It didn’t matter that Frederick J. Fitzwilliam had the sort of broad, muscular build that suggested he led football teams to victory when he was younger and still worked out regularly now.
It didn’t matter that he wore a perfectly tailored three-piece suit, the charcoal-gray jacket and starched white shirt clinging to those broad shoulders like they were made specifically for his body, or that his matching gray slacks fit him just as well.
None of this mattered, because this was someone with a room I maybe hoped to rent. Nothing more.
I had to get a grip on myself.
I tried to focus on the more eccentric aspects of his outfit—the frilly blue cravat he wore at his neck; the shiny wing-tipped shoes on his feet—but it didn’t help. Even with those unusual accessories he was still the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen.
As I stood there, yelling at myself to stop gaping at him while being helpless to do anything but, Frederick just stared at me with a puzzled expression. I wasn’t sure what there was to be puzzled about. He had to know how hot he was, right? He must have been used to getting this reaction from people. He probably had to fend horny people off with a stick every time he left his home.
“Miss Greenberg?”
Frederick cocked his head to the side, probably waiting for me to form a complete sentence. When I didn’t, he stepped out into the hallway—most likely to get a closer look at the weirdo who’d just shown up at his door.
But his eyes weren’t on me anymore. They were on the floor, riveted to the cheesy doormat at my feet.
He scowled at the stupid thing like it had personally wronged him.
“Reginald,” he muttered under his breath. He knelt down and grabbed the welcome mat in both hands. I absolutely did not stare at his perfect butt as he did it. “Thinks he’s so funny, does he?”
Before I could ask who Reginald was or what he was talking about, Frederick turned his attention back to me. I must have looked pretty out of it because his expression softened at once.
“Are you quite all right, Miss Greenberg?” His deep voice conveyed what sounded like genuine concern.
I managed, with difficulty, to tear my eyes away from his perfect face, and stared pointedly down at my shoes. I cringed at the sight of my paint-splattered, beat-up old Chucks. I’d been so flustered I’d forgotten all about the fact that I’d showed up covered in paint and wearing the worst clothes I owned.
“I’m fine,” I lied. I stood a little taller. “I’m just . . . yeah. I’m just a little tired.”
“Ah.” He nodded, understanding. “I see. Well, Miss Greenberg . . . are you still interested in touring the apartment tonight to determine whether it suits your needs? Or would you perhaps prefer to reschedule given your current fatigue and your . . .” He trailed off, his eyes roaming over me slowly, taking in every part of my outfit.
I flushed hot with embarrassment. Okay, yes—clearly I had underdressed for coming here. But he didn’t need to make a thing about it, did he?
In a way, though, I was grateful. He might be the most attractive man I had ever seen in my life, but people who were snobby about appearances were seriously one of my biggest pet peeves. His reaction to my clothes helped prod me from my ridiculous lusty fugue state and back to reality.
I shook my head. “No, it’s fine.” I still needed a place to live, after all. “Let’s do the tour. I’m feeling okay.”
He looked relieved at that—though I couldn’t understand why, given how unimpressed with me he seemed so far.
“Well, then.” He gave me a small smile. “Do come in, Miss Greenberg.”
I’d seen the pictures he’d sent, so I thought I’d been prepared for what waited for me inside. I saw immediately that the pictures hadn’t done the place justice.
I’d expected it to be fancy. And it was.
What I hadn’t expected was that it was also . . . strange.
The living room—like the pictures of the kitchen and the spare bedroom Frederick had sent me—seemed frozen in time, but not in a way I could put into words and not frozen in any specific period I could name. Most of the furniture and the fixtures on the walls looked expensive, but they were thrown together in such a multi-style, multi-era jumble it made my head ache.
Dozens of shiny brass wall sconces created the sort of dim and atmospheric lighting I’d only ever seen in old movies and haunted houses. And the room wasn’t just darkly lit. It was also just . . . dark. The walls were painted a dark chocolate brown that I vaguely remembered from art history classes had been fashionable in the Victorian era. A pair of tall, dark wooden bookshelves that must have weighed a thousand pounds each stood like silent sentinels on either end of the room. Atop each of them sat an ornate brass, malachite candelabra that would have seemed right at home in a sixteenth-century European cathedral. They clashed in style and in every other imaginable way with the two very modern-looking black leather sofas facing each other in the center of the room and the austere, glass-topped coffee table in the living room’s center. The latter had a stack of what looked like Regency romance novels piled high at one end, further adding to the incongruity of the scene.
Besides the pale green of the candelabras, the only other color to be found in the living room was in the large, garish, floral Oriental rug covering most of the floor; the bright red, glowing eyes of a deeply creepy stuffed wolf’s head hanging over the mantel; and the deep-red velvet drapes hanging on either side of the floor-to-ceiling windows.
I shivered, and not just because the room was freezing.
In short, the living room was confirmation of something I’d known for years: people with money often had terrible taste.
“So. You like dark rooms, huh?” I asked. It was maybe the most ridiculously obvious thing I could possibly have said—but was also the least offensive thing I could think of. I stared at the carpet as I waited for him to reply, trying to decide if the flowers I stood on were supposed to be peonies.
A long pause. “I . . . prefer dimly lit places, yes.”
“I bet you get a lot of light in here during the day, though.” I pointed to the windows lining the room’s eastern wall. “You must get a fabulous view of the lake.”
He shrugged. “Probably.”
I looked at him, surprised. “You don’t know?”
“Given our proximity to the lake and the size of these windows, I can infer that one can see the lake quite well from here should one wish to do so.” He fidgeted with a large golden ring on his pinky finger; it had a blood-red stone as big as my thumbnail in its center. “I keep the curtains drawn, however, while the sun is up.”
Before I could ask why he’d waste a view like that by never looking at it, he added, “Should you decide to move in, you may open the curtains whenever you wish to see the lake.”