Plenty, she realized, if it wasn't a dream and it meant hurting Cole. He had been kind to her, so kind that she could probably never repay him for it. She wasn't going to take advantage of his generous nature by playing fast and loose with his feelings.
He led her onto the porch and unlocked the front door, then took her inside. The interior of the house had the same understated elegance that she had glimpsed in its exterior. Ahead of them, a staircase curved toward the second floor, its banister polished to a high gleam, a brass knob shining .atop the newel post. A gilt-edged mirror hung on the wall, and a gaslight burned in a sconce next to it. Despite its size, the house seemed warm, friendly, and cozy.
"I'll take you on a tour of the place if you'd like," Cole offered when he had hung his hat on a brass hat stand just inside the door.
Annabel found herself stifling a yawn. The heavy meal, plus the long day, had left her tired. "If you don't mind, I'd rather postpone that until tomorrow."
"Of course," Cole said quickly. "You'd like to retire. I'll take you up to one of the guest rooms." He hesitated, then said, "I'm not sure what we have in the way of night-clothes. . . .'.'
"Oh, don't worry about that," Annabel said without thinking. "I don't mind sleeping in the buff."
Cole's eyes widened. "Well, ah," he said after a moment, "however you're comfortable is fine with me." He took her arm again. "The guest rooms are on the second floor."
He led her up the stairs, pausing to light another lamp on the second-floor landing. Then they went down a hallway, their steps almost soundless on a thick carpet runner. Cole stopped in front of a door and opened it. "I'll just light the lamp," he said.
The glow revealed a small but lovely bedroom with a four-poster bed, a dressing table with a mirror above it, and a mahogany wardrobe. The spread on the bed was a rose print, which matched the ornate tracery in the wallpaper.
"It's beautiful," Annabel said in a hushed voice.
"My mother decorated the house before she passed away," Cole said, "and my father was careful not to change anything. Neither have I."
"Oh." She realized he hadn't spoken much about his parents. What little she knew about them came from Mellisande Dupree, in fact. She asked hesitantly, "How old were you when you lost your mother?"
"I was ten," he said quietly.
"That must have been very difficult for you."
He nodded. "My father tried, but . . . he was hurting over her loss, too, of course, and he . . . he never quite understood me the way Mother had . . ."
"I'm sorry, Cole," Annabel said quickly. "I shouldn't have asked you—"
He shook his head and smiled faintly. "No, that's all right. I don't mind talking about it. My father passed away four years ago. We loved each other, I suppose, but things were never the same after my mother died."
"And you've been . . . alone . . . since then?"
"Pretty much," he shrugged. He glanced around the room. "Well, will this be all right?"
"More than all right," Annabel assured him. "It's a lovely room. Thank you for letting me stay here. But tomorrow I'll start looking for a place of my own."
Assuming I'm still here tomorrow and haven't been whisked back to my own time by whatever forces brought me here in the first place.
Annabel realized with a shock that she wasn't in as much of a hurry to get back now.
"I noticed the boxes from Miss Mellisande's downstairs," Cole said. "I'll just leave them there for the night, if that's all right, until you decide what you want to do."
"That's fine," Annabel told him.
"Well, then . . . good night."
"Good night." She looked up at him, not knowing what she expected of him, not even knowing what she wanted.
He hesitated, took half a step toward her, and lifted a hand as if to reach out and touch her. Annabel waited.
Suddenly, he leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead like she was nine years old, then practically leaped backward. "Good night," he said again, hurriedly, and turned to almost run out of the room. The door closed firmly behind him.
Annabel stared after him for a moment, taken by surprise, and then she started to giggle. She was still laughing when she threw herself backward across the bed and sank down into the soft mattress and thick covers.
****
As he walked down the hill ten minutes later, Cole wore the dark blue uniform and the black cap with the short, stiff brim that he should have donned earlier in the evening. His duty time at the firehouse was more than half over, but he was going to report anyway. It was quite possible that Lieutenant Driscoll would hand him his head for being so late. Whatever lectures or punishment the lieutenant handed out, Cole intended to accept them with equanimity. He deserved them, after all, he told himself. He had no suitable explanation for why he had been so negligent in his duty.