“Very nearly.” She eyed the bird’s nest atop his head. “Now for the true challenge.”
“My hair is not so bad as all that.”
She cut off the tail of hair she’d tied back, then, reaching over his shoulder, dropped it onto his lap.
He picked it up the way one might a dead rat. “Thatisa little unpleasant looking.”
The appearance of his hair he’d been toting around had ill prepared her for how soft and thick it actually was. And it was a startlingly dark shade of near-black.
“Perhaps if your position here doesn’t work out, you could open Hope Springs’ first barber shop,” he said.
She laughed. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Do you secretly dream of cutting hair, then?”
“No. I just don’t dream of keeping house for a living.”
Dark hair dropped all around them, covering the towel and the floor. He had so much that needed cutting off. The transformation would be dramatic.
“Whatdoyou dream of doing for a living?” he asked.
“I grew up in an inn. My family ran it for generations. I loved living there, loved the work we did.” She’d thought about it a lot in the three years since she’d left England. “I didn’t realize how much I’d miss it.”
“Hope Springs doesn’t have one of those, either.”
“I know.” She kept cutting, decidedly pleased with the improvement. Most of her effort was made from the back and sides of his head, not affording her the best view of his face. But he didn’tsounddispleased. She simply assumed he didn’tlookdispleased either. “I don’t truly mind being a housekeeper. This is the nicest place Lydia and I have ever lived, and certainly the safest.”
“You were in danger before?” He didn’t seem to like the idea. Sweet man.
“The Widows’ Tower was not in the best area of town, and the building was practically falling down around us. This room feels like the very lap of luxury compared to that hovel.”
“I lived there with Maura and Aidan for a time.” Now that he mentioned it, she thought she remembered Maura telling her that. “If I could’ve scrounged up money enough to see them safely somewhere else, I’d’ve done so without hesitation.”
She stepped around him, ready to tackle the front of his hair. “Maura made the Tower a home. When she moved west, it became a misery. I was never so happy to leave a place in all my life.”
“Even though it means spending your time giving a haircut to a beggar man?”
She fussed with his hair a little, combing through it with her fingers, feeling for any oddly cut pieces or sections that needed more attention. “Beggar man haircuts are my specialty.”
A few snips, and she was perfectly satisfied. She stepped around him and back a bit, wanting to make sure everything looked right from a bit of a distance. He lifted his chin enough to look up at her.
Eliza’s breath caught.Mercy.The man was . . . gorgeous.
His expression changed from curious to worried. “That bad, then?”
She shook her head and forced her voice to function despite the shock of his transformation. “Your eyes are— They’re—”
An angle of mischief tugged at his newly revealed mouth. “The word I’ve heard the most often is ‘piercing.’”
A good word for his ice-blue eyes. They provided a startling contrast to his nearly black hair, which boasted a fair amount of wave now that the weight had been taken away.
Mercy, mercy, mercy.
“Promise me you will never let your hair grow that wild again,” she said. “It’s a sin to hide behind all of that.”
“I will if you promise to fix things if this means Lydia doesn’t recognize me any longer.”
She laughed. “I hadn’t thought of that. I suspect she’s going to be confused.”
