Keeper of Enchanted Rooms (Whimbrel House, #1)

by Charlie N. Holmberg

after the hired boat dropped off Merritt and the one bag he’d packed, he heard a beautiful thing. Silence.

❤️

Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms, or BIKER for short.

“Really, little house. He’ll never take care of you if you behave like a child.”

She didn’t want the thing deliquescing while she stood atop it.

Love that word!

“Chaos is disorder, but if something is already in chaos, then its disorder is order.”

The house didn’t respond.

Lol

stultify

Anothrr brilliant word

She hadn’t put any wards in the living room or adjoining sunroom, and dark shadows roiled within, as though the house were having a tirrivee at having been forced into order.

In his office, Mr. Fernsby had multiple pens and pencils strewn about, as though every time he set one writing implement down, he retrieved another instead of picking up the first. The floor was littered with half-filled papers, some crumpled, some flat, others in between. Worse, his dinner plate was sitting next to the notebooks, and there was still food on it. Frowning, Hulda picked up the plate and carried it downstairs. Where she found his breakfast dishes had not quite made it to the sink, his fork was on the floor, and the eggs were not put away. And the most atrocious of them all, she later discovered, was that Mr. Fernsby did not make his bed. She stared at the disheveled monstrosity in his room, blankets askew, pillows flat, one forgotten on the floor. For goodness’s sake, she understood the library being a mess, the house was what the house was. But this was ghastly. Expected from aristocracy, yes, but this was the United States, and Mr. Fernsby was not accustomed to staff. He had no excuses. She blanched. What if he doesn’t wash his sheets?

Stay and read with me. Stay and spend quiet, peaceful time with Merritt Fernsby. Absorb his work, watch him write, feel a part of it. It was as alluring as the scent of freshly baked rolls at the end of a toilsome day.

Now she found it strangely charming. Which she should not . . . but Merritt’s—Mr. Fernsby’s—soft words in the kitchen yesterday had softened her resolve. A resolve she heavily starched when alone, yet somehow managed to crinkle whenever she was in his presence.

She liked being in his presence, even if it was quiet. She could be happy with just that—

Silent companionship 😊

The floor bucked upward, tossing Hulda from her seat and propelling her toward Mr. Fernsby.

This is the cutest thing!

antediluvian.

ANother fantastic word

“If you don’t intend for the couple to have a happy ending, then don’t involve them with each other at all. You’ll lose readers. The general populace prefers comedies, not tragedies.”

There musst be a HEA

He rubbed his chin. Stubble covered it; he hadn’t shaved today. There was something distinctly masculine about the unkemptness, and Hulda briefly wondered how rough it would feel under her fingers.

“Have you ever wondered,” he followed up without missing a beat, “if we’re all characters in another’s book? If all of our actions, whims, thoughts, and desires are being controlled by some omniscient author?”

His expression brightened upon seeing her, which created the sensation of a hundred hatching butterflies in her stomach.

Cuttttteeeee

“And what exercise do you have planned for within doors?”

Hahahahahahaa

pulchritudinous,”

What a word!

Beauty is just like a book. Some will not bother to look beyond the cover; others will find the entire tome utterly captivating.”

Perhaps tomorrow Baptiste would make soup so Merritt could drown himself in it.

Lol Merritt so dramatic