He trailed after her as she strode past him, toward the room in the rear of the shop where he’d been lurking before she’d arrived. He’d lit a fire in the stove a few hours earlier, and when Miss Kendall spotted a kettle on a shelf above it, she turned toward him and arched a mildly accusatory brow.

“I don’t use it,” he said.

She continued to stare at him while she lifted the kettle and smiled smugly when she felt water sloshing inside.

“I rarely use it,” he amended, shrugging.

With an entrancing combination of grace and efficiency, she placed the tin kettle on the stove, rinsed out a chipped teapot, and polished a dimpled strainer. Reese sank into an armchair and watched, grateful for the distraction and—to his amazement—her company. For there were very few people he could tolerate for more than five minutes, and even fewer people who could tolerate him.

While Miss Kendall waited for the water to heat, she moved about the room humming softly as she fluffed the pillows on a threadbare settee, organized the random pieces of crockery and dishware on the shelf, and stacked a week’s worth of old newspapers in a neat pile beside his chair.

Once the room was mostly in order, she leaned over a small potted plant that looked like ivy but probably wasn’t and began tenderly plucking off its brown, shriveled leaves. Reese snorted to himself, thinking she’d have more luck resuscitating Marie Antoinette. “Why are you tidying up?” he asked.

Her long, graceful fingers froze, and her gaze slid toward his. “Because it’s untidy.”

“But it’s not your duty to clean.”

She frowned at the gossamer layer of dust on the table holding the pot. “Apparently, it’s no one’s duty.” The comment would have sounded snide coming from most people, but Miss Kendall managed to make it sound like a compliment. “Besides, it’s more pleasant to pass the time in surroundings that are serene and free of clutter,” she said.

Reese grunted. He could row to the center of a glass-surfaced lake on a windless day. He could meditate in the middle of a peaceful, ancient forest. No amount of tranquility on the outside would ever calm the tempest raging inside him. But Miss Kendall wouldn’t understand his particular brand of misery. What could a vibrant, beautiful young woman know of war and terror and shame?

When the teakettle began to whistle, she reluctantly left the plant she tended and set about preparing two cups of tea.

“I told you I don’t drink tea,” he said, acutely aware that he sounded like a crotchety old curmudgeon.