Fool Me Twice (8 page)

Heart quickening, she turned her attention toward the duke. He reclined on his bed, lost amid the shadows cast by his canopy. Only his eyes glittered out from the murk. “Ah,” he drawled. “My newest housekeeper.”

How could a man who wrote so beautifully have gone so rotten? She could not think of him as the same person who had written those essays. And she
had
to get him out of this room. What on earth had he been doing in here? He was not slurring his words, and the air held no reek of alcohol—or smoke, either, thank goodness. All she smelled was . . . sweat. Not unpleasant. But sweat all the same.

“Your Grace,” she said, remembering to curtsy. “I heard a disturbance. I wished to make certain you were well.”

“I suppose that’s a matter for debate.
Miss
Johnson.”

She resented the heat that came to her face. Had he no shame? Why would he wish to remind her of his abominable behavior at their last meeting? She was tempted to quote him to himself:
We too often mistake as a privilege of rank that breed of low behavior which, among the poor, we readily recognize as vice.

Instead, she said sharply, “Very true, Your Grace.
Bedlam is quieter. I imagined you must be disassembling your furniture.”

He shifted a little, bringing his upper half into clarity. He was undressed from the waist up.

She startled back into the door frame. His leanness brought into prominence the sort of muscles generally stored beneath a healthy layer of fat—and
clothing
. “If I have interrupted—”

“What of it? It seems to be a habit of yours.” He reached for his shirt, drawing it on. His abdomen flexed with every movement. Rather a fascinating effect.

She yanked her attention back to her cause. He seemed more voluble today. That wasn’t saying much, but she would press the opportunity while she found it. “These rooms should be cleaned, Your Grace.”

“No.”

“I am informed that you’ve forbidden the maids entry for a month or more. And to be frank . . .” She made herself look directly at him, willing herself not to redden. “It smells in here.”

Momentarily he looked astonished. It was the most animated expression she had ever seen him wear, though it consisted merely of the widening of his eyes, and the briefest lift of his brows.

And then, miracle of miracles, he
laughed
. Not for long, not with much energy, but it was definitely, distinctly, a laugh. “And what do they smell like, ma’am? Pray tell me, how do I stink?”

“Like perspiration, I’m sorry to say.”

He gave her a mocking smile. “How shocking,” he said. “God alone knows what I’ve been doing up here.”

If she staged a fire, he’d flee this room quick enough.
But how did one
stage
a fire without
setting
one? Arson was a step too far for her. “It would not take above an hour,” she said. “A very quick cleaning—”

“Must I sack you again?” He stood, emerging from the shadow of the canopy. His disordered, shaggy blond hair lent him a piratical quality, amplified by his wolfish smile. “The newspapers will enjoy that detail: being fired twice.”

She inched toward the door. She saw no bottles at hand, but for all she knew, he might throw a chair. “Indeed not. However, I think your mood would profit from cleaner surroundings. And perhaps you might open the curtains”—
in for a penny, in for a pound
—“for if one wallows in the dark, one cannot complain if one’s mood follows suit, you know.”

All expression slipped from his face as he regarded her. She had the uncanny sense that she was losing him; that although the curtains could not block out
all
the daylight, he was falling into darkness again, all the same.

“The room stinks,” she repeated, to goad him.

His face tightened again. “Are you aware,” he said, “that you are speaking to your
master
?”

“My employer. Yes, Your Grace.”

A line appeared between his brows. “Precisely what I said.”

If there was one thing she could not abide, it was the sloppy use of language. She would have expected better from him, but clearly he had lost his faculties. “Not so, Your Grace. You employ me, but you hardly master me.”

His brows rose. He looked her up and down. “Have you struck your head recently, Mrs. Johnson?”

She laughed.

His expression did not change. Apparently that had not been a joke. He’d lost his wit, too.

“No,” she said, “but I thank you for the concern.”

“It was not concern.” Now he spoke through his teeth. “It was simple logic, for I can think of no other reason for your bizarre and impertinent behavior.
Again.
”

No, of course he couldn’t. It would take a great leap for him to guess that she lay awake at night stricken by fear that Bertram’s man would somehow locate her here; that every hour that passed led him closer, while she squandered her chance to escape to safety, somewhere far from London, and all on a desperate gamble that among Marwick’s papers might lie the only chance at freedom she would ever receive—

“Forgive me,” she said. “But I think of your well-being.” And that was true. Her motive was not
entirely
selfish. It did . . .
concern
her . . . to see a man in his prime lounging about like an invalid. So his wife had betrayed him. So he had made himself into a strange, maniacal, bullying hermit. What of it?
He
had the freedom to make a new start. If he wished, he could redeem himself, patch up matters with his brother, acquire a new wife who would help him forget that sordid business with the last one. Recover the man he’d once been.

But all of this would be difficult to accomplish from his bedroom.

Why, she was
irritated
with him. If she could resist the impulse to pity herself, he certainly should be able to do the same.

She turned around and yanked open the curtains.

The sudden flood of light revealed an atrocious
amount of dust. Dust danced crazily in the air; dust coated the writing table; dust lined the edge of the carpet. “Goodness,” she said. “It’s a wonder you can breathe at all.”

“Mrs. Johnson.” His voice was rife with disbelief.
“Get the hell out.”

She turned, prepared to defend herself, and the words fell apart in her mouth.

To have seen him in the gloom was one thing. But in the light, his beauty was radiant. His hair blazed. His thickly lashed eyes looked as blue as jewels. His skin was tawny by design, fine-grained, and shadows girded the dramatic blades of his cheekbones. Her gaze dropped to discover that he had shoved up his sleeves, revealing blond hair that glimmered on his muscled forearms.

Light was his natural element. In it, he became blinding, a golden creature who might easily write sonnets to outdo Shakespeare’s—or inspire them . . .

She turned away, disconcerted, nervous in some strange new way. Her gaze fell on the hearth. She frowned at it, then stepped forward and ran a finger across the mantel. It came away a sooty gray.

Turning back, she held up this finger for his edification, and made a
tsking
noise. “No wonder you feel unwell.”

He was staring at her as though
she
were the lunatic. He looked as disconcerted as she felt. How . . . diverting. She was suddenly beginning to enjoy herself.

Oh, dear. No, no, no
. This determination rising within her was unwise and unwanted. She had promised herself she would do only the bare minimum. Marwick and his disorderly house were not her problems to solve.

But the bully needed bullying. It was so obvious, suddenly. Whether or not he realized it, Marwick was badly in need of her direction. And she meant to direct him
out of this room.

He bent down in one graceful move and retrieved something from beneath the bed. When he rose, he held a bottle. “This seems to be a language you understand.”

As their eyes locked, a sense of déjà vu overcame her. In the space of a heartbeat, she placed the feeling: this was not so different from the recent scene with Polly.

He was trying to intimidate her. But if he wanted to throw the bottle, surely he already would have.

And if she was wrong?

She squared her jaw. She could survive a blackened eye from a bottle—but Thomas Moore, she was not so hopeful of. “Do you
want
to live in squalor? And all these books”—she nudged a pile with her toe and sent it toppling—“would do better on a shelf. Why . . .” Her voice failed. The collapse of the pile had knocked open one of the volumes. Surely that painted illustration wasn’t . . .

She fell to her knees. “This is an
illuminated manuscript
!” She snatched it up, studying the gilded halo of Saint Bernard. “This Romanesque style—it dates from the thirteenth century at the latest!”

He said something she didn’t catch, for now her eyes were darting from pile to pile, the possibilities multiplying, wondrous and fearsome at once. “What else have you got lying about on the floor?” On the
floor
. “What are you doing to these books?”

A hand caught her arm. He was pulling her to her
feet. Dragging her toward the door. But her eye had caught on something. Good heavens, it couldn’t be.

She ripped free and lunged across the room, lifting away a copy of
Leviathan
and
Don Quixote
in the Spanish, to uncover . . .

She held it up, balancing it on the flat of her palms, suspended between awe and rage. “This,” she whispered, unable to remove her eyes, “is Newton’s
Principia
. An
original edition
.”

Silence.

She looked up and her heart tripped. He was towering over her, his face thunderous. He had not finished buttoning his shirt. His collar sagged apart to expose a generous triangle of skin, and—
heavens above,
his left nipple lay exposed to her sight.

She clasped the book to her chest and goggled. She had seen a variety of male torsos in her life, most of them belonging to adolescent country boys who cast off decorum at the sight of a fishing pond. None of them had looked like
this
. He had
hair
on his chest. Who could have guessed it?

“Have you a death wish?” he snarled. “Or have you, perhaps, lost the ability to understand English?”

She backed away from him, angling toward the door. He matched her step for step, prowling like a lion on the scent of a lamb—not a comfortable analogy. But these innocent
books.
She was stumbling over them, gilt-edged, calfskin-bound,
priceless
. She must save them from him.

She had one foot out the door when she caught sight again of the illustrated manuscript. She could not abandon it here. The poor darling! She lunged forward and snatched it up.

“Put that down!” he roared.

“You may keep them
all
,” she cried. “Move the entire library up here, but you
will not keep them on the floor
!”

She hopped backward and pulled the door shut in his face.

CHAPTER FIVE

“I need two bookcases from the library.” Olivia took a seat opposite Jones’s desk. “At once. I don’t . . .”

She leaned forward to take a better look at the newspaper beneath Jones’s elbow. No, she was not imagining the headline: BERTRAM’S BID PROVES VICTORIOUS.

“This cursed matter of the truffles!” Jones rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I have reviewed an entire month’s worth of meals. We certainly did
not
use them. None of the dishes required them. And I’ve spoken with every member of the kitchen staff. Nobody claims to know—”

She cleared her throat. “
I
will find out. Only give me two strong footmen to move the bookcases first.”

He frowned. “What? Where do you wish them moved?”

She knew very well how he would respond to her truthful reply. “Just give me the shelves, and I will solve the case of the truffles”—she snapped her fingers—“quicker than Scotland Yard.”

“I don’t think Scotland Yard cares much for
missing truffles.” Jones sounded mournful. “Besides, I have already spoken to everyone who might have accessed them.”

Her eyes strayed again to the newspaper. In
what
had Bertram proved victorious? A glorious death, dared she hope? “Give me the bookcases,” she said absently.

He sighed and shut the ledger. “Very well. Have Bradley and Fenton move them.”

“Thank you.” She rose.
Just walk away. Don’t torment yourself.
“Are you done with that paper?”

He glanced toward it. “Oh—yes, indeed. Do you follow the news?” He smoothed a fond hand across the newsprint. “Time was, I ironed four newspapers a day. His Grace had a
prodigious
appetite for them. But now he refuses to read a one. Were it not for me, nobody in this house would have a use for them.” He grimaced. “But the
fashion
magazines, Mrs. Johnson—and the racing sheets, and cheap novels—you should see the rubbish that goes into the bins each week.”