Change of Address by Kate Dolan Read Free Book Online Page A

will—”
    “I’m sorry,” he blurted out, looking her squarely in the
eye. He could manage one eye, at least. It would too much to try for both. “I
am not usually such a dunderhead, I swear. Or if swearing offends you, I avow.
I—I—that is, we live in such proximity, can we not be on friendly terms?”
    “Friendly terms?” She frowned behind a mask of ice that was
now about three inches thick around the eyes.
    “Yes, friendly.” He would focus on that idea, friend, and think of her as someone in whose company he could relax. “You know, I say
friendly things and you look at me as if I’m not such a—a…”
    “Dunderhead,” she suggested.
    “Yes, exactly.”
    She considered for a moment. “I will stop looking at you as
if you were a dunderhead,” she proposed, “if you will stop looking at me as I
am a harebrained damsel without enough sense to leave a burning building.”
    “I never once associated you with a hare,” Charlie insisted
quite truthfully, “not even in my mind. And I do apologize for my sudden
intrusion yesterday. Your sister explained that you saw it as rather an insult
to your intelligence. I just thought that Mary might need help.”
    “Would not this Mary have enough sense to leave a burning
building either?”
    “She would, but I thought…” Really, what had he thought? “I suppose I did not think at all.”
    She nodded. “Yes, I believe men are prone to that. Act first
and think later. They consider it heroic.”
    “But,” he said carefully, struggling to put his logic into
words, “if I had taken time to reason and decided not to enter the house and
Mary had been in distress, she might have died. That would not have been
heroic, leaving her to perish.”
    Miss Castling looked taken aback. “No,” she said slowly. “I
suppose not.”
    “So might,” he suggested carefully, “it be permissible on
occasion to act without conducting a fully reasoned discourse in my head?”
    “You mean without thinking?”
    “Yes”
    “I suppose.” She nodded. “When there is a possibility of
true harm.”
    She did not see him as quite such a dunderhead now, that he
could tell. The look she gave him was far from approving, but he no longer had
the sense that she wished to scrape him off the bottom of her shoe. He had now
progressed to being somewhat akin to a slightly dirty handkerchief—possibly
useful, but best exchanged as soon as possible.
    He still had no idea why she had come. “Do you have a
message you wish me to convey to Isabel?”
    “Oh.” To his tremendous surprise, the cheeks of the icy
beauty began to color, seemingly not from exertion this time but from
embarrassment. She glanced down for a moment before replying. “I, too, have an
apology to make.”
    “If you would prefer to commit your thoughts to paper,” he
offered, “I can send for writing implements.”
    “No, there really is not sufficient time.” She bit her lip
and it seemed as if she could hardly bring herself to speak. “That is, the
message to be conveyed must be delivered as soon as possible.” Then she
actually hung her head.
    “You’re not going to confess to stealing the furniture, are
you?”
    “No,” she chuckled, despite herself. As she looked up, the
mortification in her gray eyes nearly took his breath away. “I spoke too
hastily in declining your father’s kind invitation to Christmas dinner. And now
I have the effrontery to ask if we might accept after all.”
    “Why of course”
    “It is terribly rude on such short notice, and after having
declined once already…”
    “That is no matter at all.” It might be for Cook, but he’d
prepare the meal himself if that meant Miss Castling and her family would be
able to share it with them.
    “Thank you. My mother and sister will be most grateful.”
    Ah, but she did not wish this herself. She appeared
only as an emissary for the others.
    “It is the least we can do to oblige,” he murmured, trying
not to let disappointment