The Lover (11 page)

Michel was an excellent lady's maid, Anne thought giddily. Far, far better than either Jane or her abigail in Dover.

Perhaps men should fulfill the position instead of women.

She gingerly sat down on the horsehair-covered bench in front of the dressing table. Michel had laved away the pain but not the tenderness.

"Shall you be back… at the end of the month, Miss Aimes?"

The pale blue eyes staring at Anne in the mirror widened, reflecting her surprise. This was the first time any of the rental servants had expressed curiosity about her comings and goings. "Yes. Of course I will be back."

The abigail unpinned Anne's hair—electricity trickled down her spine. She remembered Michel's hands, equally expert at unpinning a woman's hair. "And will you be leaving an address, ma'am?"

She frowned. Last night she would have welcomed the maid's interest; now she found it irksome.

Contrition was instantaneous. It was not the abigail's fault that her mistress was involved in a clandestine
affaire
.

"I will leave my address with my solicitor."

Hard bristles bit into Anne's scalp, stroked the length of her back. "But what if your solicitor is unavailable?"

Anne averted her gaze from the glint of silver that streaked her pale brown hair. How long before pale brown hair streaked the silver?
How long before she did not recognize herself at all in the mirror
? "That is highly unlikely. In any event, the solicitor's housekeeper has access to his files. She will be able to locate me, should an emergency arise."

The abigail quickly pinned up Anne's hair, dark, thin fingers darting here and there in the mirror. "I will have the butler summon your coach."

Heat mushroomed in Anne's cheeks; a blush spread over the pale flesh of the woman in the mirror.

The coachman was the only Dover servant who had accompanied her to London.

She did not want the old to intrude on the new.

Not yet.

"My journey is not far. A cab will suffice."

A last pin slid into the tight bun Anne's hair had been secured in, lightly grazing her scalp. The abigail stepped back; dark eyes met pale blue ones in the mirror. "Will you take lunch before you leave, Miss Aimes?"

She had not dined last night, sick with nervousness. Nor had she accepted Michel's offer of refreshment, her appetite overcome by sexual satiation and belated shyness. "Yes. Thank you."

"Very well, ma'am."

Anne gritted her teeth. "You may leave black silk gloves, my black beaded reticule, and my black bonnet with the butler. I do not require your assistance again."

In the dining room Anne picked at scalloped potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, and rare roast beef steak. Blood leaked onto her plate.

Would she bleed again when Michel penetrated her?

How would she be able to take him come the night, sore and swollen as she was?

Perhaps she should wait.

Another night.

Another time.

She pushed her plate aside.

A footman liveried in a black coat silently scooped it up. When she abruptly rose, another liveried footman pulled the chair back for her.

Everyone wore black, she realized. A respectable color for respectable people. It forcibly reminded her that instead of mourning her deceased parents she cavorted with a man who had made a fortune off of wealthy women.

A man who claimed he had had no procuress in five years.

But she wanted him. She did not find his scars repugnant.

Were there not other women such as herself?

In the foyer, a dark-haired, liveried footman conversed with the butler over her trunk. They jerked to attention at the sight of her.

"The cab is waiting, ma'am. James, take the trunk out."

James hoisted the trunk onto his shoulder.

He was amazingly strong. Ruggedly handsome in spite of the nose that had obviously been broken at one time.

Further proof of her descent into decadence.

She had never before appraised a footman's physique, let alone wondered about a servant's sexual habits.

The butler opened the door, admitting the only ray of sunshine into an otherwise dismal house.

"Do you have any instructions, ma'am? I understand you will be gone a month. Shall you leave a forwarding address?"

His cold courtesy grated on her nerves. He made her feel like a stranger in her own home.

When Michel touched her, she felt like a stranger inside her own body.

"My solicitor, Mr. Little, will have my address," she answered shortly. "He will stop by periodically. If you require anything, he will take care of it."

The butler impersonally held out her black grenadine cloak. Anne slipped first one arm through a sleeve, then the other. Silently he offered her gloves, a round black felt hat with a white aigrette curled around the crown rather than the black bonnet she had ordered, and her black beaded reticule.

Had Jane misunderstood her instructions?

Grimly positioning the hat on top of her head, she looped the handle of her reticule over her wrist and pulled on her gloves.

The butler did not step out of her way.

"The address, ma'am. If you would be so good."

Anne's heart did a somersault inside her chest. "I beg your pardon?"

A sunbeam bounced off of a glazed marble eye, adding macabre life to the stuffed owl perched on a side table.

"The address, if you please, Miss Aimes." The butler produced a lethally sharp, five-inch-long hat pin. "So that I may give it to the cabby."

Anne stared at the hat pin.

For the first time in her life she realized how fragile human skin was, stretched over muscle and bone. How easily it could be pierced.

By flesh.

By steel.

Icy fingers stroked her vertebrae.

It was ridiculous, of course. But Anne was suddenly afraid of this blond-haired English servant who looked as if he had never touched a woman's naked body.

She mentally shook herself.

Her solicitor had hired him. He would not have done so unless the servant had excellent references.

Anne tore her gaze away from the needle sharp hat pin. "I am going to see my solicitor," she said, and reluctantly relayed his address.

The butler bowed. "Your hat pin, Miss Aimes."

"Thank you." Fingers not quite steady, Anne accepted the pin. She gingerly stuck it through the crown of her hat before stepping out into the sunlight.

The butler trailed behind her and opened the door to the cab. Just as would any other butler.

So why couldn't she calm her thumping heart?

The hack smelled of damp hay and worn leather. Innocuous odors. When it pulled out into the stream of traffic, she did not know if it was relief or trepidation that balled inside her stomach.

Each bump and grind of the carriage wheels drove home the lingering ache inside her pelvic region. Pressing her face against the window, she concentrated on the passing streets and carriages.

Anne had never visited her solicitor's office.

The two-story brick building was old and unassuming, rather like the solicitor himself. It was surrounded on either side by less carefully preserved brick buildings.

A sparkling glass front window advertised MR. LITTLE, SOLICITOR, in bold black letters. White Venetian blinds blocked the interior view from inquisitive eyes.

Taking a deep breath, Anne stepped out of the cab.

"Please wait," she instructed the cabby. "This is not my destination. I have a moment of business to take care of."

The cabby, face grooved with perpetual boredom and overwork, silently tipped a worn bowler hat.

A little bell announced the opening of the solicitor's sturdy wooden door. The smell of freshly baked bread and lilac scent struck her in the face.

"May I help you?"

It took a second for Anne's eyes to adjust to the dim interior light. Polished wood raced up a stark white wall—a banister. Near the foot of the stairs sat a small desk weighted down by a massive metal typewriter. A woman wearing a white lace cap sat behind it. Anne estimated her age to be in the late fifties.

"Mrs. Huttchinson?" she asked, surprised.

The solicitor had always referred to a housekeeper, not that most ambitious breed, a woman clerk.

"Mr. Little no doubt told you that I am his housekeeper." The woman smiled; the lines creasing her cheeks and eyes added character to a face that was still quite attractive. "And so I am. I am afraid he is not in at the moment. May I help you?"

Anne gripped her reticule. "I am Miss Anne Aimes. When do you expect Mr. Little?"

Mrs. Huttchinson's brown eyes softened. "How do you do, Miss Aimes. Mr. Little left early this morning. He caught the train to Lincolnshire. To visit with a client there."

"I see."

Anne did not see at all.

Mr. Little had been most insistent that she contact him after her liaison with Michel des Anges—to assure him that the arrangements had proved satisfactory, he claimed.

She suspected the reason he wanted her to contact him was to verify that she had safely returned from the liaison.

"Did he say when he will be back?" Anne asked.

"Indeed not. I am afraid he departed before I awoke. He left a note saying that he had gone, is all."

The solicitor had visited Anne in Dover when her parents died; it had taken several days to go through all the necessary papers.

Then he had visited her again when she summoned him two months past. He had stayed overnight, and returned for another overnight visit after gaining Michel's signature on the contract.

Anne was not his only client.

He would be back soon.

"May I leave a note for Mr. Little, please?"

Mrs. Huttchinson graciously rose to her feet in a waft of lilac perfume. "Certainly, Miss Aimes. If you will follow me, please."

Her figure was neat and trim underneath a starched white apron. She was the same height Anne was.

Anne incongruously remembered that she and Mr. Little were the same height. Client, solicitor, and housekeeper were all five feet, five inches tall.

Mrs. Huttchinson's heels were muffled by a thick green wool runner. Walnut paneling swallowed the light in the narrow hallway.

Mr. Little's office—indeed, the entire lower floor of the building—was surprisingly large and comfortable. Surrounding bookshelves were crammed with ancient leather tomes; the green carpeting was thick and luxurious. Two brown leather wing-back chairs waited in front of a long, glass-topped desk.

A curious smell of scorched meat permeated the room. White ashes were thick in the iron fireplace; a shiny brass tong protruded from the grate.

"Please be seated, Miss Aimes." Mrs. Huttchinson gestured toward the desk and the writing materials neatly arranged there.

Sitting on the edge of the first of the two leather chairs, Anne briskly drew off her right glove and reached for the necessary writing tools. She paused, brass pen poised between her fingers. A large, black leather trunk crowded the wall behind the desk.

The solicitor had traveled with just such a trunk when he had visited her in Dover.

"Mr. Little—he does not plan on being gone long, I take it?"

Mrs. Huttchinson followed Anne's gaze. "Oh—Mr. Little would have taken another trunk, a smaller one, so possibly not. He wrote in his note that I should have this one sent to a fellow solicitor in London."

Anne dipped the pen into the inkwell—and stared at the blank vellum paper.

How could she reassure the solicitor that she was well when even she did not know what or how she felt?

A single drop of ink teared on the sharp steel nib. It splattered onto the stark white, bled into the paper.
Black instead of red
. A reminder of the pain Michel had brought, as well as the unimaginable pleasure.

Quickly scribbling a short note, she lightly sanded the paper before folding and sealing it in an envelope.

"Just leave it there on the desk, Miss Aimes. No one will disturb it. Mr. Little will see it first thing when he returns. He is very conscientious in these matters."

"Thank you." Anne wondered if the older woman was indeed married—or if she had adopted the title of Mrs. purely to gain respectable employment, as so many women did. She offered a smile. "Mr. Little speaks very highly of you."

Wicked humor gleamed in Mrs. Huttchinson's warm brown eyes. "Mr. Little speaks very highly of you also, Miss Aimes. He says you are a most courageous young woman."

Anne blinked.

Surely the solicitor had not told Mrs. Huttchinson about Michel des Anges.

She immediately dismissed the thought.

Mrs. Huttchinson, obviously a respectable woman, would not be so cordial if she knew about the illicit contract! No one knew save for Michel, Anne, and the solicitor.