Chase grinned. “You weren’t at breakfast.”

Her cheeks blossomed with color. “I fell back asleep.”

“So did I, but Stephen was not about to allow me the luxury of actually enjoying it. You’d better get yourself something to eat, or you’ll be starved.”

“I’ll eat some bread and cheese on the way to the field.” She plopped on the edge of her bed and grabbed the boot and began tugging. “I don’t know why this won’t go on.”

“Let me help.” Chase moved toward the bed, but something sparkling in the open wardrobe made him pause. “What’s that?” He walked to it and pushed the door farther open. On the bottom shelf sat a pair of shoes. And not just any shoes, but lovely beaded silver satin ballroom slippers. He picked one up and looked at Harriet.

She tossed the boot on the floor and crossed to his side. “They’re from my father. He gave them to me on my seventeenth birthday.” She traced a finger down the shoe, lingering on the beads. There was a wistful gleam to her eyes, a sadness, too.

Chase turned the small shoe over in his hand. “It’s never been worn.”

She shrugged and turned away, her expression shuttered. “Where would I wear that?” Her fingers brushed her skirts. “And with what? Father was not a practical man. Just a dreamer.”

“Dreaming is important.”

“Not when it prevents you from dealing with reality,” she retorted, sitting back on the edge of the bed and picking up her boot. “He always wanted the good life. So he pretended. And now, we’re all paying for it.”

Chase looked down at the slipper, wondering how many years it had rested in the bottom of the wardrobe. He looked at the shelf, then collected the mate. “Here. Put these on.”

She paused. “What?”

Chase came to stand in front of her. “Put these on. I want to see you wear them.”

“Why?”

“Maybe because you never have.”

She set the boot back on the floor. “I’ve worn them once or twice.”

He looked at the perfect, unscuffed soles. “Where? In here?”

She nodded.

Chase shook his head. “That will not do.” He knelt before her.

Harriet stiffened. “What are you doing?”

“I am going to put these shoes on your feet.”

“Why? Captain, I’m already late and—”

“Five minutes won’t matter.” He glanced up at her. “Put them on. For me.”

“For…why would I do that?”

“Why not?”

She bit her lip and he could see her mulling the thought, considering it from every angle. “I suppose—”

“Good,” he said, not giving her time to reconsider. “Take off your stockings.”

“My—whatever for?”

“Because these slippers will never fit over such thick woolen stockings.”

She sighed, but to his surprise, she did as she was told, rolling the gray stocking down her calf, unwittingly giving him a bare flash of a nicely rounded leg. The sight heated him in ways a mere rounded leg never had before.

He took her foot in his hand. Her foot seemed tiny, delicate even, against his large palm. “You deserve to wear shoes like these.”