaps with an offer of marriage thrown in to sweeten the deal….

“Thank you, Alice,” he said with a warm smile. “I think that’s an excellent suggestion.”

He turned to walk around his desk to sit, and to his surprise, Alice followed him. Her eyes glowed as though he’d handed her an award instead of simply approving of her idea to hire a second teacher.

“Do you think so?” she asked, clutching her hands to her chest.

“I do.” Tim smiled and nodded, then searched for blank paper on his desk.

“I do,” Alice repeated, her voice soft and wispy. “That sounds wonderful.”

Tim’s brow pinched in momentary confusion, but he ignored it, looking for something to jot down a note.

“Sir,” Alice began again, hesitant.

“Yes?” Tim glanced to her.

She bit her lip, cheeks bright pink. “Did you know there’s going to be a Valentine’s Day dance next week?”

Tim paused. “I suppose I did, but I’d forgotten.” He went back to searching his desk.

Alice leaned forward, resting her hands on the desk’s edge. “I think it would be splendid if you invited your new teacher to attend with you.”

“Oh.” He paused to think about it. The image of Ada, dressed in her best gown, flowers in her hair, holding his arm as they walked into the town hall, warmed him from the inside out. It was a good thing he was sitting at the desk, because his imagination slowly changed the dress she was wearing to something far more scandalous, then to nothing at all. “That might be a good idea,” he said, his voice hoarse and distant.

“Do you think so?” Alice blinked, seeming far more surprised and delighted than Tim thought his comment warranted. “Oh, that’s lovely.” She glanced over her shoulder to her friends, who were giggling up a storm.

Tim spared them all a brief, flummoxed look, before adjusting his posture so that he could lean back in his chair without offending Alice with his body’s reaction to his imagination. But no sooner did he start to imagine Ada’s expression when he marched up to Winterberry Park to invite her to the dance than his spirits sank. He’d been chased away from Winterberry Park the other day when he’d gone to ask a simple question about Master James. Mr. Noakes had made it clear that he was not to interfere with the servants’ work. So if he was going to ask Ada, he’d either have to wait until Sunday and hope to catch her after services—which wasn’t ideal, as it gave any other man the chance to move in and invite her first—or he’d have to find a much more clever way to ask.

“What’s the best way to ask a woman to a dance if you are unable to ask her directly?” he asked aloud.

Alice sucked in a breath, beaming from ear to ear. “Yes, I suppose there would be reasons one couldn’t ask outright. Certain, shall we say, paternal figures who wouldn’t appreciate it.”

Tim would never have thought of Mr. Noakes as paternal, but he certainly was in that sort of position with the staff of Winterberry Park.

“A secret letter, sir,” Alice went on, leaning against the desk. “A romantical, secret letter. Written as a poem. Something beautiful and…and clandestine.” She clasped her hands to her chest and sighed.

Tim arched an eyebrow. “Romantical and clandestine, eh?”

“Yes, sir.” Alice blinked rapidly. “It would be ever so appreciated.”

“Right.” He nodded and went back to searching for a blank sheet of paper amidst the turmoil on his desk. “Thank you, Alice. You’ve been a great help to me.”

“I would do anything for you, sir,” Alice said, high and breathy, before turning and scurrying back to her friends.

Tim gave her an odd look, but whatever was wrong with Alice was quickly forgotten as he located a blank piece of paper. He pulled it toward him, then reached for a fountain pen in the cup at the corner of his desk. He tested the ink, then held the pen over the paper as Alice and her friends, then George and his, gathered their things and left, leaving Tim alone in the schoolroom.

He wasn’t much for poetry. Words just didn’t come together for him that way. He debated copying some of the great lines of Shakespeare or Byron, but that didn’t seem right either. In the end, the only thing he could think of to make the letter romantical and clandestine was to be clever with names.

“‘My dearest A—,’” he began. “‘I have admired you from afar for these many years. You are the sun to my horizon, the ink to my pen.’” He paused with a smirk, staring at his pen. Apparently, original imagery wasn’t his forte. “‘Please say you’ll come to the Valentine’s Day dance with me. Perhaps that will be the dawn of a new understanding between us. Yours affectionately, T—.’”

As far as missives went, it wasn’t brilliant. But as long as it did its job, he didn’t care. He folded the letter, then tucked it into his pocket as he stood. He marched to the back of the schoolroom, plucking his winter coat and hat from the peg where he kept them alongside those of his students. He was careful to lock the schoolhouse door as he left. His living quarters were above the schoolroom, after all, and accessed through the same door.