Charmed: Gowns & Crowns, Book 6

by Jennifer Chance

  “It’s so beautiful,” Caroline murmured, and Simon felt it again, the odd shimmer along his skin, as if she’d touched him. But she hadn’t—she’d merely reached out to brush aside another strand of moss. He frowned, catching the trailing end of the plant in his own hand—no reaction.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, and his attention was drawn forward, a rueful smile springing to his lips. They’d come upon a small clearing where a natural break in the trees allowed the sunlight to bear down. Belle and her cousins had spent several summers back here decades ago planting flowers and erecting tiny little houses, and he realized, eyeing them now, that his grandparents and their friends had been tending the village while he’d been away. A new collection of homes had sprung up at the base of one of the oaks, surrounded by a profusion of summer phlox still maintaining its rich colors despite the lateness of the season. “What is this?” Caroline asked, her voice hushed.

  Simon couldn’t help the surge of affection that colored his voice. “My great-aunts and uncles built it, along with my grandmother. And then, when they were first married, my grandparents added a little to it, and then a little more every few years. Legend has it, the children had originally wanted to construct a folly—a gazebo, I believe, looking out onto nothing but more forest, back here where no one would see it. Their parents said absolutely not, so they took their construction plans to a much smaller scale.” He laughed as he gestured to the profusion of flowers. “I don’t think anyone had any idea that it’d grow to be this big.”

  “It’s magical,” Caroline said, reaching out to draw her finger along the edge of a tiny house built into the crook of a tree. Simon braced himself, and sure enough, her touch sent a visceral jolt of desire through him.

  As if sensing his distress, Caroline turned toward him, her face tilted up in the hazy gloom. Her lips were parted, her eyes wide and dreamy.

  Simon tried to stop himself, he did.

  He failed.

  Chapter Four

  Caroline was barely able to draw in a short, shallow breath Dr. Simon Blake closed the final distance between them and brushed her lips with his.

  The entire world seemed to stop. Energy zipped between them with the force of an electrical shock, which had to be the reason why her heart suddenly jackknifed in her chest, a wave of heat and confusion and almost unbearable longing sweeping over her.

  Almost as abruptly as he leaned in, however, Simon pulled back, his own face a mask of confusion. A rough swath of red flashed up his cheeks and was gone so fast, she wasn’t sure she’d seen it. Could anyone blush that quickly?

  “Forgive me, I apologize,” he said curtly, stepping back a full three feet. His eyes glittered in the half-light of the sun, and he sighed. “And that’s the second apology you’re due, Countess Saleri.”

  Caroline couldn’t help herself, she burst out laughing, her nerves making the outburst sound more like a choked gasp. “When did you...?”

  “The moment you called out.” As he confessed this, his lips twitched, and the movement sent a spike of renewed desire arrowing right through Caroline’s core. What was wrong with her? This was the same gruff, intractable man who’d reduced her family to a presentation slide in front of complete strangers—the man who’d known who she was, and kissed her anyway.

  He’d kissed her!

  Caroline wasn’t a complete innocent, for all that she spent most of her adult years caring for the million and one needs of her older and younger sisters, her father, and his endless rounds of entertaining. She’d dated. She’d certainly done more than kissing. And yet…this stolen kiss in the half-light of a forested idyll hung on her lips as if it was some kind of benediction, some promise that once made, could not be unmade.

  Seemingly oblivious to the significance of the moment, Dr. Blake nodded briskly, then spoke as if the words were being dragged out of his throat. “I was out of line listing such a specific family detail when I had at least a passing suspicion that you might be a fellow Garronia national, at the very least. I could have recast my statements in any number of ways, and I apologize for embarrassing you.”

  “It was…” Caroline paused, her mind scrambling for the right words, when all she could think of was the man’s mouth against hers, the sudden pressure of his body against her own though he’d not actually touched her. The immense intimate awareness she’d felt in that moment would not seem to go away. “It was simply unexpected, Dr. Blake,” she finished lamely.

  “I think, under the circumstances, you should call me Simon,” he said, and she wasn’t mistaken. He was flushed, though not as much as she was. Her cheeks felt like they could easily catch flame at this point.

  “Simon.” The word came out far too breathless, but Caroline persevered. “How did you ever find out about the Saleri curse in the first place? If it’s so worthy of your derision, how did it come to your attention?”

  To his credit, Simon winced, but he didn’t answer the question right away. Instead, he gestured to the garden surrounding them. “I suppose I have no right making fun of any superstition, with a folly such as this.”

  Despite herself, Caroline allowed the distraction to take hold again. The fairy garden was truly one of the most magical things she’d ever seen. Easily two dozen small wooden structures occupied the twenty-foot square space, surrounded by a colorful profusion of flowers. There were little houses of all description, some of them faded, more of them brightly colored in blues and reds and greens. The tree houses had little names, such as Owl House, Merlin’s Perch, and Wisteria, and she could only imagine that the ground level homes were named as well. There was a larger house that looked like it could hold several fairies at once, and a few tiny crushed shell passageways twisted through the flowerbeds.

  “It must take them forever to keep this maintained,” she murmured, and she realized belatedly that she’d drawn closer to the professor. It hadn’t been intentional, but neither did he step away.

  “It’s more protected than you might think,” he said. “The trees have been here long enough that most storms do little more than tear the moss from their branches, and despite the proximity of the marsh, there’s not much flooding. You’ll see, if you go on ahead, that the ground falls away fairly quickly to a more basin-like valley, which takes the brunt of any high water.”

  “You’re right, it does seem safe,” she said, sighing deeply. “Nothing could ever touch us here. Not even the wind.”

  Was it her imagination, or had he edged closer to her? He lifted his hand to gesture to the path that led deeper into what surely had to be an enchanted wood, as dizzy as she suddenly felt, and he smelled of soap and sunshine. “Would you like to see more?”

  Caroline drew in a sharp breath. “Maybe—maybe when I come back,” she said. “I’ll have to anyway, since your grandparents aren’t available.”

  That seemed to make Simon hesitate, and he shook his head as if clearing it. “Then we should continue with the tour of the house.” He smiled, and another spiral of heat started deep inside Caroline, rooting her to the spot. “It’s an easy place to get lost in, all sorts of corners and cubbies and nooks.”

  “Cubbies and nooks,” Caroline repeated, imagining what it must look like on the inside. She wanted to explore every inch of it so badly she could taste it, but surely that was a bad idea. Surely she should simply return another day, when two old people would be the ones escorting her down long hallways and into shadowy alcoves, each room more interesting than the last. The house had seemed to call to her as she’d ridden up the long, gently graded road from town, emerging above the dunes like a sentinel. She’d wanted to explore it at first sight, and had seriously considered trying the door herself when she’d first heard the clang of the ladder.

  As if Simon could read her thoughts, he continued. “You’ll find Pinnacle House a worthwhile diversion, I expect, a real throwback to a bygone era, though of course it’s been modernized. By all accounts, it’s a showpiece. The house has a complete wraparound veranda, tw
o dining rooms, an extended kitchen and outdoor smokehouse, and twelve bedrooms.”

  “Twelve,” Caroline echoed weekly. The idea of peeking into twelve separate bedrooms with Simon Blake close enough to touch wasn’t one she thought she could effectively manage right now. “I’m sure your grandparents would enjoy giving me the tour when I return,” she said, her voice a little shrill.

  Simon regarded her curiously, then shrugged. “If you prefer,” he said. “They’d certainly enjoy it, though I’d ask you to keep them to the first floor. They don’t manage stairs as easily as they used to.”

  “Oh.” Despite herself, Caroline flushed again, suddenly feeling like a boor. Simon’s grandparents had to be more than eighty years old, and the house was immense. She didn’t need them dragging her all the way through it. “I suppose in truth I only need to see the museum. That’s on the first floor, I suspect?”

  “It is. You are, of course, welcome to return and see it when they are present. Or, you can see it now.”

  Simon started heading back toward the edge of the trees and civilization, and Caroline felt herself curiously loath to leave the idyll his grandparents had built. But she hadn’t come here to sightsee, after all. She’d come to reclaim her family’s property. The sooner she got moving on that, the better.

  “Now,” she said, struggling to insert a business-like tone back into her voice. Because the moment they stepped out of these trees, everything would change once more. Simon Blake would return to being an insufferable churl who’d impugned her family—even if not by name—and she’d return to being the middle sister who was there simply to assist everyone else. Everything would be back to normal.

  Simon drew in a long, steadying breath, willing everything to return to normal. Maybe he’d simply been out in the sun too long, affected too much by the heat. It had been unusually humid of late, the way it usually was before a storm, though there was nothing on the radar to indicate turbulent weather headed their way.

  He grimaced. The Weather Channel couldn’t have foreseen Caroline Saleri, though.

  They stepped back out into the sunlight, and he turned to her, tensing as she glided past the last of the Spanish moss. If he could get through the next hour or so without her touching anything, he might be safe. Because as it was, the thought of those soft, elegant hands brushing his skin equally gently was enough to drive him to distraction.

  “How long have you lived here?” Caroline’s question sounded as forced as his own cheerful smile, but Simon leapt on it with gratitude.

  “Since I was a boy, off and on.” His voice sounded scratchy to his own ears, as if he’d not spoken in days. He cleared his throat. “I have a place in Charleston as well, inland enough to serve as shelter should the storms get bad.”

  She nodded. “We’re in the high season for storms, I was told.”

  “We are, though we tend to be lucky here on Pearl Island in that regard. Storms seem to move around us a lot.” See? Simon heard his own voice ringing in his head. Normal. Talking like ordinary people. The strangeness of the idyll in the woods was merely an aberration, a folly, to use the word most precisely. Not the real world.

  They reached the house a few minutes later, and trotted up the front steps. Simon could hear laughter carried forward on the breeze, and relaxed another notch. He and Caroline hadn’t been gone long, and it seemed that no one had missed him. He worried too much about his grandparents and their friends, he knew. They were capable people for all that most of them were in their mid-to-late eighties. They were healthy and happy and they had sharp minds, in the main. Occasionally they would forget where they were or what they were doing, but he could say the same about people half their age. He could say the same about himself, actually, at least this afternoon.

  “Is there anyone inside?” Caroline’s voice had dropped to a murmur, and it hit Simon like a punch to his gut. What was it about this woman that was pushing all his buttons?

  He shook his head. “We should be good.” He couldn’t stop the grin in his voice, and that struck him as odd, as well. He felt like he was sneaking through his own house, and if Caroline figured out why, he was doomed. As much as he loved his grandparents, he had no interest in reliving the story of the fairytale countess.

  They stepped inside and she removed her sun hat, setting it on one of the chairs off to the side of the wide hall. “What a lovely foyer,” she said, and he nodded, glancing around. Pale green walls and white trim greeted his gaze, a welcome cool respite from the heat outside.

  He moved down the hall, but as they passed the first sitting room, Caroline stopped. “Oh…” she murmured, staring inside. “Oh, my.”

  Simon paused and gestured her inside. “It’s the formal parlor, my grandmother would say.”

  “It’s stunning.” Caroline stepped inside the room and twirled around, her arms going wide as if to feel the space. It was a room of particular beauty, Simon had to admit. While most old Southern parlors had the sheen of starched lace and antiques, his grandmother and the generations before her had insisted that the “formal” parlor of Pinnacle House be decorated with found things. Driftwood and bits of sea glass lined the shelves in collections of spare elegance, stones and shells filled clear glass vases. The greyish-taupe wood flooring was polished to a high sheen, and a thick white rug formed a square of plush oasis in the center of the room, where chairs upholstered in light blue and white echoed the slightly deeper blue of the walls and brighter white of the shelves. The barrister bookcases built into two walls were also painted white, but held only the books most beloved by the generations that had passed through these walls—well-worn tomes lovingly installed in places of honor, to be taken out and pored over by children and adults alike. There were also pictures—dozens of pictures—from every era since photography was first invented. They featured guests from all walks of life, from soldiers to sailors to men and women in summer suits and flowing dresses, babies to codgers and every age in between.

  Simon found himself frowning as Caroline exclaimed happily in small, quiet bursts, speaking a language he assumed was Garronois. How long had it been since he’d stepped into this room other than to ensure it was cleaned by the local service to his satisfaction? How long since he’d added a shell to one of the myriad glass vases—or taken one out?

  “What are you thinking?” Caroline asked abruptly and, caught off guard, Simon gestured to the closest vase.

  “A tradition we had here, going back—I don’t actually know how long,” he said. “When someone brings in something from the beach to add to the collection, they take something else out, returning it to the sea.”

  She tilted her head, the small smile she gave him thoroughly delighted. “What a lovely tradition,” she said.

  He nodded. It had been too long since they’d done something with that tradition though. The room seemed like it was caught in time, holding its breath. “We should keep going.”

  “Of course.”

  Simon stepped from the parlor and made it another several feet down the hall, pausing again before the library. “The reading room, I guess you would call it,” he said, waving into the sunny space. Caroline murmured a cooing sound of pleasure, but hesitated once more at the doorstep. A laugh bubbled up in Simon’s throat, and he stepped aside.

  “Go on in,” he said.

  The look she tossed him was curiously grateful, and he followed her, leaning against the door frame as she walked slowly through the library. It was stuffed full of the most hopeless mix of books—literary and commercial fiction, thrillers and romance, picture books to research tomes. He hadn’t cleaned out the shelves in maybe five years, but there’d been no reason too.

  Nobody stayed at Pinnacle House any longer. That’s the way he preferred it, especially with his grandparents spending their nights at their retirement village almost full time now. The B&B was simply too much for them to manage, but they couldn’t abide the thought of hiring help and not being able to take part in the hosting of guests. No
. Better to let that past fade. He’d deal with what to do with the house after they’d passed on. Until then, he’d manage everything himself.

  “Can I go through?” Caroline’s question drew his attention again, and he blinked. She pointed to the pass-through door to the breakfast room, and he nodded, then re-entered the hall to make his own way toward her.

  On the other side of the wall, Caroline exclaimed at the turned-leg table and upholstered chairs, then re-emerged into the hallway as he drew even with the doorway. “The kitchen has to be next, right?”

  “Down that hallway.” Simon pointed. They’d reached the center receiving room of Pinnacle House, and Caroline’s eyes moved up—and up still further, her mouth making a small O as she took in the sweeping two story open space. Windows near the ceiling let in slanting shafts of light, and gave the center room a remarkable, almost ethereal air.

  Her gaze dropped. “This is where people check in, isn’t it?”

  Simon gestured to an enormous desk at the far curve of the room. “When there are guests, yes. It proves an inviting gathering space for meeting, setting off on day trips, all of that. There’s a room with an old fashioned bar and billiards table through there—” he pointed in one direction, “sleeping rooms are up those stairs,” another point, “and the back salons are that way, that lead out onto the porch.”

  She nodded. “And the museum?”

  Another gesture. “Through there.” He gazed down at her, then lifted a brow. “Where to next?”