What a Lady Craves

C
ORNWALL, SUMMER OF 1821

Within a month of becoming a paid companion, Henrietta Upperton learned the value of a good swear. Oh, she’d discovered the delights of foul language before coming to live with the Dowager Countess of Epperley. Having an older brother who didn’t always mind his tongue would teach a girl that much. But Henrietta had never fully appreciated the feeling of a forbidden word rolling off her tongue—or at least rolling through her mind—until now.

She stabbed her needle through the linen held taut by her embroidery hoop.
Hellfire.

Not good enough.

Damnation.

Better, perhaps. Was any activity more useless than stitching a sampler? Or any other approved pastimes for an accomplished young lady? She flung the work aside.

Across the room, the Dowager Countess of Epperley glowered, her rheumy blue eyes magnified by an etched gold-framed lorgnette. “Such displays of temper do not become you, George.”

Henrietta didn’t bother with a reminder that George was her brother. After six months in the dragon’s employ, Henrietta had learned such corrections were pointless. Lady Epperley would do as she damned well pleased.

Bugger.

There. That was nearly satisfying, but not as satisfying as voicing her opinion aloud.

The dowager ran her gnarled fingers through the long gray fur of the cat lounging on a silk pillow beside her. “It’s little wonder you’ve never attracted a husband when you carry on so.”

Henrietta glanced at her embroidery. The ivy border she’d been attempting looked ready for pruning shears. “Might I speak plainly, my lady?”

Lady Epperley peered at Henrietta from beneath the fringe of orange ostrich feathers in her matching turban. “Naturally. I’ve always been in favor of speaking one’s mind.”

True enough, but experience had proven the dowager less in favor of
other
people speaking their minds—unless she happened to agree with their opinions. And Henrietta could never tell ahead of time whether Lady Epperley would agree. Her level of congeniality varied
from hour to hour and followed the phases of the moon.

“Perhaps I’ve no use for a husband.”

“No use for a husband, indeed.” The old lady harrumphed, the sound a momentary mask to the howling wind outside. “Mine set me up quite nicely.”

She swept her hand in a broad motion that encompassed the sitting room. The brocade-upholstered chairs and carved end tables had no doubt been costly in their day. Along with the daintily patterned wallpaper and heavy velvet drapery, the room had been the height of fashion fifty years ago. But the dowager’s shortsightedness permitted her to overlook the patina of shabbiness that was slowly overtaking her estate.

“Yes.” Henrietta lifted her chin as she pleated the muslin of her skirt between her fingers. “I can understand why you were in such a hurry to remarry.”

“Do not talk such nonsense.” Lady Epperley fixed her with a surprisingly penetrating stare. As ever, sarcasm was lost on the beldam. “One husband was quite enough. Wasn’t he, Albemarle?”

In acknowledgment, Albemarle—an astonishingly masculine designation for a cat who produced a litter of kittens without fail every spring—stretched out one lazy paw and dug its claws into the silk cushion. Henrietta could only surmise the origin of the feline’s name. Whatever it was, the old witch insisted on addressing the disagreeable creature as an intimate. Or maybe a familiar.

“I never did understand women making a second rush to the altar,” Lady Epperley went on, “when widowhood affords one so much liberty.”

Henrietta studied the effect of pale blue muslin poking between her knuckles. The last thing she wanted was to encourage this conversation. Not when she suspected the liberty Lady Epperley referred to was of a physical nature. Henrietta could well dispense with even the suggestion of the old lady engaged in any manner of amorous activity.

At any rate, Lady Epperley did not seem to require a reply, for she went on. “But you cannot enjoy the advantages of widowhood without first acquiring a husband.”

Outside, rain lashed at the windows. Somewhere a loose shutter knocked against an ancient stone wall.
Bang, bang, bang … bang.
Like a succession of far-off cannon shots that had gone on all day and threatened to continue throughout the night.

“My lady, it sounds as if you’re suggesting I entrap some poor man and do him in. And that could not possibly be the case.”

Lady Epperley opened her mouth, no doubt to deliver a scathing reply, but the sound of a
throat clearing stopped her cold. She scowled through her lorgnette at the intruder. “Hirsch, how many times must I repeat? I loathe interruptions, most especially when I’m instructing an impressionable young lady on the merits of the conjugal life.”

Hirsch set a hand to his chest and bowed from the waist. The man was surprisingly fresh-faced for a butler. Dress his broad shoulders and sculpted form in eveningwear and he would have turned heads at any society function. But perhaps Lady Epperley had hired him for his youthful mind—yes, that must be it—the better to instruct him in his role.

“Forgive me, my lady.” His dulcet tone raised the hairs on Henrietta’s nape. Smooth as well-aged wine, that voice. “You have indeed reprimanded me on any number of occasions. Only I dared your wrath for good reason.”

“Good reason,” Lady Epperley spluttered, her jowls shaking along with her ostrich feathers, her gimlet gaze steady. “Last time you merely informed me the vicar had come to call. As if I wanted to listen to that pompous old windbag.”

And why should she attend the vicar when she could listen to herself natter on at length? Henrietta stopped herself before she expressed the thought aloud.

“I fear it’s rather more than that,” the butler said.

“Has the apothecary’s wife lost her cat again, then? But why would she need to consult me on such a matter when clearly she’d be better off without the scrawny beast? She ought to have drowned it as a kitten and saved us all the bother.”

At that pronouncement, Albemarle opened one baleful amber eye before yawning and tucking herself more tightly into a ball.

“My lady—”

“Oh, do get on with it, Hirsch. You said the matter was serious. Pray stop your dramatics and tell me.”

To Hirsch’s credit, he did not even blink, much less roll his eyes. “There is someone at the door. Someone who claims—”

Lady Epperley cut him short with a wave of her hand. “Callers? At this hour? Preposterous.”

“If you please, my lady.”

Without a sound to announce his presence, a dark-skinned man appeared on the threshold. Their caller, apparently, could not wait for an invitation.

Henrietta caught her breath. She’d never seen such a deep brown face, nor such perfectly black hair and eyes. When new, his tattered garments must have been white, but what remained
of them were a dull gray and currently dripping water about his bare feet. Hardly surprising, given the storm that had howled most of the day.

Lady Epperley glanced at the man. “You are no acquaintance of mine. I cannot imagine why a perfect stranger would choose as inconvenient an hour as this to pay his respects. Such a time is only appropriate for relatives.”

Relatives? A shiver passed down Henrietta’s spine. But no, Lady Epperley had many relatives. Why would that particular relation show up after all these years, just to spite her? But how else could this stranger have turned up on the threshold to the sitting room, an ever-widening puddle forming at his feet.

“No, indeed,
memsahib.
” The newcomer folded his hands in front of him in a prayerful attitude and bowed his head. The front of his shirt gaped to reveal a knotted tangle of darker scar tissue on his upper chest. His accent suggested hot, sultry days, spicy food, and a land far more colorful than England.

India. Henrietta knew little of the place, other than Alexander’s last letter had come from that land.

No. Alexander was not here. He could not be. But her heart insisted on beating all the faster.

“But I come in the name of one of your relations,” the stranger finished.

“Whose name?” Henrietta blurted.

“Mr. Sanford.”

Damnation. Bugger. Bollocks. Hellfire.
Henrietta curled her fingers into a fist to stop their shaking.

“Good heavens.” Lady Epperley placed a bony hand to her bosom. “Good heavens. If he’s returned from India, he’s left no word, sent no note. Why, we had no idea.”

“Please,
memsahib.
He is in a bad way. I cannot drag his body—”

“Body?”
Lady Epperley’s doughy cheeks paled beneath their generous layer of rouge. Henrietta suspected her own cheeks had taken on the same ashen tones. Whatever had passed between her and Alexander, she certainly did not wish the man dead.