Suzanne Robinson (4 page)

As he brushed Jocelin’s coat and creased the pleat in his trousers, Loveday raised a brow. “Shall I tell Mr. Choke to expect you for luncheon, my lord?”

“What? Oh, no. I’m going to call on Asher Fox, and a few others. I should be home by three.” Jocelin took the gloves and top hat Loveday handed to him. “Loveday, have you …”

“If I have ascertained that Lady Octavia is At Home, my lord. As are the Honorable Miss Birch and Lady Alberta. Lady Octavia’s husband, unfortunately,
has been called to France on business of the Foreign Office.”

“Thank you. Then I’ll call on Lady Octavia after I’ve seen Asher, and possibly old Buggy Winthrop.”

“Very good, my lord.”

He descended the stairs, his good mood still uplifting him. He paused in the entry hall to retrieve a walking stick from the stand by the door. His gaze caught the glint of the silver calling card salver on the table beside the stand. His father’s embossed crest caught his eye, and his spirits plummeted. Last night’s arrival.… He’d been unprepared for his father’s stupidity. The old man had cornered him in the library, taking advantage of Jocelin’s loss of composure upon being forced to remain in the same room as Yale. He remembered little of the conversation. Its details had been blasted away, exploded starwise, by his almost uncontrollable hatred.

All he remembered was that the duke had harped on Jocelin’s lack of heirs, his dissolute habits, his mistresses. Interspersed with these criticisms were admonishments to put aside his imagined griefs in favor of hunting, shooting, fishing, and attendance at church. These, the duke assured him, were the pursuits of a proper Englishman.

He remembered little else of his father’s conversation. What he did remember was that disjointed feeling of unreality. It was as if the real Jocelin didn’t exist—at least, not for his father. All the ugliness and violation sat across from him in the library in the person of his uncle, but the duke ignored them in favor of chastising his son. After a long absence Jocelin always forgot how his father was.

Why couldn’t he give up hope that his family would change? He heard a loud crack, which sounded
all the more loud in the marble-and-stone entry hall. He looked down at his hands. Each held a jagged-edged portion of his walking stick. He stared at them in surprise, but glanced over his shoulder as he heard another sound. It had been a faint rustle followed by a click. Careful not to make a racket, he placed the pieces of the stick on the floor and hurried to the door behind the stairs that led to the servants’ area and stairs down to the kitchen.

As he’s suspected, the door was slightly ajar. He grasped the knob and threw it open. Encountering nothing but shadows, he slipped inside. He sped along the hall to the next door. Throwing it open, he found an empty cloakroom. The next door was locked, the silver pantry. He was about to open a third when he spotted the edge of a starched skirt disappearing around a corner toward the stairs that led down to the kitchen and scullery. He sprang after it.

Jocelin rounded the corner and collided with a maid. His foot came down on the hem of her uniform. It ripped. She cried out and stumbled, her arms flailing as she careened onto the top step. Jocelin caught hold of the banister and the neck of the maid’s gown. Material rent, and the woman gasped as he pulled her to safety on the landing. He caught a glimpse of white skin, the rise of a breast, before she clutched the ends of her bodice together and rounded on him.

“You bleeding idiot—my lord!”

As he tugged on his coat and brushed a lock of hair back from his face, he scowled at the plump maid. “Were you in the hall?”

She squared her shoulders, tilted back her head to meet his gaze, and looked down her nose. “I beg your pardon, my lord?”

“Don’t look at me as if I were a street Arab with the pox. Answer me. Were you in the hall just now?”

“No, my lord. If your lordship will remember, my task is to lay fires and clean boots this morning.”

Her tone made it clear she thought he had no conception of heavy coal buckets and boot scraping. She stood there, as stiff and virtuously offended as a martyr at an orgy, waiting for him to apologize. The damned little nuisance was waiting for him to apologize.

“It was you,” he snapped. “I know it.”

“I beg leave to contradict your lordship.”

He began walking toward her. In the dark hallway she stood her ground much longer than he thought she would, but finally, when his boot touched her torn hem, she shrank away. He followed, and her back hit the wall. Her shoulder nearly dislodged a portrait of some long dead and faithful Marshal butler. He reached out and steadied the painting. She dodged to the side to avoid his arm, but he braced his free hand on the wall so that she couldn’t burrow into the corner.

Leaning over her so that he could make out her face, he said quietly, “Servants are supposed to be invisible, especially maids of all work.”

“Yes, my lord. If you will excuse me, I will become invisible.”

He flattened his other hand on the wall as she moved toward the stairs. “Too late.” With satisfaction he watched her try to merge with the wall at her back.

“You were watching me,” he said.

She glared at him. “I was not, you—my lord.”

“I have bountiful leisure in which to await your confession.”

He touched one of the wispy curls at her temple,
and she started. He hadn’t realized how close to her he’d moved until he smelled lemons. This maid of all work, with her coal-grimed hands and her mussed hair, smelled of lemons. He was used to the odor of horse sweat and exploding artillery shells, accustomed to the complex fragrance of Parisian perfumes. Thus, when he swelled to near bursting upon catching a whiff of lemons from a peevish housemaid, Jocelin found himself unprepared.

Without thinking, he pressed his body against her. She drew in her breath. Still clutching the neck of her gown with one hand, she pressed the other against his chest. Coal dust smudged the white cleanliness of his shirt. He grinned when she noticed, pulled her hand away as if it burned, then put it back as he moved closer.

“Admit you were watching me,” he breathed near her lips. “You smell like lemons.”

She had gone silent and stiff. At least he’d achieved that much.

Their lips almost touched, and he whispered, “You were watching me. Other women have, so don’t be ashamed. I want you too.”

He kissed her then, because the smell of lemons was driving him, as were her trembling and her reluctance. His lips touched hers. Pliant, they opened, and he tasted her. Then she stomped on his foot.

“Hang it!” Springing back, he fell against a wall and grabbed for her at the same time.

She ducked under his arm, whirled, and scampered down the stairs. Still cursing, Jocelin put his weight down on his injured foot and grimaced. He pulled off his boot and examined it. On the top he made out the imprint of her heel.

“Hang it!”

A door slammed somewhere in the bowels of the scullery. Jocelin limped back the way he’d come. His gait sounded odd, since he walked on one booted and one stockinged foot. He swore at himself all the way back to his room.

Loveday had the habit of appearing magically, like a genie. He did so now. Jocelin expected him, since the man seemed to have the ability to know exactly when he would be required, no matter what his master was doing.

Throwing his boot on the floor, Jocelin stomped to a chair beside the fireplace and sat down. “Ice, Loveday.”

“Indeed, my lord?”

“I hurt my foot, Loveday.”

“How unfortunate, my lord.”

“Not just for me, Loveday.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I’m going to strangle that maid, Loveday.”

“Which maid, if I may inquire, my lord?”

“The plump, lemony one, Loveday.”

“Ah, Miss Gamp, my lord.”

“Gamp? Gamp? Gamp, Loveday?”

“Yes, my lord. May I inquire if your lordship wishes the maid dismissed?”

Jocelin shot to his feet, grunted when he put his weight on his swelling foot, and sat down again. “No. No, no, no. If you get rid of her, I can’t have revenge, Loveday.”

“No, my lord.”

“And don’t say ‘No, my lord’ in that disapproving governess way of yours.”

Loveday shoved an ottoman over to Jocelin’s chair. “If I may say so, it has not been our custom to
dally with the maids in our service. We have prided ourselves on this small virtue.”

Jocelin flushed and propped his foot on the ottoman.

“Well, Loveday, we can’t be so proud of our virtue anymore.”

“No, my lord?”

“No.”

“I will get the ice, my lord.”

“She smells like lemons, Loveday.”

“Indeed, my lord. A most wholesome fruit, the lemon.”

With this comment Loveday left Jocelin slouched in his chair, staring at his foot and wishing he had a cup of hot tea—with lemon.

S
trangling the neck of her gown, Liza ran downstairs. As she pattered over the thin carpet tacked to the risers, she listened for the viscount’s footsteps, but heard none. She’d been in terror that he would follow her. The heels of her boots tapped the polished wood floor of the kitchen. No notice was taken, however, for a cry had gone up from the butler’s pantry.

“Tea!” Choke called. “Tea, Mrs. Eustace. At once.”

Liza tiptoed into the scullery, past the maid on her knees scrubbing the floor, and out a rear door. She reentered the house by a side door, reached the back stairs, and climbed to the attic, where she shared a
room with the third housemaid. She arrived breathless and still shaking from her encounter with that uncivilized aristocrat. Choke would think her still occupied with the bedchambers, so she had a few minutes to repair the damage to her disguise.

The ragged edges of her gown fell open to reveal the padding sewn into it. She’d been desperate to conceal this lining and the stuffed corset when the viscount had torn the dress. The man was mad. No, not mad, but far too intelligent. He’d caught her watching him, and now she’d alerted him to her interest. Luckily he possessed the vanity of most men and thought her interested in his glorious person.

She stripped off her gown and set about righting her corset. Usually she and her roommate dressed in the near total darkness of early morning and late night, which prevented her from revealing her padding and allowed her to stuff her hair beneath a cap. Without the need for concealment, Liza pulled the cap off.

Cascades of hair tumbled forth. Liza thought of it as neither-here-nor-there hair, for it was neither so pale as to be blond nor so dark as to be brown. It was an unsatisfying taupe, which she darkened with pomade to complete her Miss Gamp disguise. What if the viscount had dislodged her cap!

Liza pulled a fresh gown from the locked trunk at the foot of her bed and stepped into it. Drawing it up to her waist, she found that her hands were still shaking. She’d been careless to let him hear her, but she’d wanted so badly to see if he was leaving.

She’d searched the house everywhere except his rooms. This morning she’d been able to examine the last of the unoccupied bedrooms. What miserable luck that he’d returned sooner than expected.

Her fingers were cold and trembled so, it was
difficult to button the gown. Not for the first time she was grateful for the lining that made the bodice warmer than it should have been. Her fingers slipped on a button, and she sank down on the bed to take several deep breaths.

If only the Metropolitan Police had believed her, but they’d sent her away with condescending smiles and secret laughter. She didn’t care. Men had laughed at her before, and she’d lived.

She didn’t care what they said. William Edward hadn’t been the kind of man to skulk about the brothels and gin shops of Whitechapel and get himself garroted. She remembered thinking exactly that thought when the police came to her to identify him upon finding her card in his vest pocket. In her grief it had taken her months to make herself face the truth of her suspicions. More time had been wasted trying to get the Metropolitan Police to see her views. They never had. It would have been useless as well to try to convince Papa, since he’d taken the same opinion as the police. Finally she’d begun to inquire into the circumstances of William Edward’s death herself—late, but determined.

Liza closed her eyes as she remembered her brother’s bloated face. His tongue had been—no. No, she wouldn’t see his face anymore. She’d promised herself.

Instead she thought back to that night last February, the night William Edward had been killed. He’d called on her unexpectedly. After leaving home, she’d kept in touch with him and her mother—secretly, because of her father. Papa would have nothing to do with a daughter he’d disowned for her stubborn unmaidenliness and quarrelsome nature. He hated it that she hadn’t come back to him on her knees after
he’d cast her out of his house. He was furious that she’d made herself independent in a trade. So William Edward had visited her secretly at her house, which doubled as her place of business, Pennant’s Domestic Agency.

He’d been agitated that evening, and William Edward was never agitated. Part of his excitement had been on account of being admitted into Asher Fox’s political committee.