Of course, the duke did not open his door when Olivia appeared an hour later, prepared to organize the books. But a peep through the keyhole showed him to be among the living—and reading in a wing chair, like a civilized man, pistol nowhere in sight.
Satisfied, she returned downstairs, intent on tackling the mystery of the truffles. It stood to reason that if none of the kitchen staff had taken them, somebody else must have. After asking Jones to speak with the footmen, she took upon herself the task of interrogating the maids.
The first summoned to her office was Doris, who seemed least likely to ruffle at being suspected of theft—or so Olivia had anticipated.
In fact, Doris did not seem unruffled as much as placidly baffled. “But why should I take the truffles, ma’am? What are truffles? Are they the ones what look like mud?”
Olivia hesitated. In truth, she had never encountered any. Her last employer had not inclined to French cuisine, though Elizabeth had certainly favored French wines. “What matter how they look, Doris? More to the point, they’re very expensive.”
“That figures, for I’ve certainly never tried one. So why should I want five pounds of them, when I don’t even know if I like the taste?”
This naïveté seemed a bit much. “You might want them to sell.”
“Oh!” Doris gave a hesitant nod. “Yes, that makes sense. But . . . I don’t know anyone who eats truffles. Do you? Why would anybody dare it?” She looked very doubtful of their safety. “It would take a very bold person, to be sure, to eat something what looks like dirt, ma’am.”
“His Grace eats them,” Olivia said dryly. “They were in his kitchens, were they not?”
Doris clapped a hand over her giggle. “Oh, well, naturally, ma’am. But I certainly couldn’t sell them to him; he’d find it a sight odd, I expect, his maid trying to sell him his own goods! And if nobody else has tried them, then who should I sell them to?”
The girl must be shamming her. “You’d sell them at the market, of course.”
“Would I?” Doris looked impressed. “That’s a proper good plan, ma’am! I’d never have thought of that.”
It dawned on Olivia that she might not be interrogating the girl so much as providing her with an introductory guide to petty crime. “Never mind that,” she said hastily. “Have any of the others acquired new items of late? Or shown themselves to be in possession of unexpected funds?”
“Why . . .” Doris looked wide-eyed. “Come to think of it, Polly dropped a penny the other day, and didn’t bother to pick it up. She said it was bad luck if it landed heads down, but I never heard such a thing.”
Olivia exhaled. Patience. “Truffles,” she said, “would fetch far more than a penny, Doris. These were more than the value of all the month’s meals, combined.”
Doris sat back, visibly amazed. “And to think they look like mud! Is that a disguise, then, ma’am? That one puts on them, to keep them safe?”
Muriel came into her office next, and immediately proved herself to be more world wise. Too world wise, perhaps. “I’ve heard that they’re an . . .” She lowered her voice and leaned in across the desk. “Afro-what’s-it, ma’am. Do you follow?”
After a moment, Olivia feared she did. “An aphrodisiac, you mean?”
“Exactly. So p’raps instead of looking to us, you’d best look to Old Willy, if you know what I mean.”
Olivia did not. “Old Willy? Who is that?” She felt certain she knew the entire staff by now. “I haven’t met anyone by that name.”
Muriel rolled her eyes. “Old Willy. You know who.”
“No,” Olivia said, bewildered. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
Muriel slammed her palms onto the desk and leaned forward. “Who’s got the oldest willy?” she hissed.
Suddenly comprehending, Olivia shot back in her seat. “Muriel! Decency, please!”
Muriel gave a one-shouldered, thoroughly unrepentant shrug. “Aphrodisiac, ma’am. You look for the willy least likely to work.” She crooked a pinky, nodding sadly at it. “That’s where you’ll find your truffles.”
What a ribald and preposterous theory. Yet despite herself, Olivia began to mentally survey the staff. “But that would be . . .” She trailed off, appalled.
“Exactly.” Crossing her arms, Muriel gave a solemn nod. “Old Jones has done it.”
Polly alone took exception to the questioning. “I thought Mrs. Wright was bad enough, with all those coins tucked under the rug. You didn’t pick ’em up, you hadn’t swept thoroughly. You did pick ’em up, you’re a thief. But truffles! God have mercy, I’d rather be accused of stealing coin. I’m an honest, good girl. What business have I to do with the French?”
“But . . .” Olivia pressed a palm to her forehead; she was developing a headache. “What have the French to do with it?”
Polly huffed. “Truffles are French, ain’t they? Yes, they are. I know what’s what. And I have no truck with Frenchies, thank you muchly. I’ll not hear a word to the contrary!”
Later that afternoon, Olivia found herself, dazed and no better informed, in Jones’s pantry. “I don’t know who took the truffles. I have absolutely no idea.”
“Nor do I,” he said with a sigh. “Well, we must keep our ears to the ground, Mrs. Johnson.”
“Indeed.” She could barely bring herself to look at him for fear of blushing furiously. Did everybody else refer to him in private as . . . oh, she could not even bring herself to think the name.
“Rest assured,” he continued solemnly, “I have dealt with such mysteries before. Sooner or later, the truth always comes out. Oh, hello, Muriel. Did you want something?”
Olivia turned in time to see the maid shake her head. Then, with a smile for Olivia, the girl flashed a curled pinky before dashing out of sight.
“Curious,” Jones muttered. “Surely you did not ask them to pinky swear, Mrs. Johnson?”
She smothered her horrified laugh in a coughing fit, and excused herself promptly.
His Grace wanted fresh newspapers.
The gossip spread shortly after breakfast the next day, and by the rapidity with which it traveled, and the stunned amazement it left in its wake, one might have imagined that the duke had instead requested a priest for the purpose of conversion—or that he had decided to sack the entire staff.
The prevailing mood was that somber, at least, when Olivia found Vickers and two of the footmen waiting in tense silence outside Jones’s office.
“I can’t imagine what you said to him,” Vickers muttered by way of greeting. “It’s been months since he cared to read anything.” He frowned. “And why do you look so happy about it?”
Pride was a great sin of hers. Stop annoying me, her mother had used to chide her. But Olivia had never been able to bear Mama’s low moods and sulks; there was always a solution for them. Was Marwick so different? She felt certain that the duke’s request for the newspaper was a very positive sign of her ongoing strategy. Aside from this whole nonsense about killing people, he’d be out of his quarters within a week.
“Never mind that,” she said to Vickers. “Why are you still down here? Take the papers to him.”
“We stopped taking the Telegraph ages ago. I had to send Bradley to market for it. And now”—Vickers tipped his head toward Jones’s door—“they must be ironed.”
But what if the duke changed his mind during the wait? Didn’t anyone else realize how precarious and quick his moods were? “Heaven forbid the duke gets some ink on his hands.”
Bradley spoke up. “It’s not the ink, ma’am. His Grace is very particular about his papers—he can’t abide a wrinkle in ’em.”
Was that so? Would that he were so particular about the state of his rooms.
A marvelous idea struck her. “How badly does he want these papers?”
Vickers and Bradley exchanged a dark look. “Badly enough to ring incessantly from the crack of dawn. He hasn’t been up at such an hour in ages, either.” He turned his glare on the door. “I wish Jones would hurry up with it. He won’t have to face His Grace after this delay.”
As though in reply, the door opened. Olivia stepped in front of Vickers and took the newspapers straight from Jones’s hands. “I will deliver them,” she said.
If the duke wanted these papers, he would have to earn them.
She climbed the stairs very quickly, switching the stack from arm to arm, for they still bore the heat of the iron, and burned right through her sleeves. “Your Grace,” she called as she entered his sitting room. “I have the newspapers you requested.”
His voice came through the door. “Bring them.”
The immediacy of his reply encouraged her. She took a strategic position behind the bulwark of the chiffonier. It was not quite high enough to protect her from missiles or bullets, but it would certainly interrupt a forward charge. “No,” she called, “I won’t.”
It took only a moment for the door to swing open. He was improving. He was wearing a dressing robe, as a gentleman ought while reading the morning papers.
He glared at her from the doorway, shaggy and radiantly blond. “Bring. Them. Here.”
Alas, the robe, while a very fine species of embroidered maroon silk, could not outweigh the effect of his scruffiness—or the way he shifted his weight from foot to foot, as though barely channeling some violent impulse. How good to know that it was not she he wished to kill. She hoped he kept that in mind throughout the remainder of this encounter.
She laid the papers atop the table. “Some very interesting news today, Your Grace. I see the mayor has authorized a new lighting scheme for—”
“I will count to five,” he growled.
“Shall you?” She pushed aside the topmost paper to canvass the other headlines. “How impressive—for a three-year-old, that is.”
He made some strangled noise. She glanced up and found he had taken hold of the door frame. A signet ring gleamed on his pinky. Had he been wearing that ring before? She did not think so. That, too, seemed proof positive of improvement.
Less reassuring was how he choked the door frame, his grip tight enough to whiten his knuckles. She had a brief flash of her throat in such a grip; certainly the emotion on his face would very easily translate to that endeavor.
He prefers bullets, she reminded herself. “I also see”—she paused to take a deep breath, disliking the tremble in her voice—“that St. George’s is planning a commemorative service for Sir Bodley. Did you ever read his memoirs? A very bold explorer—”
“How do you dare?”
The deadness in his voice was chilling. But there was no choice for her. She had to get him out of that bedroom. She forced herself to reply brightly. “Was that a rhetorical question, Your Grace? With your tone so level, it is hard to tell—”
“If I step over this threshold, you will regret it. You do understand that, Miss Johnson?”
That was the longest threat he’d ever issued, syllabically speaking. It also, somehow, seemed the most convincing of them. Certainly it triggered an ache in her throat, an almost physical memory of Moore’s stranglehold.
She realized she was crumpling the newsprint, and forced herself to let go. So much for the ironing. Her fingertips were smudged.
“It is a short distance to this table,” she said encouragingly.
His reply came very softly: “That should trouble you.”
She gripped her hands very tightly at her waist. If she bent to him now, handed over the newspapers, then he would withdraw and slam the door. And she might as well book her passage to France, for she would never get a look at the papers he kept there. Not if his improvements did not lead to him leaving his bedroom.
“If you would . . . if you would only come fetch these papers, you might learn yourself of all the marvelous developments—”
“Fetch them?” He made some abortive movement and she clapped her hand over her mouth to contain her squeak. “I am not your damned dog!” he roared.
She pressed her lips until they hurt. What a mortifying sound to have made. He had reduced her to a mouse.
But what of it? He squirreled papers in his den like a dog with old bones. This was all his fault, really—wasn’t it? If he only left his rooms like any normal man, she would have no need to harass him.
Yes, there was the dudgeon she required. It straightened her spine. She nudged up her spectacles and narrowed her eyes at him.
“No, you are not a dog. I have it on very good authority that you are a man, a peer of the realm, a duke no less. But a very curious species of man, I must say—looking so shaggy at present that one could be forgiven for mistaking you for a sheepdog.” She blew out a breath. “How can you see through all that hair?”
He bared his teeth at her, then retreated out of sight. Panicked, she wracked her brain for some goad to lure him back. But none came to mind that she dared to speak. The point was to lure him out—not to lure him into murdering her.
He filled the doorway again, a book in his hand—something very old by the crumbling cover. “Do you know,” he said pleasantly, “what distinguishes man from beast?”
A very good question. “I should think . . . a haircut.”
He made a contemptuous noise. “The ability to make fire, you tart.”
“Tart?” Aghast, she crossed her arms. “Termagant, perhaps, but tart, I think not!” And then suddenly it dawned on her what he was threatening. “You can’t mean—”
“Say good-bye to this book.”
“You heathen,” she cried. “You shaggy mongrel!”
“Mongrel I am not,” he snarled. “And so help me God”—he smirked—“or shall I say, the Devil”—she gasped—“but if you do not bring me those goddamned newspapers this minute—”
“Woof!” she cried. “Woof woof, yap away!”
She clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified. Where had that come from?
He, too, seemed shocked. He gawped at her for a long, silent moment. Then he pivoted away.
“No—wait!” That poor book! She started around the chiffonier—checked when she heard him loose a roar—more leonine than canine, to be fair—and then came a great, thunderous crash.
He swung back into view. “Your books,” he said with a savage grin, “have seen better days.”
He had toppled the bookcase. “You boor! You—” She hauled together the newspapers and carried them in a great armful toward the sitting-room hearth. “Fuel for the fire! What use has a hermit for news anyway—”
Hands closed on her shoulders. They spun her around so violently that she lost her balance, and grabbed onto the nearest support, which turned out to be—him.
Her jaw dropped. Yes, those were her hands gripping his arms. His arms. Like iron, they were.
He was out. He was outside his bedroom.
Her fingers sprang away as though from lit coals. But her retreat was stopped cold by his grip on her elbows. He crushed them down to her ribs, and held her pinned there before him as his breath came and went as hard as a bellows.
She made herself look at him. His face was a terrible mask, the force of his rage apparent in the pulsing vein in his temple. Her gaze bounced away from his, the awful, glassy fixedness of his blue, blue eyes, and landed on the newspapers, piled on the floor.
As far as final views went, it was not so inspiring.
“You,” he said very low, and then paused—a hush like the moment before the guillotine dropped.
That sentence would go nowhere good. She made her lips move, though they felt stiff as wood. “How good,” she croaked, “to see you out of your room.”
Bull’s-eye! He recoiled from her, staggering back a pace. He looked around blindly, wildly, as though only now realizing where he stood.
Here was her chance. She would run.
And he would run, too—straight back to his bedroom.
Her joints felt rusted, congealed, so hard did they fight her as she stooped to the floor and gathered up the newspapers. “Here,” she said, and held them out, praying he did not notice how they shook in her grip. “Read them on this sofa.” The suggestion came out as a hysterical shrill. “The light is very fine here!”
Staring at her, he reached for the papers like a man underwater, moving slowly, slowly—but his hands, instead, closed on her wrists.
She flinched and froze, or tried to—the instinct of a cornered hare commanding her to go still. But the terrified pounding of her heart rocked her in her boots. You’re in it now, a mocking little voice nattered in her brain.
His hands were very large; they engulfed her wrists, wrapping like hot manacles around her. His thumbs pressed directly against her pulses.
He knew precisely how hard her heart was beating.
“How do you dare?” he said softly.
She looked up into his face. His eyes had lost their glassy blankness. He was—the realization jolted through her—looking at her, studying her, with great intensity. And his expression was far from blank.
She stared back, surprised so completely that she had no defenses against that look. She fell into it headfirst, fascination engulfing her suddenly and completely. What did she see in his face now? What, in her own face, could possibly inspire such riveted, arrested attention?
“How do you dare?” He whispered it again, as his fingers flexed around hers. And then, without warning, his thumbs stroked over the sensitive skin of her inner wrists.
Her breath fled her. She felt a flush of heat, bizarre, weakening. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes. You do.”
His thumbs stroked again. She swallowed. The sensation bothered her. It affected her far too deeply. She felt the pull of it in her belly. She had to look away from him. In a moment, she would.
“Woof?” he said.
A blush stung her cheeks. “Well. You must admit, you do need a haircut.”
A faint smile ghosted over his mouth. His fingers loosened; they slipped over hers as they withdrew. “Is there anyone in this house whom I could trust to wield the scissors? I have given them all cause to aim for my throat.”
Was that a joke? Miracle of miracles! “Come now,” she said hoarsely. “Be sensible. Dead men pay no salaries.”
His smile flickered to life again, then guttered out. He frowned and turned his face away. “Send someone to straighten the bookcase,” he said gruffly.
Another miracle. “At once, Your Grace.”
She picked up her skirts and dashed out the door—straight into Vickers, who caught and steadied her.
“My God,” he whispered, his eyes huge. “My God, Mrs. Johnson.”
She pulled free of him. She had no time for nonsense. “Didn’t you hear him? You were eavesdropping, weren’t you? I must fetch the maids. We’re to clean his rooms.”
Vickers dashed after her as she flew down the stairs. “I didn’t hear him say that. Only that somebody was to straighten the bookcase—”
She cast an impatient glance over her shoulder. “Clearly,” she said, “you don’t know how to listen.”
She returned an hour later—far longer than she would have liked, but the maids had proved ridiculously recalcitrant to accompanying her; it had taken several threats to persuade them. Threats! And her! She had never fancied herself a bully, but Marwick was proving an excellent tutor.
She left the girls waiting in the hallway, looking pale and anguished like martyrs on the eve of execution, while she entered to make a quick survey of the battlefield.
The reigning lunatic sat on the sofa, immersed in the pages of the Morning Herald.
She breathed a sigh of relief. He must have heard her, for he lifted his brows, but did not look up. “I’ve brought the maids—”
“No,” he said, and turned the page.
She decided she had not heard him. “And the footmen will right the bookcase,” she continued. “How good to see you’re still out here. Well done. Of course, you must forgive me for congratulating you on such a simple trick—remaining in place; it’s not as though you were a toddler, and liable to crawl off. But you must know how they talk—downstairs, I mean.”
This taunt was a calculated risk. Had he any pride left? If so, it would be useful.
He blinked. And then looked up, his face darkening. “Downstairs?”
Yes, she knew enough of him now to guess he would not like being the subject of gossip. “Below stairs.” She gave him a sympathetic smile. “Your staff, I mean.”
He made some curious noise. And then he stood, knocking the sofa back a foot. “You’re saying my staff is doubting my ability to inhabit my own bloody sitting room?”
“Oh, well”—she shrugged and gave a trailing little laugh, which sounded perhaps a touch more nervous than she intended—“idle hands are the devil’s playground. And when you don’t let anybody in to clean, how else are they to occupy themselves?”
He thrust his hand through his blond hair and turned full circle, as though looking for something. “Where is Vickers?” he snapped. “God damn it, how are you always getting in here?”
She stifled her own snort. But how amusing, to imagine Vickers trying to stop her. “Your valet is in the kitchen, loitering with the cook’s assistant. When not there, you will typically find him in the hallways, flirting with the maids. I warn you that his suit on all fronts is too far advanced for comfort. I am predicting a surprise, or several, in nine months’ time.”
His mouth twitched. It must have been a passing spasm, not a smile, for it faded instantly. He turned on her a narrow, assessing look. “How indelicate of you, Mrs. Johnson.”
Was she a missus now? How gratifying. “I am prone to indelicacy,” she admitted. “It is a flaw.”
“One of several,” he bit out.
“Yes, but who’s counting?”
With a snort, he sat back down. He’d unbelted his robe, and it parted now to show that his shirttails were untucked. How much weight had he lost? Those trousers barely stayed up.
What was wrong with her? Surely she had not just entertained a flicker of curiosity about what she would see if they fell?
His lunacy must be catching. Feeling itchy and out of sorts, she said, “May I ring for tea for you? The girls will happily clean around you, provided you promise not to menace them.”
“No.” But he said it very quietly.
“No tea, quite right, far too early for that. Stay right where you are. This won’t take above an hour.”
And then, before he could countermand her, she dashed out and grabbed Polly’s wrist. “Come on, then.”
Polly in turn grabbed Muriel’s elbow. “I won’t go!”
“Oh, Lordy,” Muriel squealed, her feet sliding as Olivia dragged Polly—and, by extension, her as well—toward the door. “Doris, run for your life!”
Doris turned tail and broke for the stairs.
“Not another foot,” Olivia shouted. “Back here at once.”
Doris’s shoulders slumped. Haltingly she turned back.
“I won’t go,” Polly shrieked. “I won’t—” She fell silent in mid-squeal, her face graying.
Olivia glanced over her shoulder, and discovered the duke in the doorway, staring in plain disbelief at this scene.
“I told you, no need to get up,” she said brightly. She dropped Polly’s wrist. “It’s perfectly all right,” she said. And then, angling her body so Marwick could not see, she gave Polly a sharp shove on the shoulder.
The maids went about their business, rustling and timid as mice. He ignored them. They were irrelevant. His mad housekeeper, hair as red as a bullfinch’s breast, irrelevant. All he cared for was this editorial he had uncovered, at the back of the Morning Herald. It had been written by a man he’d once counted a friend—a man who probably had no notion of how offensive and ludicrous this headline was: LORD SALISBURY’S JUDICIOUS CHOICE.
Beneath it, in slightly smaller print, lay the thrust of the piece: BARON BERTRAM A BOON FOR ENGLAND.
He made his jaw unlock. He took a deep, deep breath.
Archibald, Baron Bertram: a distinguished man of fifty-odd years, unctuously pleasant to his political opponents, fastidiously proper in his manners. A regular attendee of services at St. George’s Hanover Square, Wednesday and Sunday both. The best, most irreproachable choice to lead the Liberals now, or so fools and naïfs believed: a godly and principled man, devoted to family and empire.
Margaret had entertained several men. But all of them had been his political enemies, save Bertram. Bertram had been his ally in the House of Lords. His coconspirator, his main support.
Other words popped out from the article: Meritorious. Dedicated. Humble . . .
The illustrator had rendered a fine likeness of the smug tilt to Bertram’s nose.
Alastair grew conscious of the bed in the next room. It was new, a replacement for the bed where he’d lain so many nights beside Margaret, never imagining how she made a fool of him.
Margaret would not have dared bed Bertram in this house. But for his own satisfaction, Alastair had stripped the duchess’s apartment, put the furniture to auction, and disassembled that grand, canopied bed where she had slept. He had taken it apart with his bare hands and donated it to a workhouse for kindling last spring.
A small commotion broke his reverie: a thud, a gasp. He glanced up and caught the blond maid righting a vase. She froze in his sights like a fox in the crosshair.
“Go on, Muriel.” His housekeeper issued this directive from the bedroom doorway, where she stood with her hands folded at her waist, supervising.
Annoyed, he laid down the paper. This woman had the peculiar ability to radiate an authority that she did not, in fact, possess. “Mrs. Johnson. Tell me something.”
She turned toward him, smiling serenely. Had she looked in the mirror? Her skin was lineless, smooth and flush and freckled like a child’s. Was she aware of her age? She had ample cause to fear him. God knew she had seen him in states that—he could not bring himself to think on it. She was only a domestic; what did it matter?
She had thought him on the edge of suicide.
He gritted his teeth. She was only a domestic. It did not matter. What irked him was the leisurely quality to her movements, as though she could not be surprised or intimidated by anyone—even he. Her confidence made no sense. Was she even twenty-five? What had Jones been thinking? It wasn’t seemly to have a housekeeper so young. Her hair was as bright and vivid as a flag. It was bloody ridiculous, in fact. Artificial, surely.
He needed to have a word with Jones. Get to the bottom of this absurd hiring decision.
“I wonder,” he said icily, “that my staff cannot pursue their duties without your supervision.” She was always underfoot. “Have you no other duties to attend?”
She shrugged. “I am happy to make time for Your Grace’s comforts.”
Against his express wishes. Yes, he had noticed. Why he continued to tolerate her, he did not know. Boredom, no doubt. Perverse amazement at her lunacy. She had the softest skin he’d ever touched.
He shifted in his seat, disliking that last thought extremely. “I did not speak of myself,” he said cuttingly. “I spoke of the staff. If they do not know their roles well enough to perform them without your guidance, then I suggest you rectify that.”
She nodded immediately. “A fine plan, Your Grace. In fact, I have already begun to do so. It is human nature to wish to please one’s master, is it not? And I have arranged this opportunity for it.” She beamed. “I fear it has been sorely lacking of late.”
He sat back, astonished. How dared she rebuke him?
She offered him another beatific smile.
He scowled and averted his gaze to the newspaper. He did not like her smile. Until she smiled, she was inoffensively plain. Overly young, but with an air of intelligence—ha! A very deceptive air, no doubt owed to her spectacles and her oddly refined accent.
Her smile, however, broke the illusion that her face was a perfect square. It brought a dimple into her cheek. It drew one’s attention to her mouth, which was full lipped, but only on the bottom. Her upper lip was . . .
Not his concern. And if she was, by some very gymnastic stretch of the imagination, pretty, then that was another flaw. Housekeepers were not pretty. Properly, they were too aged to be recognizably female.
“How old are you?” he asked, his eyes on the paper.
“Old enough, Your Grace, to appreciate the boons of cleanliness. I predict you will greatly enjoy the results of our efforts.”
He glared at the headline. He should dress her down for this cheek. He should sack her. Again. God damn it, why was she still here?
He took a deep breath. It stopped his next words. By God. The air was taking on a clean, crisp scent that struck him as . . . agreeable.
The vixen was right. These rooms had been overdue for scrubbing.
“Mind your tongue,” he bit out, and snapped the newspaper taut. Jones had done a poor job of ironing. The man should know better.
After a moment, her silence began to irk him. He had rebuked her. She should offer an apology. It set a bad example for the maids.
He looked up to say something sharp—and found her assisting one of the girls. The maid had discovered a pile of letters sitting unopened on his sideboard. She’d begun to carry them away in bunches with her bare hands. Mrs. Johnson was whispering to her: “On a silver salver, Muriel. You know this.”
“But there’s so many!”
Mrs. Johnson glanced up and found him watching. “Your Grace, how shall we sort your mail? Would an alphabetical organization suit you?”
How in God’s name would that help? “Just leave it there.”
“To properly clean the sideboard—”
“I said, leave it!”
Her lips pressed into a mulish line. The heightening color on her face brought her freckles into livid clarity. Freckles were not fashionable; so many freckles might be counted a disfigurement. How was it that they all clustered on the roses of her cheeks?
Scowling at himself, he once again turned to the newspaper.
“Perhaps,” she said, “if I were to sort them by the postmark—”
“No.” The very thought of all those letters made his chest tighten. The pile grew and grew. One would imagine, with no reply, his correspondents might realize he did not wish to hear from them. But they simply kept writing. Christ God. Open one and he would have to open them all. Answer one and he would have to discover what the rest of them wanted. “Burn the lot.”
Silence.
He glared at the newsprint. It might as well have been in Egyptian.
“Perhaps it would be easier,” she said tentatively, “if someone opened them, and sorted them by degree of urgency—”
He slammed down the paper. Four women froze as one. A strange feeling ghosted over him, ancient, barely recognizable: embarrassment.
He took a deep breath. “I do not wish to read them.” His voice remained level; that was something. “I do not care what’s in them. I will not answer them. Burn them, Mrs. Johnson.”
Her face made a curiously transparent screen for her thoughts. He could see, in the faint twitch of her brow, how deeply she disapproved of his order. And then, in the back-and-forth tick of her jaw, the ridiculous, thoroughly out-of-line impulse surfacing in her. She was going to argue.
“But what if . . .” she began, and then trailed off.
As he waited, her blush deepened. She cleared her throat and looked away; glanced back at him, and then quickly away again.
He realized he was staring. There was something . . . interesting . . . about her face. How easily he read it. How long had it been since he had really seen anyone? How long since he had paid attention to the small details, the nuances of expression?
Why, he could remember no images from the last year. Nothing visual at all, save the garden. The garden that was dead now. But he remembered it in full bloom this summer. That was all. Nothing else. As though his revelation, how blind he had been to Margaret’s nature, had blinded him to almost everything . . .
He did not even remember who had attended the funeral. He remembered nothing but the grave, which he had visited weeks afterward. Who were you? That had been the only thought he’d felt capable of holding. Who lies here? Who were you, really?
But even that had been blindness in a sense, a massive self-deceit. It was not Margaret he’d been marveling at, but his own ignorance, the immense space of all the things he had not guessed and never suspected. He, who had prided himself on foreseeing everything.
“Wait,” he heard Mrs. Johnson say. One of the maids had moved to toss the letters into the fire. That girl was an obedient servant. “Your Grace,” his housekeeper said. She moved into his line of vision; he saw, in the resolute tilt of her chin, that she had recovered her courage. Such a small observation, to reveal so much. Once, he had been very good at reading faces. Once he could have read a lie from thirty paces. “I cannot think you truly wish to burn all this mail,” she was saying. “What if—”
“Yes,” he said scathingly. “God forbid I should miss an invitation to a charity ball.”
She frowned but made no retort. His brain supplied it for her: There are countless important matters that might be addressed in those letters.
“I could read them,” said Mrs. Johnson.
He laid down the paper. “You,” he said flatly. “You propose to read my private correspondence.”
Even the maids were gawking at her. He noted that with vicious satisfaction. They thought her as mad as he did.
“Well . . .” Her jaw squared. “If it’s fit for burning, I suppose it’s fit for my eyes as well. Unless you have a secretary?”
He snorted. “No.” O’Leary had been called home to Dublin several weeks—no, he realized with a shock, several months ago. “No secretary.”
“Well, then—”
“I sacked him.” This was not true. “He kept insisting on looking through my mail.”
She laughed.
He felt his brow knit into a frown, which he directed at the breakfast tray. Had he been joking? God’s blood, but his head was addled. It felt full of cotton. Bat wings and spiders and nails. How long since his brain had truly worked?
His attention drifted to the headline.
“Well?” asked the termagant. Her own word. He could not fault her self-knowledge.
What was she nattering on about? He couldn’t quite recall. BERTRAM A BOON. He thought of the pistol, tucked away in his bedroom. His old life was dead. He could take it back, no doubt. But that wasn’t what he wanted.
What he wanted was to wreak bloody havoc. Let loose the hounds of war.
“Your Grace—”
“Yes,” he snapped, just to shut her up.
“Thank you.” He heard the swishing of her skirts as she approached. God above! Could she not leave well enough alone? “There is another thing I wished to ask you,” she said as she sat across from him—sat down in his presence without so much as a by-your-leave. Now, this deserved a sharp word. He opened his mouth, but she beat him to it, leaning across the chiffonier to whisper, “By any chance, did you consume five pounds of truffles last week?”
What in God’s name? “No.”
“I thought not.” She plucked off her eyeglasses, revealing eyes a startling shade of light blue. He abruptly forgot what he’d been about to say. She was polishing the lenses with her sleeve as she continued to speak. The words might as well have been gibberish.
Her eyes were the precise shade of the sky over his garden this past summer. On the cloudless days, when the sun shone brightest, this had been the shade of the sky. It had glowered at him like a taunt. Not for you. None of this is for you anymore.
She replaced the spectacles on her nose, the glare of her lenses masking the miracles behind them.
Housekeepers did not possess such eyes.
“And I will look through your letters,” she finished solemnly. She rose and walked away, leaving him . . . confused. He took a testing breath. Yes, it wasn’t his imagination: she left the faint scent of roses behind her.
Was that perfume? How had he not noticed it before? It was precisely as he had imagined the scent of the garden. But he had never allowed himself to open the window, for fear of being disappointed.
God damn it.
He inhaled again as the door closed behind her.
His housekeeper smelled like the summer.