The Dress of the Season by Kate Noble

sheet down with a flourish, crying, “A-ha!” as she did so. He could feel the disappointment come off of her in waves when it was only the expected suit of armor, its metal dully reflecting the light from her candle. She whirled then, looking around the dark space. A petulant frown on her brow. He couldn’t help it then. He laughed.
    Just a low chuckle. It was a slip. But she was just so damned adorable, looking for him in the dark attic, clutching her candle like the heroine in that terrible novel. Fortunately, that chuckle did not give him away. Instead it came out sounding like an echo, like the remnants of a ghosts whisper. And by Felicity’s reaction, she was thinking the same thing.
    “H–Harris?” The candle in her hand shook slightly. “Is that you?”
    He held still in the cabinet. Felicity took two steps backward, turning to move quickly back past him and toward the door.
    Suddenly, Harris had what a marvelous idea. All he had to do to scare the wits out of Felicity was brush a hand across her shoulder without her seeing. She was already fleeing the attic. He need only reach his hand out and catch her as she moved past him . . . in three, two, one . . .
    His hand had barely grazed her shoulder when she whipped around, and in the dark, must have really only seen a single hand emerging out of the ethereal plane, because she screamed bloody murder, dropping the candle to the ground and snuffing the light.
    “Shh!” he tried, unfolding himself from the cabinet as quickly as the cramped space would allow. “Felicity, ’tis I! It’s Harris!”
    The screaming abruptly stopped. “Harris!” she cried, her breath coming in strange gulps. Her eyes grew, if possible, wider in their relief. “Oh thank God, it is you!” She wrapped her arms around his waist, like she had when she was a reckless, loping child. Then, before the shock of her movements could be processed by his mind (if not his body), she pulled back in his arms—for indeed, strangely his arms had come to wrap around her back—and walloped his shoulder.
    “How dare you frighten me so!” she cried, and even in the dimness of the attic, he could see the pretty little scowl on her face. “That was unconscionably cruel. I thought you were a . . . a . . .”
    “A ghost?” he offered, and she walloped him on the shoulder again.
    “A varmint.”
    “A varmint?”
    “An oversized rat or squirrel. Or some other nasty woodland creature that enjoys a good attic.” Her chin came up, and Harris felt himself smiling. Hell, he felt it to his toes.
    “You really didn’t think I was a spectre?” He could feel her warmth beneath his arms. He knew he should loosen his grasp. He knew he should put some distance between them, but at that moment, he was smiling at her, and she was looking exasperated at him, and Harris could not move his arms for the life of him. And he didn’t want to.
    “Of course not. That would presume that I think ghosts are real, you ninny.” Apparently done walloping him, she placed her hands lightly on his shoulders. “And besides, a ghost would not make me nearly as ill at ease as a varmint. They have tails . . . and teeth.”
    She wrinkled her nose at him, and he chuckled lightly. But he was all too aware. His body was coursing with the knowledge that he and Felicity Grove were
embracing
.
    He was shocked to find her in his arms, but more shocked that he liked her there. And by the look in her eyes, by the touch of her hand against his arm, by the way she leaned against his hands . . . she liked it, too.
    He had been too long without a woman. That had to be it. Needs had been building for months—hell, it was the reason he had sought out the widowed Mrs. Grace to begin with. And in the darkness of the attic, Felicity looked uncannily like Mrs. Grace. They both had dark hair and eyes, and pale pink skin . . .
    Or,
some traitorous part of his brain posited,
Felicity did not look like Mrs. Grace so much as