Two hands and a throat: that is all that murder requires.
Alastair sits on the floor. The wall presses like a hand against his back, trying to shove him away, but he will not go. He will stay here. In the darkness he looks into his hands, spreads and flexes them. They itch for something to break.
Simple. Murder is so simple that boys must be warned against it. The throat is a delicate instrument; the hyoid bone, once crushed, blocks the airway completely. On playing fields, boys are taught the rules by which they must abide as gentlemen: Never squeeze the throat. Poor sportsmanship.
But in the end, the laws of honor have nothing to do with games, or with honor, either. They are simply lies invented to dissuade boys from knowing their own power, and from using it to kill each other.
Why? Why not kill? There are worse deaths than murder. Alastair’s wife, for instance, died alone in a rented suite at Claridge’s, an opium pipe beside her. But no, he’d told the inspector, no, no, it can’t be that. You’re wrong. There has been some mistake. She knew her limits. She knew how to use the stuff safely.
You knew, Your Grace? You knew she smoked the pipe?
The sudden change in the inspector’s tone had startled him. Before that night, nobody had spoken to him so. Yet this paid lackey of Alastair’s own government had dared to challenge him.
Yes, he’d replied icily. I knew.
What arrogance, that he hadn’t thought to lie. He’d been stunned, of course; grief-stricken, baffled, any number of florid adjectives that only a fool would willingly use to describe himself. Still, what arrogance! And what naïveté, that he’d ever imagined there was a safe way for Margaret to dabble in such drugs. What idiocy that he had believed her (I take it for my headaches; it is harmless, it works better than laudanum). Any sensible, intelligent man, upon discovering her habit, might have made the next leap: if she had kept this secret from him for so long, she might be keeping any number of other secrets, too.
But self-doubt had never come easily to him. For he did everything right, did he not? He lived well; he performed his duties with panache; he defied all the sordid legacies of his father. He had married well, and his marriage was nothing like his parents’. Margaret was the perfect wife. The opium was only a fluke.
And then suddenly she was dead of it, and Scotland Yard did not know what to do. A duchess found dead at one of London’s finest hotels? Dead in a plush suite that had cost fifty pounds a night, between floors of Americans planning their tours of the Tower and the zoo? How to contain such a story? How to bury it quickest?
No one at Scotland Yard knew of the letters Margaret had written, or of the lovers she had kept, or of the countless betrayals she had made in the dark, pressing her body to her lovers’ bodies, speaking into their ears of her husband’s plans, the schemes with which he sought to defeat them in Parliament. On that night, Alastair had not known yet, either. He had still been telling himself a story, believing it: their lives had been perfect until now. But if Scotland Yard had known those details, they might have suspected Alastair of murdering her. And had he known those details, perhaps they would have been right.
He flexes his hands. So easy. The wall gives another shove. He digs in his heels and resists.
The death of Margaret de Grey, Duchess of Marwick, was ruled an act of nature. Her body was removed from the hotel under cover of nightfall, while all the curious Americans were sleeping. Influenza, the official report read. Alastair’s friends consoled him. The injustice of it. God’s ways are mysterious indeed.
But there had been no mystery, no injustice, in her death: her own stupid vice had caused it. Likewise, it would be no injustice if her lovers died. No mystery, either. It would be murder. It would be murder if Alastair left this house.
So he does not leave this house. He does not even leave this room.
He looks into his palms. His eyes have grown accustomed to the dark he has made for himself, behind these curtains that never open. He sees clearly his lifelines, supposed harbingers of fortune: another lie, as much a lie as honor or ideals. He curls his lip. Fuck these lies.
His language is filthy. Foul thoughts swarm through his rotted, useless brain like flies across shit. He thought once that he saw every possibility. That he would make his own destiny. That he and Margaret, together, would be everything the world required. He thought he had control, and that everything he did, was done perfectly. I have done everything right—or so he’d thought.
He makes fists. His knuckles crack. He feels no pain.
“Your Grace.”
That is the third time someone has addressed him. He becomes aware of that, all at once. The soft voice comes from the doorway. It is female. He does not look up.
Glass clinks: the woman is collecting empty bottles from the carpet. He has not drunk in some days, though. Even alcohol has ceased to affect him. With it or without it, he feels equally numb.
“Your Grace,” she says, “will you come out? Take the air, while I tidy your rooms?”
They always leave after a minute; the trick is to ignore them. But the more frequently this question is put to him, the more foolish and dangerous it seems. All of them are ignorant: the servants, his brother, the world. They fail to understand that their best interests lie in leaving him here. It is safer if he stays—not for himself, but for them.
For he knows that he could kill very easily. These hands, his own, could kill. He is no longer Parliament’s brightest star, celebrated husband to a society beauty, someday to be prime minister. He is not the country’s best hope, nor the corrective to his parents’ foul legacy. He is not the new chapter of anything.
If he decided to take the air now—to step out, to return to the world—people would die, because he would kill them. He would kill them for what they had done.
“Your Grace.” The girl is pale, tall, with hair as red as a warning. She is too bright; she hurts his eyes. “If you will just—”
Idiots must be saved from themselves. He gropes for a bottle and hurls it.
Olivia slammed the door, then leaned against it, heart pounding. She had not started her day intending to meet the duke. But in the library, when she had remarked on the empty spots on some of the shelves, one of the maids had replied, Oh, the duke has them upstairs. It’s like a jumble sale, his rooms! Loads of books and papers and whatnot. He won’t even let us in anymore.
Papers.
Olivia had been here five days. She had not yet searched an inch of the place. Contrary to her expectations, the disorder of the household worked against her. The maids, the footmen, even the cook’s assistant forever seemed to be popping up where they shouldn’t. She caught them in odd places, doing everything in the world (loitering, dozing, playing cards) save their work.
How was a woman supposed to pry when potential witnesses roamed wherever they pleased?
She was attempting to impose a schedule, discipline. Jones, when he was not hiding in his pantry, approved: she had the makings, he told her, of an excellent housekeeper. Natural talent, he pronounced, clearly pleased with his own instinct in hiring her.
But she couldn’t care less about the household, save that the errantry of its staff offended her sensibilities and was foiling her plans. What she needed was predictability: to know where everyone would be, at what time.
Until she managed that, she contented herself by surveying the terrain and designing a plan of search. She knew she must go through the study, top to bottom. The library also had cabinets requiring investigation. But the duke’s rooms? She had never dreamed he might keep files there. She had ventured upstairs to make her introductions to him (baffled as to why Jones hadn’t yet arranged it) and to take a look around.
Instead, she’d uncovered a shocking scene, at the end of which he had thrown a bottle at her.
Her palm itched with the urge to turn the key and lock him inside. But no, she didn’t dare. That was not the act of a housekeeper, but of a jailer.
The housekeeper in a madhouse might do it, she thought.
She took a long, ragged breath. He had not been aiming at her. That was some kind of comfort, surely.
Or perhaps he had been aiming and had simply missed. It had been so dark that from the doorway, very little was visible. She’d made out shapes along the floor—books? Or piles of paper?—and the mass of the canopied bed. To the right, where a dim glow penetrated through the drawn curtains, she’d spotted him: the shape of him, at least, a silhouette sitting perfectly still, head bowed as though in prayer.
But he was not praying. He was mad. His insanity had a feel to it, jagged and sharp, so the very air in his bedroom seemed filled with edges.
When the bottle had shattered, she’d dropped the ones she’d been collecting. He was armed, then, with at least three more potential weapons to throw. She would not go back into his rooms until she found a suit of armor.
She smiled a little. The one standing guard outside the library might fit her.
“She just went in there.” The voice came from ahead.
“No! She wouldn’t dare!”
“I tell you, she did. I was listening for a bit, didn’t hear no screams.”
“Just wait for the bruised eye, then. You know he ain’t—”
Olivia stepped around the corner. The maids fell silent, but the glance they exchanged spoke volumes, lending their silence a mocking air. It made her wonder what they saw in her face—if she looked shaken.
The thought irked her. She was not frightened. Only Bertram’s man frightened her, and she refused to expand the list. She pulled herself straight. “Polly,” she said to the brunette, “I told you to see to the morning room.”
Polly wiped her hands down her apron. “I already did, Miss Johnson.”
“Mrs. Johnson,” Olivia corrected. That was the proper address for a housekeeper.
The other maid, Muriel, giggled. The footmen seemed to admire that giggle, for they were constantly trying to elicit it. Olivia had never witnessed so much flirtation as she had the past several days. She’d found this atmosphere mildly annoying, but now, all at once, it struck her as obscene.
The duke was drinking himself to death in the darkness while his servants flirted and giggled. It’s been grand fun, Polly had told her. Like being paid to see a stage show. “What,” she said coldly, “do you find so amusing, Muriel?”
Muriel dimpled as she shrugged. A petite, pretty blonde, she seemed to think her charms were universally applicable. Life would surprise her someday. “Nothing, ma’am. Only, somebody said you came to apply for the housemaid’s position—”
That somebody could be none other than Polly, who returned Olivia’s sharp look with a shrug.
“—and truth be told, you’re the youngest housekeeper I ever saw.”
That, no doubt, was the truth—and the reason the staff mocked and japed at her. Jones, who spent most of his time hiding in the pantry, was not proving the confederate she’d hoped.
But until she got the servants in hand, she dared not search the house. “How surprising to hear that,” she said. “The youngest housekeeper, are you certain? But I suppose I must take your word for it, your experience being so very broad. You having served in so many great houses, and traveled the world, vous avez même soupé à Versailles, n’est-ce pas?”
Muriel’s smile slipped. “I . . . I don’t speak that language, ma’am.”
“No? What a pity. Do you speak the language of rug brushing and curtain beating?”
Muriel cast a worried frown toward Polly, who had gaped at Olivia’s French, and had yet to close her jaw. “I don’t suppose I know that language, either,” Muriel said.
Polly collected herself. “Dolt. It’s not a language. She’s saying, do you know how to brush a rug?”
“Think carefully,” Olivia said. “It is the main requirement of your continued employment.”
Judging by the startled alarm that flashed across their faces, the maids had not realized that she had the power to sack them. Indeed, Olivia did not feel so certain of it herself. She was, after all, “temporary”—and the household had lost too much staff already.
Regardless, her threat had the desired effect. Both girls went hurrying to collect their maids’ boxes, which they had abandoned at the top of the stairs. Polly muttered something to Muriel. Only two words popped out: duke and drunkard.
No wonder that the staff was wild. Marwick set them no good example. On the other hand, why did they humor his debauchery? Had they no self-respect? The task of a well-trained staff, particularly in a grand home such as this, was not merely to obey the master, but also to exert a civilizing influence. In some households, the staff even took pride in that role. And why not? Left unchecked, the excesses of the aristocracy would have outraged England into a revolution by now.
But this staff cowered as though their duty and their dignity were mutually exclusive.
“One more thing,” she called. Both girls turned to look at her. “You will take no more liquor to His Grace’s rooms.” Let him learn a lesson. For that matter, let him be deprived of new weaponry, in case she needed to enter his rooms again. “That is an order that applies to all the servants, footmen included.”
They goggled at her. Muriel recovered first. “But if he rings, ma’am—”
“You will come to me. I will handle it.” Somehow. She would deal with that problem when it arose.
“The footmen don’t take orders from you,” Polly said.
“No, they take orders from Mr. Jones, who is in agreement with me.” Or so he would be, after Olivia spoke with him. Marwick’s brutishness should carry repercussions. Besides, if he drank himself to death, his butler would be out of a job.
“Don’t move.” Olivia sat at the head of the table in the servants’ gallery, Jones to her right, Cook to her left, and Marwick’s valet, Vickers, at the foot. Together, the four of them sat watching the bells affixed to the wall, one of which had begun to ring again, for the third time that hour.
“But we must answer him!” Vickers was round-faced, tonsured like a monk, and given to rubbing his bald spot when nervous. He was scrubbing it now vigorously.
“He’s had his dinner,” Olivia said. “You were just upstairs. The only possible thing he could require from us is alcohol—or hot milk.” She grew thoughtful. Hot milk was said to be comforting. “Would you take him some? It might help.”
Vickers clutched his pate. “You want me dead, do you?”
“I agree with Mrs. Johnson,” Jones said. “Whisky will not aid him. But what of port? It is a gentleman’s right to enjoy his—”
“Any intoxicant will do him ill. And he does not deserve our indulgence.” Really, Olivia thought. Must she persuade them all over again? “He threw a bottle at my head, sirs. That is not a gentleman’s right.” But her motive was not wholly spiteful. She clung to the virtue in it. “Besides, if it’s true what you say—if he was never violent before—why, then the liquor must account for it. You do him a service by denying it.”
“Are you certain he was drunk?” Jones squinted into space. “I keep good track of the cellars, and I’ve not noticed—”
“You can’t imagine how many bottles I found up there.”
“And you can’t imagine what he’s been like,” Vickers said. “The liquor soothes him, I tell you!”
“Soothes him!” Olivia sat back, gawking. “Do you call a bottle, hurled at the wall—”
“At least he’s eating.” Cook looked bleary-eyed from exhaustion, her face as gray as her hair. Every time the bell rang, she shrank more deeply into herself, so that over the course of the last hour, she had gone from sporting two chins to three. “I can’t say the liquor accounts for it, but he’d barely touch his tray, this summer. He’s better now.”
Better! Olivia thought again of the darkness, of his sudden savage assault today. Cook called that better? She gripped her hands very tightly in her lap. “But surely you see that this is for his own good. Even if he is on the mend”—ha!—“liquor will not benefit—”
Jones’s chair scraped as he stood. “You are new to this household, ma’am.” He lifted his voice to be heard over the clamoring of the bell. “I cannot fault your intentions. But you overstep yourself to imagine that you have any understanding—”
Olivia lifted her hands in surrender. “Fine! Take it to him.” What did it matter to her anyway? For all she knew, the duke kept his dossiers somewhere logical, like the study. She would never need to go into his rooms.
But the problem of the disobedient staff remained. “But how,” she continued, “shall I win the respect of the staff? Pray tell, Mr. Jones. For the servant follows his master’s example, does he not? And you see what this household resembles, when its master is playing the lunatic.”
The bell fell still. In the silence, she found herself the object of three appalled stares.
And then Cook gave a breathy sob and looked down at the tabletop, and Jones fell back into his chair like a sack of flour, and Vickers set his head into his hands.
Olivia felt a brief wave of triumph. Finally, they saw her point.
With the next breath, she felt sorry for them. Their employment here was no game, no masquerade; it was their livelihood.
But should the duke perish, his heir might bring a new staff to replace them. She was doing them a favor.
Cook was muffling sobs with her handkerchief. “I’ve known him since he was a boy. I never thought to see him brought so low. He was everything kind, you can’t imagine . . .”
No, she certainly couldn’t. With a sigh, she said, “Perhaps what we need is a doctor.”
Vickers scoffed. “His own brother is the finest doctor in England. Much good he did!”
“Lord Michael tried his best,” Jones said with dignity.
Olivia believed it. She had come to know Lord Michael during his courtship of Elizabeth Chudderley. He had not struck her as a man to do anything by halves.
She had depended on Marwick’s estrangement from his brother to safeguard her masquerade here. But now, for the briefest moment, she wondered if he shouldn’t be summoned. “Do you think he might . . .”
Alas, she was too self-minded to finish her sentence, for if he came, Lord Michael would recognize her in an instant. But Cook caught on, and shook her head. “He’s been driven away, Mrs. Johnson. He’ll not set foot in this house again.”
Olivia eyed her. “You say you’ve known the duke since boyhood.” And Cook’s tearstained face was very poignant, the picture of a grieving grandmother, almost. It would require a heart of stone to look upon her and remain indifferent. “Perhaps if you were to speak to him . . .”
“Oh, no. It’s not my place. And I’ll not go up there, I won’t.” Cook crossed her beefy arms and sat back, less grandmotherly now than mulish. “It’s here I stay, in the kitchens. I take good care of them; I know my place.”
“Convenient for you,” Vickers muttered.
Olivia bit back an agreement. Cook’s pride in her kitchens evidently did not extend to cleanliness: Olivia had discovered a pile of dirt sitting on the counter just this morning. “Let’s trick him down here, then. When he realizes Vickers is not at hand, he’ll certainly go looking . . .” She trailed off, for all three looked startled. “What is it?”
Jones said guardedly, “He will not leave his room.”
She frowned. “Even if we all seem to have abandoned our posts?”
“He has not left in . . . some time.”
She paused. “You mean to say he won’t leave his bedroom? Ever?”
“I suppose he might venture into the sitting room occasionally.” Jones cast a hopeful look at Vickers, who shrugged.
“Vickers ain’t in the rooms often enough to know,” Cook said. “I have to chase him off my girl thrice a day!”
“Hey now,” said Vickers. “I can’t help it if she hangs about!”
“He won’t leave his room?” Olivia wished to be very clear on this point. She had never heard of such a bizarre condition. “But why?”
“Nobody can say,” said Jones.
“He doesn’t receive anybody, either.” Vickers sounded gloomy. “Doesn’t write letters. Takes no calls. It’s dashed dull around here, of late.”
Olivia groped for words. “Then how on earth does he conduct his business?” For this was not merely a private gentleman. This was a peer of the realm, one of the greatest landowners in England. His concerns necessarily encompassed the welfare and livelihood of a vast number of people.
“He don’t manage,” Cook said. She gave a pull of her mouth, considering. “Perhaps you’re right.” She glanced toward Jones. “Liquor can’t be helping him.”
Jones thumbed his patch of overlong whiskers. “Perhaps,” he allowed.
As though in reply, the bell rang again. Was it Olivia’s imagination, or was it somehow ringing harder now?
“Somebody needs to answer it.” This, naturally, came from Cook, who would not go upstairs. “Even if to tell him we won’t fetch him his drink.”
Suddenly everyone was looking at Olivia. “Oh, no,” she said. “As Mr. Jones has pointed out, I am too new to take a hand in these matters.”
“But it’s your plan,” Vickers said. “You’re the reason we haven’t answered him.”
She scowled. They cared for the duke; she did not. Indeed, that thought felt like an anchor, holding her steady against their imploring looks, which, like a strong current, threatened to bear her straight into stormy waters. “He and I have not even been introduced. Surely, Mr. Vickers, it is you who—”
Jones stood. “Come, then. Let us go together, so I may introduce you properly.”
Vickers mimed a tip of an invisible hat. “It was a pleasure to know you both.”
As Jones opened the door to the duke’s sitting room, the hinges squeaked. Olivia stood close enough behind him to sense how he flinched. His nerves proved contagious; she found herself holding her breath as she crept across the carpet in his wake.
She never should have interfered. What did she care if the staff failed to defend their own dignity? If they were at peace with their master’s savagery, so be it; let them indulge him. And as for having to go into his rooms again—she could have encouraged the footmen to take him more bottles than any man could drink. An unconscious, stupefied drunkard would have posed her no harm.
Oh, this was a terrible flaw in her, this need to interfere and manage and fix things.
Jones knocked softly on the bedroom door. “Your Grace?” His voice shook. Olivia wanted to pat the poor man’s arm to lend him courage, but she wasn’t sure she had enough to spare. She had vowed, after all, not to return until she’d acquired a suit of armor to protect herself. So much for that.
Jones must have heard a reply, for he opened the door. “May we enter?”
A soft hiss filled the air. Along the walls, gas lamps sputtered to life. The rising light illuminated a man standing at the far corner of the room, very tall. It gilded the strong column of his throat, the sharp angle of his jaw—
Olivia felt as though she’d been kicked in the head. He was disheveled (but with a valet like Vickers, she would not have expected otherwise). His beard wanted trimming, and his shaggy hair begged for scissors. He looked, as well, underfed—his shirt hung loosely about his shoulders, and his trousers depended too visibly on the clasps of his suspenders. Together with his gauntness, the effect should have been ugly.
It was the opposite. His leanness only accented the perfect bones of his face: broad, sharp cheekbones; a straight, high-bridged nose; a hard, square jaw that framed full, long lips. She stared, feeling stupefied. Marwick had been a subject of public scrutiny ever since he had stepped into political office. But for all the things that had been spoken of him, nobody had ever called him handsome. Why not? How not? Broad-shouldered, whittled lean, he put her in mind of some warrior ascetic from the icy, Viking north. Only his mouth ruined the image: his full lips belonged on a hedonist.
He stepped toward them—rangy, tall, very, very blond. His single step caused Jones to bobble back against her. “I have been ringing,” the duke said coldly, “for an hour.”
His voice was dark and rich, like the cream on a pint of stout. She understood nothing, suddenly. He did not sound like a madman, and he did not hold himself like someone afraid to leave his rooms. He loomed, rather. He . . . presided.
And the chamber over which he presided, she saw, was filled with papers. Piles of them lay strewn across the carpet. There were also piles of books stacked about, but those papers . . . oh, so many of them!
“Forgive us, Your Grace.” Jones stammered the words. “There was an emergency in the kitchens.”
She had a sinking feeling. She would search the study, of course. The library, too. But all these papers . . . here . . . in the room he never left. God must have a very dry sense of humor.
When she raised her gaze, she found Marwick’s attention fastened on her. His eyes were a brilliant, piercing blue. Their intensity made something flutter inside her. She recognized the intelligence in them. Her gut told her to take it as a warning.
Jones spoke in a rush. “This is Mrs. Johnson, Your Grace. She is—ah, a temporary replacement for Mrs. Wright, who you may recall gave notice two weeks ago. We were left in the lurch, I fear—I know it is somewhat extraordinary, to hire someone without consulting you. But—if you recall, you gave me full authority—”
“I recall.” His piercing blue eyes had not yet released her. She began to feel the weight of them as a deliberate challenge. The lion in his natural element expected submission, but she would not bow her head. She did not even blink. Had she been a cat, she might have bristled at the provocation of his look.
Instead, she was a secretary—by training, at least; and a housekeeper, by strange luck. Neither position required her to abase herself to him.
Thank God for it. For she realized in this moment how badly she would have played the maid. Humbleness came hard to her. She could not value it; too many unkind people had tried to force it on her in her youth. They had expected her to be ashamed, and so she had vowed never to be so.
Nevertheless, a curtsy did no harm. “I am honored, Your Grace,” she said as she rose.
He stared at her a moment longer. Then, with a soft noise of contempt, he swung his attention to Jones. “I have told you,” he said, “that you may manage the staff as you like. However.” His voice hardened. “If I am forced to wait, the next time I ring that bell—”
“That was my doing,” Olivia said quickly—for Jones had whimpered, and she could not let him face the consequences that rightly belonged to her.
Marwick said to Jones, “You will tell the girl not to interrupt me.”
The girl! She stiffened. She was his housekeeper, a position well worthy of his respect. Not that she imagined a man who threw bottles would recognize that.
“Yes, indeed.” Jones shot her a panicked look. “Mrs. Johnson, if you will wait in the hall?”
She would, gladly. She was already turning away. But—no, in fact, she had something to say. She pivoted back. “I am no girl,” she told Marwick. Bully. Brute! He had tried to wreck his brother’s marriage to a good woman, for no reason. He terrified his servants. His estates were probably falling to pieces thanks to his inattention. And he called her a girl? What was he, but a sulking, spoiled boy? “Admittedly, I am young—and a good thing, for an elderly woman might not have survived the shock of having a bottle thrown at her.”
Marwick looked at her a moment. And then, suddenly, he was crossing the room in long strides—and Jones, the coward, was dashing into the safety of the sitting room.
She shrank back. But her feet would not let her retreat, clinging stubbornly to pride even as Marwick towered over her. Her heart, on the other hand, was a coward; it slammed against her breastbone in search of an escape.
“I beg,” he said softly, “your pardon, girl. And now, I advise you to go downstairs and pack your things. You are sacked.”
As simply as that? No. She did not dare glance over her shoulder to find out if Jones had heard the news. “That would be foolish, Your Grace.” The sound of her voice, so fierce, gave her fresh courage. “Your staff is running wild. They need a strong hand to put them to rights.”
“Get. Out.”
A wild idea came to her, borne of desperation. Lowering her voice, she said, “I should hate to be forced to tell the newspapers that I was attacked by my employer, and then thrown out on my ear for complaining of it.”
He stepped back as though to see her better. But as he studied her, his perfect face held an absolute lack of expression. “Was that a threat?” he asked. He did not sound particularly interested.
His monotone was somehow more terrifying than a bellow. She felt a bolt of primal alarm, the same that saved her from runaway carriages, uncovered drains, and lunatics on the street. Run, it said. For your life.
She took a breath. She knew enough of him from Elizabeth Chudderley—particularly about his reaction to his wife’s letters—to know that he feared public notoriety. Elizabeth had said that he dreaded above all things that the letters would be made public. It stood to reason, then, that he would not like the incident with the bottle to be made public, either, for it certainly would make him notorious.
“It is not precisely a threat, Your Grace”—for she would never carry through on it; such attention would not suit her, either—“only a suggestion that you might prefer to deal fairly with me. Your household requires direction.”
He stepped toward her again, and this time her feet responded sensibly, carrying her backward until she hit the wall.
“How curious,” he said. He propped an elbow against the wall above her, leaning into it, looming over her, while with his other hand he grabbed her jaw, lifting it the way one might an animal’s. Every muscle in her stiffened as he looked into her face.
His hand was hot. Impossibly large. She spoke through her teeth. “Release me.”
“Your Grace,” he said very softly. “You will address me properly.”
Properly? He wanted respect from her while he behaved like a common thug? She glared at him.
He pulled her chin higher. A muscle in her neck protested. Where was Jones? Why was he not interfering? “Your Grace,” he said again, still just as soft. “Do say it, Mrs. Johnson. I am waiting.”
She would spit in his eye first. “Do dukes behave so?” Her voice came out very hoarsely. “Gentlemen do not.”
His eyes roved her face, his own still coldly impassive. “Oh, yes,” he said, “you are very young. Very young and very stupid. I think girl is the only word for you, Mrs. Johnson. Tell me, was there ever a mister?”
She slammed her lips together to halt their trembling. Until he released her, she would say no more. She did not know which remark might incite him further.
He lifted a brow, which gave her a weird shock; it was the first animation she had seen on his frigid countenance. “Silence? But a moment ago, you had so very much to say.” He placed his thumb on her lower lip, then made a firm, hard stroke. She tasted the salt on his skin.
This was not happening. She seemed to move outside her body, viewing from above this unbelievable moment: the Duke of Marwick, molesting her.
He withdrew his thumb. Lifted it to his own mouth. Tasting her. Their eyes met, his impossibly blue, not a speck of hazel or gold to break their electric intensity. A curious prickle spread through her.
He made a contemptuous noise and dropped his hand. “Disobedience,” he said. “The taste of it does not suit me.” He took another step back, looking at her with sudden cruel amusement. “However. The correction of impertinent domestics has always been one of my skills.”
Here was why nobody commented on the beauty of his bone structure, the shape of his mouth, or the brilliance of his eyes. Perfection was not always beautiful: sometimes, it was terrifying.
“Your Grace—” she began in a whisper, but he cut her off.
“There is no Mr. Johnson, I think. You blush like a virgin. Ma’am.”
She turned her face away. Staring at the wall, she said rapidly, “The staff assures me that you have never been the kind of cowardly man who abuses his servants—”
His fist slammed into the wall.
She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. His fist had missed her ear by an inch, no more.
“I am precisely that kind of man,” he said bitterly. “Or did you imagine you were dreaming this episode?”
She darted a horrified glance at him. Something dark and contemptuous had come into his face. He reached for the gas dial, and the lowering light masked him from view.
She wanted to bolt, but she was not certain her knees would support her. Her breathing would not settle into an easy rhythm; it jerked in her throat. What kind of man was this? What kind of monster? And she could see nothing, which would make her escape treacherous, for the floor was littered with all manner of—
Papers.
She willed her voice not to shake. “It would be easier to keep me on. Otherwise you might have to trouble yourself with terrorizing a new woman.”
“You must be very desperate, Mrs. Johnson, to want this position.”
Again, she caught the note of contempt. But it was not for her, she realized. He meant that it would take a desperate woman to wish to work for him. His contempt was all for himself.
This attitude was so at odds with what she had expected from him (arrogance, vanity, condescension) that she felt at sea. She groped for a reply. “I do not blame you.” What a lie! “Liquor can make us strangers to ourselves—”
His laugh seemed edged with glass. “But I am sober, ma’am. I have been sober all day.”
She swallowed a gasp. If he had been sober when he threw the bottle—if he was sober even now—then liquor had no role in his wickedness: the evil was native to him.
She would not let him hear her shock; she sensed it would gratify him too much. “Then what were you ringing for, if not alcohol?”
His slight pause suggested surprise. And then, with a note of mockery, came his reply: “Bullets.”
Her courage shattered. She groped desperately along the wall for the door. She fled through the sitting room into the hallway, where Jones—a true coward—stood waiting. “Well?” he asked anxiously.
She shook her head and walked past him, hugging herself. Whether, with his last remark, Marwick had been trying to frighten her or only telling the truth, she could not say. But if it was the latter . . .
Jones fell into step at her heels. “Shall we send up a bottle?”
“Several.” And put hemlock in them.
The thought was too black, too horrifying; she felt appalled at having entertained it. But had she spoken it, Jones probably would not have been shocked. By his lack of surprise, it was clear he’d given up on his master sometime ago. He had only humored her tonight as a matter of form.
Yet as she reached the ground floor, she found herself remembering the look on the duke’s face. His disgust after he had punched the wall. It had been an ugly look, at odds with the treacherous beauty of his features.
She realized she was touching her lip. She scrubbed it with her knuckles. He was a bully, a lunatic. She should not spare a thought to what haunted him. There was no possible earthly excuse for his behavior.
But she did know the reason for it. She had read the duchess’s letters. And as much as they had shocked and revolted her, she could only imagine what effect they’d had on Marwick.
How she wished she hadn’t read them! For this sudden, fleeting sympathy was undeserved by him, and ridiculous of her, and . . . the very opposite of armor.