by Leslie Kelly
He paused to smile at the memory. Oh, they’d been grateful.
Clearing his throat, he eventually continued. “We’ve gotten each other out of more scrapes than most men ever dream of having.”
The other man finally lowered his pen, turning in his chair. A smile creased Roderick’s lips and his fine gray eyes stared somewhere over Mortimer’s shoulder, as if he were looking into his own past. His youth. “Indeed we have, sir,” he said softly.
Rising from his chair, Mortimer crossed the room to his friend and put his hand on the stack of invitations. “So, after all these years, what am I going to have to do to get you to stop calling me sir?”
Roderick rose to face him, that formal smile never fading. “You have only to ask.”
Mortimer’s jaw dropping, he stared in disbelief at the other man. “There must have been a thousand times over the years I’ve told you to call me Mortimer.”
Roderick nodded. “That is correct. You’ve told me, sir.”
He saw the pride in the other man’s wrinkled brow, the honesty in his tired eyes, and realized what Roderick was getting at. “I’ve told you as a servant,” he mumbled.
Seeing Roderick’s face tighten, Mortimer felt like a blind fool. How was it possible he’d never realized his most trusted companion still believed he was thought of as merely a butler?
“Have I ever asked you as a friend?”
A slight shake of his head preceded Roderick’s answer. “I don’t believe so, sir.”
Nodding and placing his hands behind his back, Mortimer righted a wrong that he’d never even realized he’d committed. “Roderick, my dearest and most loyal friend, will you please do me the honor of calling me by my given name?”
Satisfaction and pride making the other man’s eyes glow, he replied, “I’d be delighted to…Mortimer.”
Mortimer clapped a hand on Roderick’s shoulder. “Excellent. Most excellent.” Then he walked around to the other side of the writing table and pulled up a chair, reaching for a pen. “Now, come, we have invitations to address.”
Roderick tugged the pen out of his hand. “Your writing’s atrocious. You handle the stamps.”
Laughing, Mortimer looked up and gazed out the window. Snow continued to drift down as it had throughout the day.
He smiled at the thought of a white Christmas, and a snowy white bridal gown. And perhaps, someday soon, the pale delicate skin of a newborn baby girl he could cuddle in his arms. As he’d once cuddled his only child.
Oh, yes, there was much to look forward to. So very much. All coming to him right here in this place that had called to him from the first time he’d heard of it. His own little slice of heaven, called Trouble.
“You know,” he murmured as he continued to stare at the world outside his window, “after all these years—all our adventures—I think I’m finally ready to settle down.”
“You, settle down?” One of Roderick’s brows cocked up in blatant disbelief. “That, Mortimer Potts, is the most outrageous thing I have ever heard you say.”
They stared at one another for a moment, Roderick silently daring him to deny it. He couldn’t, of course. So breaking into a rueful smile, Mortimer admitted, “Yes, I suppose it was.”
Nodding as he acknowledged his fervent hope that his most exciting days were not yet behind him, Mortimer reached for the invitations, returning to work.
And daydreaming about what wondrous adventures still awaited him.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-0589-8
HERE COMES TROUBLE
Copyright © 2006 by Leslie A. Kelly
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