Page 4 of Estelle’s Ardent Admirer (The Bookshop Belles #1)
CHAPTER 4
Letting The Cat Out Of The Bag
P erhaps it had been a mistake to begin jesting with Miss Baxter again the moment he saw her, Felix recognised as soon as the unfortunate sentence left his lips and her pretty face darkened to a scowl.
He’d gone too far.
He’d come to Hatfield to smooth things over, and he’d made it worse.
The Miss Baxter behind the counter - so alike they could only be sisters, though the one behind the counter was wearing glasses - coughed, and then said in incredulous tones; “I beg your pardon - did you say to marry her? Estelle, who is this?”
“Please just go away, Mr Yates,” his Miss Baxter said wearily.
“Yates?” one of the Baxter sisters said. “This is Lord Ferndale’s grandson?”
“Estelle, do not chase away paying customers!” This was a third Miss Baxter, emerging from among the bookshelves. Taller and sturdier than the other two, still the facial shape, the dark hair and intriguing green-gold eyes marked her inevitably as one of the sisters. Felix tried to remember how many of them his grandfather had said there were. He bowed politely to the newcomer.
“Good morning, Miss Baxter. Ah, but you are all Miss Baxters, are you not? Miss Baxter, will you not introduce me to your charming sisters before I get impossibly confused as to which Miss Baxter I am addressing? Or are you even Miss Baxter - which of you is the eldest?”
The tall Miss Baxter stifled a laugh behind her hand, and Felix grinned at her.
“Very well, Mr Yates,” his Miss Baxter said ungraciously. “I am indeed Miss Baxter. This is my sister Miss Marie -” indicating the glasses-wearer “- and this is my sister Miss Louise. Over there is our youngest sister Miss Bernadette.”
Felix blinked, and then looked again. He hadn’t even seen the fourth sister, but there she was, sitting behind the counter in a dark corner, folding something up into small paper packets. She glanced up at him with a polite little nod before returning her attention to what she was doing.
“Ah, you are the sister who binds books!” he said to Miss Louise. “My grandfather speaks highly of your skill, and indeed, I admire the quality of your work. I quite covet his beautifully bound set of Daniel Defoe’s works.”
Miss Louise smiled at him in quite a friendly way and said, “How kind of you, Mr. Yates! I have enjoyed reading Defoe’s scandalous tale of Moll Flanders, although there were no chapters in the entire book where one could take a rest.”
“That’s possibly the least objectionable part of that tale,” he said with a laugh. “There were parts of it that quite made me blush!”
Miss Louise continued, “Estelle brought back with her several books Lord Ferndale has commissioned me to rebind. I shall take care of them in a timely manner, I assure you. I will need a couple of weeks to get the materials I need, but the repairs themselves should not take long.”
“I appreciate your dedication,” he said, smiling her way.
They were all lovely in their own way, but there was something indefinable about his Miss Baxter that continued to intrigue him. “Honoured to meet you all,” he added gallantly.
“How charming,” Miss Baxter said in a mocking tone. “Now please either buy some books or go away.”
“ Estelle! ” Marie and Louise exclaimed in unison, obviously quite shocked. “That’s no way to speak to Lord Ferndale’s grandson,” Marie added.
A naughty thought popped into his head. “Now, is that any way to speak to your fiancé, Miss Baxter?” He shouldn’t tease her, really he shouldn’t, but goodness she was pretty when she was cross, her eyes flashing and pink colour flushing her pale cheeks.
“You are impossible!” Obviously furious, she stomped past him and behind the counter, snatching up a pile of correspondence from the desk and turning her back on him as she pretended to read it.
Felix grinned. Well, at least she wasn’t trying to throw him out. He looked about the bookshop. Perhaps he should actually buy some books - he needed something to read, and his grandfather behaved about his library rather as a dragon might with a hoard of gold. Humming a cheerful little tune under his breath, he stepped along the aisle to examine a shelf of travelogues as the four sisters gathered together behind the counter.
Snippets of low-voiced conversation reached his ears as he browsed the books.
“ Fiancé? ” The single-word question was Miss Louise, he thought.
“Absolutely not. It’s all a little silly. This is a jape between us, really. Yes, Mr Yates is Lord Ferndale’s grandson, returned from a tour of Greece. He was at dinner last night, and Lord Ferndale thought it would be funny to say we should marry.”
Dear me, Estelle sounded positively disgusted. Once again, Felix had to wonder what exactly it was about the thought of him as a potential husband that so repulsed her. It was certainly a novel reaction from a lady to the idea, in his experience.
“He’s very handsome.” That quiet voice, he thought, might be Bernadette.
“And quite obviously rich, from the look of his clothes. Not to mention he’s Lord Ferndale’s grandson! Why don’t you marry him?” That was Louise, and Felix grinned at the Italian travel guide he was leafing through. He rather thought Louise might be an ally.
Estelle’s reply was too quiet for him to hear, unfortunately. He leaned towards the counter, took a small step in that direction, and was distracted by a soft yowl underfoot.
“Hullo, puss.” The black cat whose tail he had barely missed standing on looked up at him from unblinking green eyes. “Aren’t you a handsome specimen?”
Felix liked cats, and this one was a beauty; large and healthy-looking with glossy black fur. He bent to scratch behind the cat’s ears and was rewarded with a throaty purr.
The purring grew louder as he continued tickling the cat under her chin and rubbing her soft ears. The louder her satisfied purrs grew, the harder it became to eavesdrop on the conversation. He overheard something about their father in France, and snatches about marriage. He would have to stop patting the cat in order to hear more clearly.
As he straightened up again, his stomach rumbled, making even more noise than the cat.
“Mister Yates, have you found anything interesting?” the tallest one, Miss Louise, asked him.
He stood upright. The cat began rubbing herself against his shins, leaving thick tufts of fur behind on his boot tassels.
“Er, yes, these travelogues are intriguing,” he said. His stomach rumbled again. Heat roared up his neck with embarrassment.
He should buy these books. Then at least the other three Baxters would welcome him in the shop. He also needed breakfast. He was having a hard time thinking clearly because he hadn’t eaten anything this morning before racing off after Miss Baxter - his grandfather’s expression of disgust had been such that Felix had turned on his heel in the very door of the breakfast-room and made haste for the stables.
He collected three books and approached the women at the counter. “I shall return soon and purchase these and most likely more. Could you recommend a respectable place to break my fast?”
Miss Baxter delivered the most delightful smile; he wondered if she might be warming to him at last.
His family had offered her a fine meal last night. She might return the favour this morning in her home. He assumed they lived nearby, perhaps in a house behind the shop?
Miss Baxter said, “The Red Lion on the corner is excellent at providing food for travellers at all times of day.”
Oh, so she wasn’t inviting him to sup with them. While she’d eaten breakfast before leaving the Hall, he wondered if her sisters had done so too. Perhaps they were all early risers and ate at dawn? Goodness, what a frightful thought to awake so early. Still, perhaps it might be time for morning tea and cake, in that case? But all of them were looking at him in silence, not one of them suggesting that a pot of tea and cake would be just the thing. Felix sighed.
His stomach rumbled again, and unless he wanted to eat the books themselves, he needed to take up their suggestion of eating at the coaching inn.
“In that case, I shall bid you adieu for now,” he said, delivering a respectable bow and walking to the door. As he pulled the door open and the bell rang, inspiration struck. “Perhaps I should write my memoirs of my recent travels. I saw little on the subject of Greece on your shelves. My recent experiences could prove enlightening. Are you expecting to receive any books about Greece in the near future?”
Miss Baxter leaned toward him, her hand stretched out, waving. “No.”
She obviously wanted to wave him off, but he would not be distracted. He would ask the book binder of the family. She seemed to like him. “Miss Louise, you bind books. Do you think you could bind a book that I might get printed? After you’ve finished repairing some of my grandfather’s books first, of course?”
“Of course, Mr. Yates,” Miss Louise said. “The printer we use is on Market Street, Black and Sons, I can recommend…”
Miss Baxter rushed toward him, “Shut the…”
A black ball of fur streaked past his boots.
“... door!”
Oh hells. The cat had run out of the shop and vanished down the street.
Because he’d stood there delivering an extended farewell instead of simply leaving.
Miss Baxter grunted in frustration.
“Oh dear,” Felix had wanted to help, not create distress.
“You want to help?” A look of determination came over Miss Baxter’s face. “If you want to make yourself useful, go out and find that cat. Otherwise, in nine weeks you’ll be helping us find new homes for yet another batch of Crafty’s kittens!”