The Butler Did It (28 page)

Morgan blinked, looked down at her hands on his sleeve and shook them off. “I wouldn't have given him that satisfaction. Be ready to leave for the theater in five minutes, Miss Clifford, or stay home,” he said, then turned on his heels and headed for the staircase to his rooms—just like any naughty boy who'd been sent to his bed.

Which left Emma to think over Rolin's parting words, and to realize that whatever animosity there was between Morgan and the man may have predated her arrival in London but had been exacerbated by that arrival.

Which left Morgan to pace his bedchamber, counting to ten once, twice, a third time, in an effort to tamp down his temper, which still ran a distant second to a new concern for Emma Clifford, thanks to, yes, Rolin's parting words.

Which left Jarrett Rolin standing on the portico outside the Grosvenor Square mansion, also rehashing every word that had been spoken inside, his devious mind already plotting a way to destroy his one-time adoring pupil, who had dared to learn too much. These titled idiots, how he loathed them. Brentwood was a fool, barely worth his time five years ago or now, but Westham needed another lesson in humility. And, thanks to Miss Clifford, he had just the lesson in mind.

Which left Thornley, formerly the Compleat Butler, who once knew everything, saw everything and managed everything, standing in the foyer, his finger in his mouth as he struggled simply to
find
a thought, muttering, “Wimples? Skin white as wimples? No, that's not it….”

 

O
LIVE
N
ORBERT
, just returning from a quick walk to locate a meat-pie seller—for no matter how lovely the victuals in Grosvenor Square, she could not quite tamp down her love for the greasy treat—spied Mr. Jarrett Rolin standing on the front steps of the mansion.

She knew him, of course. She knew most of the
ton,
at least by sight, as she always made it a point to sit and sew by her window, which overlooked the front of the
dress shop. Mr. Hatcher, Mr. Rolin, so many of them, bringing their bits o' muslin by for fittings.

But Mr. Rolin, he sort of stood out, because Olive had more than once had to bring her tape and measure one of his mistresses, and they'd had, to the last of them, bruises on their bodies that could only have come from the man now paying to cover those same bodies.

No, not a nice man, Mr. Rolin. But his pockets had been deep.

“Mr. Rolin, sir, how good to see you again,” Olive trilled, dropping into an awkward curtsy, then heading for the front door. How she enjoyed entering the mansion this way, not shuttled around to the servant's entrance. Why, she entered and left at least three times a day, just for the joy of being bowed back into the mansion. “You don't have to use the knocker, sir, you can just nip inside with me.”

Jarrett Rolin looked down at the squat, and fairly enormous woman, not recognizing her, but certainly recognizing what she was, no more than a servant. “I beg your pardon? You reside here?”

Olive grinned, exposing the last bite of meat pie as her lips and chin gleamed greasily in the light from the flambeaux on either side of the door. “I do. Mrs. Olive Norbert, that's who I am. Guest of his lordship. So? Mayhap you're leaving, not coming?”

Rolin attempted to understand what he was seeing and hearing. He smiled. “Departing, actually, my good—
that is, Mrs. Norbert. I have just been visiting with Miss Clifford. Delightful young woman, don't you think?”

“Young Emma? Ah! You sweet on her?”

“Yes. Yes, indeed, I am. However, his lordship seems to want her all for himself, and has just now depressed my pretensions.”

“Huh?”

Rolin tried again. “The marquis would keep us apart, Mrs. Norbert. Miss Clifford and myself. He's not a nice man.”

“Oh, he's not so bad. He even let me back at the table, but that's because Miss Clifford must have asked him to. Little high in the instep, the marquis. But he likes me fine,” she added quickly. “I live here, as a guest. His lordship's guest.”

“Yes, so you said,” Rolin said, taking the woman's arm and leading her back down to the flagway. He didn't really care why she was here, he was much more interested in what he could do with her because she was here. “You'll have to tell me all about that, and yourself. But first, Mrs. Norbert, have you a fondness for true love?”

Olive grinned again. She was being walked by a toff, a real toff. If the bitches back at the shop could see her now! “True love? Oh yes, sir, I do. Why, me and Ed-gie, we're gonna be bracketed, soon as he asks me. That'd be Sir Edgar Marmington, Mr. Rolin. He lives here, too.”

Rolin ignored that as well, for he had formulated a plan, and it already consumed him. “My felicitations,
Mrs. Norbert, on your coming nuptials. Alas, I have no such hopes for Miss Clifford and myself, now that the marquis has banned me from her presence. I…I don't know what I shall do, truly I don't. If only there were some kind person who would be able to arrange for me to see her…even from afar.”

Whether it was the thought of True Love, or the fact that she couldn't help but see that Mr. Rolin had taken a fat purse from his waistcoat pocket and was now holding it to his heart, Olive heard herself saying, “Well, now, there's to be a ball here Friday next, you know. Lots of people about, so that one person wouldn't even be noticed, if you was to catch my meaning? That's what Miss Clifford said, that I could come to the ball, because his lordship wouldn't notice one body more. He wouldn't notice you neither, stands to reason. Iffen somebody was to, say, open the right door from the mews, and let you pop inside?”

Rolin stopped, took the woman's greasy paws in his hands, and, when he let go, his purse had changed possession. “You would do that for me? I had quite lost hope, only moments ago, but now my crushed heart beats again. Do not tell her, Mrs. Norbert, I beg of you. It will be our secret. An elopement. How romantic, don't you agree? And I know just the door. In the morning room. You could possibly leave it unlocked for me, the evening of the ball? You'd do this for my dearest Emma and me, Mrs. Norbert? In the name of True Love?”

Olive stuffed the purse down the bosom of her gown. “What? Oh, sure, sure, for that, too.”

 

“A
ND
I'
M TELLING YOU
, Harry has to come down here with the rest of them,” Riley said as he and Cliff Clifford closed the door to the hallway leading to a large storage space directly behind the card room that adjoined the Westham ballroom. In that storage room were twenty-four cages, all holding hooded gamecocks.

“But Harry's the best of them. He deserves his own quarters,” Cliff said, still unconvinced. “It wasn't as if his lordship caught me out.”

“I don't care, Cliffie boy. You was lucky, that's what you was, but we don't want to be using up all our luck just hiding Harry, now do we?”

“No, I suppose not. All right, we'll bring him down here with the rest of them. Are you sure they'll be safe here?”

“Safe as houses,” Riley told him confidently. “All the chairs and such as are stored there are already in the ballroom, for the big to-do next week. Nobody will come nosin' in here until after the ball, and then we'll just move 'em all right and tight into them closets back there for a space. It's perfect, I tell you. Now nip on up the servant stairs one more time to fetch Harry, and then I'll be bringing you and me some hot water for a wash and brush up. We smell like gamecocks, we do.”

“All right, Riley,” Cliff said, wondering if being independent was worth all this fuss. Except for the thrill
of putting them to the fight, gamecocks seemed to be all feeding them and then scraping the bottoms of the cages with a knife he'd pilfered from the kitchens.

 

“M
OLTING
, R
ILEY
?” Thornley asked a few minutes later, as he picked a brown feather from the footman's livery and held it up for the boy to see.

Riley grinned, that grin rather resembling a rictus, as his nerves were stretching near the breaking point. He was beginning to feel the pressure of this entrepreneurship thingamajig he'd thought he'd wanted so much.

“Yes, Mr. Thornley, sir. That's what it is,” he said, then snatched a bit of blue embroidery thread from the butler's sleeve and held it up beside the feather. “And how is Mrs. Daphne Clifford going on this evening, sir?”

Thornley took a step backward. “Carry on, Riley. I believe you were taking hot water upstairs?”

“That I am, Mr. Thornley,” Riley said. “Things are turnin' hot all over this lovely place, and no mistake.”

Once Riley had gone, Thornley patted the small book of poetry he'd liberated from the library and slipped into his pocket, gave himself a small shake and headed back into the morning room, where Daphne, dear Daphne, awaited him.

He did give a moment to worrying about his lordship, and another to sighing about that rascally Riley, but neither thought stuck in his once orderly and precise mind. For his lordship and Miss Clifford were at
the theater, Mrs. Clifford the elder was closeted with Sir Edgar—and both much past the age of requiring a chaperon—Mrs. Norbert was wherever she was and could stay there for all he cared. Daphne's dimples awaited….

 

T
HE
E
ARL OF
B
RENTWOOD
lifted his quizzing glass to his eye as he struck a pose and waited for Morgan and Emma's approach as they weaved their way through the throng. “Ah, such a delight to see you both. Truly the high point of an otherwise dismal evening. I've half a mind to nip downstairs into the pit and purchase a few oranges to aim at the stage if that horrid woman dares to sing again after the intermission.”

“Oh, but my lord, I thought she was wonderful,” Emma said, dropping into her curtsy even as Perry bowed over her hand, placing a kiss just a breath above her kid glove.

Perry stepped closer to whisper, “As did I, Miss Clifford, as did I, but as I proclaim never to attend the theater for anything other than showing off my always-impeccable ensembles, I wouldn't wish anyone to know I was near moved to tears by that last aria.”

“Still acting the fool, Perry?” Morgan said, shaking his head.

“At least I acknowledge who I am and what I want, dear man,” Perry drawled, winking at Emma, who obviously had absolutely no idea what the man had meant.

“Yes, I'm sure you do,” Morgan drawled right back at his friend. Damn Perry for being here, when the only reason he had invited Emma to the theater was the hope of being alone with her. “And how is Uncle Willie this evening? I did see him sharing your box, did I not?”

“In point of fact, I am sharing his, as I do not have mine own. I much prefer to flit from box to box, imposing on all my friends. May I join you after intermission? I fear Uncle Willie has begun to snore, and unless I wish to pass the remainder of the evening dabbing drool from his chin, I would be elsewhere until the last curtain falls.”

“Yes, please do,” Emma said quickly, as she had spent a most uncomfortable hour sitting alongside Morgan, who seemed to radiate anger this evening. Claramae, her nominal chaperon, insisted on sitting at the back of the box, well into the shadows, gnawing on a taffy-coated apple she had procured somewhere. Between the silent anger and the occasional noisy
slurp,
she knew herself ready to scream.

“Actually, Perry, we were about to return to our box, gather Miss Clifford's belongings and depart for Grosvenor Square, as Miss Clifford has just now complained of the headache,” Morgan said in a tone that dared Emma to contradict him. “So, if you don't mind, we'll be off now. Consider use of my box this evening as my gift to you.”

Perry bowed. “And you may consider my apparent gullibility in swallowing that obvious crammer my gift
to you, old friend. Miss Clifford, a pleasure, as always. Do be kind to his lordship. I believe he is in considerable pain.”

As Morgan glared at his friend's back, Emma said, “How cryptic. Was I supposed to understand any of that, my lord? Or anything that has happened this evening? In all, I should say we had no need of attending the theater this evening, as I do believe I am already caught up in the midst of some play. I only wish I had a program.”

“Forgive me, Miss Clifford,” Morgan said, leading her back to his box, to gather up the maid. “I should have begged off earlier, as I am not in any fit mood for company tonight.”

“Only tonight, my lord? I vow I hadn't noticed any thing out of the ordinary in your disposition,” Emma said, snatching up her shawl and settling it over her shoulders. “Claramae?”

“Yeth, mith?” the maid said, pulling on the stick holding her treat, trying to disengage the taffy apple from her top teeth.

Emma sighed. “Come along, dear. And don't touch anything, please, for I fear you'd adhere to it.”

 

“N
O, NO, IT'S TRUE
, I swear it,” Fanny Clifford said as Sir Edgar looked askance at her when her story was done. “It's one of the dozen or more reasons we all called him
Mad Harry. Bit poor Jamie's nose half-off before their seconds could pull them apart.”

“Because Sir James deloped? I should think the marquis would have been grateful,” Sir Edgar said, sitting down beside Fanny as he returned to the couch, two refilled glasses of port in his hands.

“You would. I would. But not Harry. He saw it as just another insult. His son is nothing like him, thank God, or we'd be having this conversation in the guardhouse.” She took a deep drink and crossed her ankles, which were already resting on the table top. “Ah, Edgar, this is the life, isn't it? You, me, all that lovely money. We're a fine pair, aren't we?”

“If you promise never to make me go within fifty feet of that horrid Olive Norbert again, yes, I suppose so. I still marvel that I allowed you to talk me round to the idea in the first place.”