Cloudy with a Chance of Marriage

“What if the bats have gotten to her?” Miss Hartley scurried off, presumably to look for her mother.

But she ran right into Pratt, who was coming up the stairs with a magnificent, bejeweled sabre.

“My goodness,” she said, “where did you get a sword like that?”

“It belonged to my great-grandfather,” he said. “Stand aside, per favore, bella.” Pratt immediately put her behind him and held the sabre out in a defensive stance. “I will defeat the thing that makes you shriek like a demon.”

“It’s all right,” Stephen told him. “It was only bats.”

“Thank you anyway,” Miss Hartley told Pratt softly. She trembled just a little.

Pratt lowered the sabre, looking almost disappointed. “Come with me.” He put his arm around Miss Hartley’s shoulders. “I will feed your mouth delicious flavors—crisp toast with golden butter and yellow plum jam, savory fried eggs, and sweet, milky tea—so you forget your fear.”

“I’d like that.” Miss Hartley smiled.

Stephen strode past them down the stairs, pulled on his coat, hat, and Hessian boots, and went out into a dense fog. Even though the daughter was all right in her own way, he hated living at 34 Dreare Street with the reprehensible Hartley parents.

And he hated the fog.

He was off to the attorney’s office to see what could be done about the Hartleys and the house, which obviously hadn’t been inspected recently.

There was nothing he could do about the fog.

He could kick himself for signing for the house without checking its sturdiness himself, but who was he to say no to an inheritance? Particularly when the pirate loot he’d been relying on to finance his new life had been unfairly taken from him mere days before he’d learned of the house?

He’d gone only a few steps onto the street when he smelled a delicious odor—frying bacon. And it was coming from the first floor of Hodgepodge.

He saw the vague shape of Otis leaning out the window. “Come up for breakfast, Captain! London isn’t even awake yet. Where could you be off to so early?”

“I’ve got business at my attorney’s office,” he said. “But you’re right. I’m too hasty. No doubt he’s not there yet.”

Otis chuckled. “So wait here with us. The shop won’t open for another hour and a half. We’ve got tremendous news to tell you anyway.”

Otis did sound rather lively for so early in the morning.

“I’d enjoy that,” said Stephen, “if it’s all right with Miss Jones.”

“It should be all right with Miss Jones,” a whiny masculine voice called out from a window at his own house, “since you’re courting her. But what kind of food shall I break my fast with here?”

Stephen gritted his teeth.

Sir Ned.

He was, sadly, awake.

Stephen turned toward the large shadow hanging out one of his windows. “Pratt will take care of you.”

“Bah!” called another voice through the fog.

This voice came from in front of Lady Duchamp’s house, and it was the old crone herself. Stephen hadn’t realized it until just now, when a break came in the mist, but a horse and carriage waited before her house, and she was inside the carriage, at the window. She was apparently going on her regular morning outing, wherever that was.

She leaned on her cane. “You’re a poor excuse for a host, Captain Arrow. And that baronet and his harpy of a wife are up to no good, mark my words.”

“Who is she?” called Sir Ned, his voice thick with fury.

Lady Duchamp’s carriage began to roll down the street.

“Arrow?” Sir Ned yelled again from his window. “You’d better set her straight! Arrow, are you there? And what are you going to do about the bats?”

Stephen ignored him and slipped through the fog to the front door of Hodgepodge. Otis had come downstairs and was waiting to let him in. The familiar odor of books comforted him, and that delicious bacon smell had wafted down from the first floor. He realized he was hungry, he hadn’t read a good story in a long time, and he was anxious to finish the ledge.

It felt good to have such simple cravings.

Of course, his craving for Miss Jones was much more primal. He looked forward to seeing her this morning.

“Miss Jilly is finishing up the toast,” Otis said, as if reading his mind. “Come upstairs.”

Stephen was taken aback by the man’s appearance. He was dressed in a tricorne hat and red coat and was carrying a bell, like a town crier. “What’s going on?”

Otis stood tall. “We have an important announcement to make to Dreare Street,” he said in a dramatic voice. “But first, we must eat.”

Upstairs, Miss Jones was bending over the fire and holding a slice of bread on a poker.

She looked over her shoulder, her cheeks pinkening at the sight of him. “Good morning, Captain.”

He’d never seen a more alluring sight. “Good morning, Miss Jones.”

She seemed struck dumb by his presence, but then she stood straight with her poker and toast. “We’ve much to discuss,” she said rather breathlessly.

“Do we?” He’d rather not discuss. He’d rather do. Kissing, that is. He wished it could be more, but he knew a scorching flirtation was all he could allow.

“Captain.” He felt reprimanded with that word alone.

“Yes, Miss Jones?”

She let out a huff of air. “You need to stop being so … so—” She waved her poker and toast.

“Stop being so what?” He pretended he had no idea what she meant. But he knew she wanted him to stop looking at her the way he’d looked at her on the roof the afternoon previous.

“Are you asking him to stop being so spirited, good-looking, and stylish?” Otis interjected.

“Of course not,” said Miss Jones crossly. “Forget I even spoke. Here.” She thrust the poker toward Stephen. “Grab a plate and take this. We’ve plenty of butter and jam.”

Stephen did as he was told. After he’d slathered the toast with both butter and jam, he sat down at the small table and began to eat. Otis ate a piece of toast as well and then remembered to pass the bacon, which Stephen took with thanks.

Otis looked back between Miss Jones and Stephen and chuckled. “My, my,” he said, and wiped his mouth with a linen serviette.

“What are you on about?” Jilly asked her assistant.

Otis merely shrugged and kept chuckling and eating his toast. Stephen couldn’t help it—he knew that Otis was aware of the tension between Stephen and his mistress. He gave a short laugh, too. Which made Otis chuckle more.

“I need you to be serious,” Jilly said to Otis in her primmest manner. “And you, as well,” she said to Stephen.

Stephen stopped chewing. “I’m perfectly serious, Miss Jones.”

Otis giggled again.

“No you’re not.” Miss Jones narrowed her eyes at Stephen. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“Do you?” He cast a sideways glance at Otis.

He knew they were being like two little boys, but it was an amusing diversion, especially when one wasn’t allowed to give in to impulse and damned well kiss the girl.

“Yes, I do know,” his beautiful neighbor said, “and you’re putting our futures in peril by refusing to listen.”

“But you haven’t said anything,” Otis declared in his sauciest manner.

Miss Jones pursed her lips. “I’m saying it now.”

Stephen sat up straighter. “Do go on.” He did his best to intimidate her with the face he’d used when facing the enemy at sea, the one that had set his own sailors trembling in their shoes—but she merely put a hand on her