Season For Desire (8 page)

“I was glad to help, though.” At last, he pulled the puzzle box toward himself, though he seemed reluctant to take up their task again. “Usually. I loved—love—my family.”

“They need you.” Audrina picked up the quill she’d been using, then set it down in a hurry when it rubbed ink on her fingers. “It must be nice to serve a purpose.”

“They don’t need me as much as they used to. Now they’re almost grown, much as I hate to think of it. My youngest sister Sarah’s going to be married next year, if she has a dowry. I’m just here in England to make sure my father doesn’t spend a real fortune looking for a fake one.”

“And then what?”

“And then”—he lifted the box, shaking it lightly—

“I return to America to run a paper mill, or design jewelry. Or both.”

“What about designing a building?”

“Not in Philadelphia. I’d have to move to New York City for that.” The words were a flick of dismissal.

“Too far away from your family?”

“Almost a hundred miles.”

Her brow knit. “But. . .” The distance from London to York was far more than that—to say nothing of the distance from America to England.

He could not possibly be unaware of this. So he must wish to design buildings less than he wanted to be near his siblings.

The thought brought her sister Charissa to Audrina’s mind, along with a gray wash of guilt. The three years separating their ages had seemed a huge gulf when they were younger, but as the last two sisters at home, they had recently become confidantes. The threat of missing Charissa’s long-desired wedding was a punishment. A judgment for testing the waters of scandal, trying to bait her family into caring about her.

Giles, for his part, had taken a nobler path, winding his relatives close to him with responsibility and care.

But Audrina knew, people couldn’t be made to care. Not out of exasperation, not out of gratitude. Not for any reason except the tender tendencies of their hearts.

She rubbed her ink-stained fingers together. “That box is empty.”

“Yes, I think so, too.” He set it down, then pressed at his temples. “But remember, princess, I do what I say I will. And I told my father I’d get it open.”

“And so off he went to decorate the house, leaving this precious possession in your care. He does trust you. You see? You are fortunate.” Giles’s father wanted to cross an ocean with him. Audrina’s father didn’t even want her to come to London.

He caught her eye and smiled, but it wasn’t the sort of grin that brought out his dimple. It was more shadowed. Wary. If the usual smile resonated like crystal, this one rang a bit false. “Such praise from you, princess? I guess I really am fortunate.”

“One day soon,” she said crisply, “I am going to come upon you while you are asleep and—and ink a mustache on your face.”

“Will you really? I’m even more fortunate, then.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you’ll be prowling about my bedchamber. With a pot of ink in hand and facial vandalism on your mind, true—but nonetheless, the situation you describe is intriguing.”

Her face went hot.

“I should try to resist, of course, for the sake of my reputation. I’ve no great fortune or rank; nothing to lose but my good name. But you know how it is in England,” he said conversationally. “The aristocracy must be allowed to do whatever they please. If you slipped into my bedchamber to seduce me, I’d put up a token resistance. But ultimately it would be disrespectful of me to decline any offer you might care to make.”

“You are not as improper as you pretend to be,” she said, playing upon his earlier words.

He leaned forward across the table, granting her a sapphire wink. “You mustn’t say so aloud. If anyone knew what a genuinely kind and delightful person I was, I’d be deluged with admiration.”

“Your secret is safe with me.” She could breathe him in: the scent of evergreen soap, the spice of tea grown cold on his lips. “I promise not even to hint at it by excessive admiration.”

He shot her the dimpled grin, then returned his blue gaze to the golden panels of the puzzle box.

All a joke; only a joke.

But his words were more seductive than he had intended, making her arms prickle, her fingers tingle. He teased her about seducing him, as though—as though it were ordinary for a woman to pursue a man. To want passion; to seek it; to chase after her own desires.

And then he left the subject in her hands to drop or pick up as she saw fit.

Every other man and manner of society had denied any of this. All of this. It seemed as far-off and mysterious as one of the bright, blobby stars she’d sometimes peered at through her father’s telescope when she was a child.

Before he told her she must not touch his things and threatened to sack any servant who allowed her into his office.

The only power Audrina had at the moment was to follow, to obey. To stay away from her sister’s wedding so as not to remind society of her undesirable existence—unless a betrothal rendered her, again, acceptable.

Yet Giles saw her differently. Giles, who had seen her weak and afraid: two things she pretended never to be. He must be made to forget that. If he would grant her power, she would take it.

But why must she wait for it to be granted?

Her thighs loosened, and she sank heavily against the slatted back of her chair. “I am not going to draw a mustache on you while you sleep tonight,” she began.

His eyes flicked up to meet hers. “Oh, good. I’d look unfashionable.” With a frown, he considered the puzzle box again.

“But,” Audrina continued, “I do want to look through Sophy’s telescope.” She wanted to see something new, and she wanted to see it with someone who thought she might be good for something. Even if neither of them knew what yet.

“Excellent
non sequitur
. Might I suggest you talk to Sophy about that?”

“I will. Then would you look with me? At the stars?”

Tugging at another panel of the box, he said, “I never cared much about the stars. There is too much to learn and do on the surface of the earth.”

She folded her arms.

After a moment, he caught on. “But I am wrong. Obviously. I’m twenty-seven years old, so I guess it’s time I changed that.”

Relief swamped her, followed by a thin, crisp edge of anticipation. “I am twenty-four. So I suppose I have three more years before I have to change the sort of person I am.”

“Only your attitude toward telescopes,” he said. “The sort of person you are, princess, you need never change at all.”

After twenty minutes of climbing around the great staircase of Castle Parr, winding evergreen branches around the stair rail and each baluster, Estella understood the look on Lord Dudley’s face.
I’m exhausted
, said every line of his wrinkle-wreathed expression
, but I cannot admit it, because this was my idea.

Estella accepted a length of juniper from her host’s thin hand, then shoved the garland untidily around the last baluster. She rubbed her hands together; they smelled like a gin distillery.

Or a warm, resinous evergreen scent, if one preferred to think of things in that sentimental way.

“I think you’ve earned a rest, Dudley.” As she straightened, a stitch in her side reminded her that she was no longer as flexible as she’d been in the eighteenth century.

“Oh, no.” Lord Dudley’s voice was a rusty file. “No, no. I’m quite all right, dear lady. I’m sure there’s not enough greenery in the drawing room, and we haven’t decorated the antique passage yet.”

“There’s a passage? Is it a secret passage?” Richard Rutherford sounded delighted even as he scrabbled on the landing for dropped needles and twigs.

“No, it’s not a secret passage,” barked Estella. “Good Lord, Rutherford. Let the servants pick that up. You were married to an aristocrat. You should know better.”

“Know better than to make myself useful when I can?” Rutherford smiled, handing the gleaned decorations into the arms of the footman following them about. “No, I don’t suppose I do.”

Estella narrowed her eyes, which only made him smile more brightly. He had a troublesome habit of putting her in her place when she meant the opposite to happen.

A
very
troublesome habit. She was beginning to forget her place—and his.

When she turned back to Lord Dudley, her voice was all sugar. “Lord Dudley, at a house party hosted by my nephew-in-law, Lord Xavier, I learned a trick that serves wily gentlemen well.”

“You serviced gentlemen at a house party?” Lady Dudley had wandered back up the stairs and into the edge of their conversation. “Are you short of funds?”

Estella wanted to snort with laughter and cover her face at the same time. She settled for a harsh “No” and turned back to the viscount. “The trick is that there’s a type of brandy just the shade of brewed tea. You can have it served out any time of day and Sophy will never know the difference.”

“I would know,” said Lady Dudley.

“Know what, my dear?” The viscount’s heavy white brows had lifted with innocence.

“That Lady Irving serviced men at a house party.”

A strange heat suffused Estella’s cheeks.
Embarrassed?
Surely not. Though she couldn’t quite look at Rutherford as he spoke. “Let’s get you settled with some . . . tea, Lord Dudley. And you, my lady—would you like the dogs brought in from the stables?”

“Yes, it’s time.” The viscountess tucked her long hair behind her ears, looking pleased. “Yes. Good. They can have biscuits when Dudley has tea.”

Lord Dudley directed them to a chamber he called the “yellow parlor,” which Estella approved as being bright enough to chase away despondency. It was almost the same shade as her yolk-yellow turban, though the turban had the undeniable advantage of being spangled with paste gems in fiery colors. Once tea was ordered—and brandy, to be served to the viscount in a teacup—Estella was satisfied that her host and hostess would ease themselves before the fire for a while.

“Rest here, and don’t worry about anything,” she said. “If you do, I’ll find out and I’ll be monstrously annoyed.”

Lord Dudley laughed, closing his eyes as he sank back onto a long sofa. In repose, his face turned toward his wife, and a smile lingered on his worn features. Lady Dudley perched, eager, on the edge of a chair seat, awaiting the arrival of her dogs.

Tired, but together. Though they were in their twilight years, they sought means of keeping their lives bright.

When Estella exited the yellow parlor a few steps behind Rutherford, she felt as though the sun were eclipsed.

“What are we left with, Lady Irving?” Rutherford’s straight brows were furrowed as he nudged the remaining pile of trimmed branches with one black boot.

Estella blinked at him through watery eyes. What, indeed? A fortune and a solitary mansion? Put in that way, her life sounded like that of Lord and Lady Dudley, though she hadn’t even an ailing spouse or a bluestocking daughter-in-law to keep her company. “I—” She could say no more before her throat closed.

Richard waved his hand at the pile of greenery. “Here. For use in the house. What do you fancy?”

Oh
. Again, her cheeks went hot. As though her face thought that this was the year 1780 once more, that she was a maiden in her first Season hoping to catch the eye of an earl.

Idiotic face. Idiotic maiden, too, for that matter.

“No holly or ivy until Christmas Eve.” Her voice came out more harshly than she intended. “That’s bad luck.”

“Is it really?” Rutherford tilted his head, appearing fascinated. “What do you think would happen if you hung it sooner?”

She gave her turban a steadying pat. “I don’t know, but it’s not done. It’s a tradition. Do Americans understand traditions?”

“Of course. What may we use instead?” The footman—Lord Alleyneham’s servant, who had stated his name was Jory—had carried off the fallen leaves and tiny sprigs left after decorating the staircase. Rutherford crouched to sift through the remaining stock of evergreen.

Looking down on him, she saw silver and dark brown threading equally in his hair. At his temples, he had gone entirely gray, but seen from above he looked a bit younger. He still had a nice form, the build of a man who kept himself active. Good shoulders within that bottle-green coat.

“How old are you?” she asked.

Rutherford picked up a branch and held it to his nose, breathing deeply. “Fifty-five.” He stood and extended the branch to Estella. “Rosemary. I like the scent. Is this acceptable, or is it bad luck, too? Will the roof fall in if we hang it?”

“Don’t you want to ask how old I am?”

He grinned, refusing to be withered by her most withering tone. “Even in the wilds of America, that would be impolite.”

“Well, I’m fifty-eight,” she muttered. “And I can’t answer for the state of the roof. But if it falls in, it won’t be the rosemary’s fault.”

“All right. As long as we won’t be blamed for any destruction.” Rutherford scooped up the pile of cut branches. The armful was large enough to hide most of his face as needles and leaves and sprigs crushed, fragrant, against one another. “Do you know the passage Lord Dudley mentioned? The one you were quite sure wasn’t a secret passage?”

“He gestured in this direction.” Rapping on Rutherford’s arm to indicate the way, she led him back down the stairs to the entry hall. Around its echoing width were scattered several doorways, two of which she knew led to the drawing and dining rooms. At the northeast corner, a pointed arch led to what she had presumed was the family wing. “Worth a look.”

“I can’t see, so you’ll have to look for me.” Rutherford’s voice was muffled behind his burden.

Estella swept through the archway, and—stopped short. “Yes. Yes, I think we’ve found the antique passage.”

A corridor of pale golden stone stretched several dozen yards before pausing at a stained-glass window and making a turn. Pointed arches lifted the passage’s ceiling into vaults, and many-paned windows sliced the weighty walls. Between each window, framed in a recess by stone pillars, was a head.

A stone head on a plinth. And another, and another, all the way down the passage. In all, Estella guessed that there were two dozen stern-faced Romans and Greeks lopped off at the shoulders, the neck, or—in some unlucky cases—the chin. A gauntlet of blank eyes and stern jaws. An entire corridor set aside for being glared at.

It was so cold that the stone floor chilled Estella’s feet through her slippers.

“My, my.” Rutherford crouched to lay down the branches, then stepped to Estella’s side. “Who do you suppose this fellow is to our right? He must have been someone significant to have his head carved in stone and kept around for a thousand years.”

The stone bust stared with vacant eyes, its nostrils a haughty flare and its hair chipped and cracked.

“Maybe he was once,” said Estella. “But what good does it do him now to be looked at? No one remembers him. No one knows who he is or what he did. He’s no better off than if he’d winked out before someone chiseled his face in marble.”

“You are a philosopher, my lady.”

“Nonsense. Philosophers are men with long hair and tight trousers who beg money from their relatives.” She sighed. “I’m just . . .”

No, it would be stupid to finish that sentence in any honest way. Rutherford would only give her one of his patient smiles, and she would start looking at his eyes and wondering whether they had a ring of blue or of gray about the dark center of the iris. Which was not the sort of information she usually cared to collect.

“I’m just ready for a brandy,” she finished.

“Brandy sounds marvelous, but we have to earn it.” With a sideways scoot of his boot, he shoved some of the branches before Estella. “Go on, your ladyship. Give these poor forgotten folk a laurel crown.”

“We only have bay and juniper.”

“Juniper should amuse them.” Rutherford seated himself on the floor as easily as though it were a silk pillow. “They can distill gin from the berries and have a wild bacchanal tonight, when we’re all asleep and they’re left alone on their plinths.”

“Nonsense.” Yet it was difficult not to smile at all, and impossible not to fall into a crouch at Rutherford’s side and begin twisting the spice-sharp branches into crowns.

“Yew,” she murmured. The needles were short, the berries starting to shrivel but still red. “Rather poisonous.”

“Well, then you mustn’t eat it.” Rutherford squinted, then gave a finishing twist to a wreath of bay leaves.

He seemed to radiate joy, but it was a cold light that reminded Estella of what she didn’t feel. “Thank you,” she grumbled. “For turning Lady Dudley away from the subject of my prostitution.
Alleged
prostitution.”

“I assumed you didn’t want to talk about your scandalous past.” When she huffed, he shot her a wink.

“You have a dangerous sense of humor, Rutherford.”

“Do you think so? I think it’s more dangerous to have none.” He sprang to his feet and plopped the crown onto the head of the Emperor of Chipped Hair.

Estella sank back onto her heels—oh, this cold made her ankles ache—and shoved a dangling bit of yew into the crown she’d fashioned. “Here. You can stick that on the head of one of the other gargoyles.” Struggling to her feet, a hand pressed to a chilly wall, she added, “What the point is of decorating someone else’s house, I can’t imagine. We probably won’t even be here at Christmas.”

Each of Rutherford’s footfalls was a dull echo. “The Dudleys like it. And it’s not so easy for them to climb around this castle anymore. We’re doing them a favor.”

He tried the yew wreath on the head of Chipped Hair’s neighbor, then laid it instead over the diadem of a grim-faced woman. The green transformed her expression from
I hate being a marble bust
to
I think this crown is ridiculous but I will wear it to please you.

“I don’t do favors unless I’ll get a favor in return,” said Estella.

“Why not?”

“Why should I?”

Rutherford shrugged. Estella had seen him make this gesture often enough to understand its meaning.
I disagree, but it wouldn’t be polite of me to say so.
“We are getting some return. Lord and Lady Dudley are granting us houseroom, and Sophy has turned over the
himitsu-bako
to Giles. He’ll figure out its secrets.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“Because the last thing my wife told me before she died,” he said, “was that I must go to England and find the puzzle box. She said it was her inheritance for her family.”

“Oh.” Estella’s hand drifted to her turban, trailing over the bevels and mazarins of the false gems.

“I know, it sounds unlikely. Giles thinks so, too. Beatrix had been ill for so long, eased with laudanum and hardly talking sense, that it seemed like a fever dream. But she left England with nothing. What happened to her jewels? A diamond parure given to her, irrevocably, when she made her debut. We met when she had it valued by the jeweler with whom I apprenticed.” His face fell into the soft expression of a pleasant memory, and he chucked the grim-faced woman under her stone chin. “Thousands of pounds’ worth of gemstones, and it vanished.”

“I’m surprised no one was imprisoned for theft. Or transported.”

“Well—we were transported, in a way.” He walked back to the pile of greenery and picked it up, then marched down the passage laying branches on each plinth. “We had to leave England after we married. Though it was a relief, Lady Irving, not to have a fortune weighing on us.”

“Bosh. A fortune never weighs on a couple. Only poverty does that.”

“A fortune shared, maybe. But if she married me with wealth and had to fit into the straitened life I could give her?” He distributed the last of the branches, then turned back to Estella with a shake of his head. “If she sat in a silk gown before a chipped brick hearth, rocking in a handmade chair—she’d grow unhappy with me. Instead, though, we started with nothing but a small family mill and a willingness to work. We were even, if that makes sense.”