From the moment Marwick had appeared in the doorway, Olivia had felt as though the world were spinning. Shock had all but knocked her off the ladder. Before she’d even had a chance to skip forward to triumph—at last, he was out!—her worst fear had been realized: he’d seen through her.
But had he? Sitting at his desk, she’d scrambled to feel him out. His questions were probing, incisive. She felt like a tennis player parrying desperately against an unexpectedly skilled opponent. Was his suspicion based on some credible cause? Had she betrayed herself somehow? Or was Amanda’s overblown reference the only cause for it?
Most unnerving of all was the growing sensation that she was not facing the same man whom she’d come to know during these past weeks. Somehow, in the journey downstairs, that wild, dark, desperate man had been replaced by a lord. He wore a well-tailored suit, his trimmed and tamed hair (Vickers must have fixed it) now framing his eyes, his face, in a manner that accented the ruthless angles of his bone structure. And his every question bore the full force and the resurrected might of a man she had glimpsed only in flashes until now: landowner, politician, the scion of an unbroken line of aristocrats well accustomed to demanding obedience. It took every ounce of her wit to evade, resist, and rebuff him.
And then, with one line, he destroyed all her efforts: You have cause to be proud, he’d said, with no veil of cynicism or sarcasm to flavor it.
Perhaps he was right. He was downstairs because of her. She had helped effect this. That was cause for pride.
Yet shame, like a rush of acid in her throat, had choked her reply to him: for whatever triumph she might have otherwise gleaned from a duke’s resurrection, it was counterbalanced by what that resurrection made possible: a deceit and a theft that would destroy the startling, open respect she saw so plainly in his face.
This unhappiness weltered through her, dulling her wits; and so when he came around the table toward her, she did not glimpse his intentions until the very last moment—when he grabbed her waist and pulled her into a kiss.
His lips were hot. As masterful as his new manner. He opened her mouth with his and she tasted his tongue, and the shock was elemental; it started in her bones. Her startled breath filled her lungs with the scent of him, soap seasoned with bay leaves, the fresh lemon rinse with which he’d washed his hair. His skin. Salt and musk.
His grip at the small of her back, the flat of his palm, powerful, steadying, as her knees sagged.
Gasping, she turned her face aside—and then gasped again as his lips found her ear, tonguing the rim, suckling her lobe. “Wait,” she said raggedly. “I don’t—this won’t work.” Not again. She had resolved it. His lips found a spot beneath her ear and it made her whole body shudder. She stiffened and struggled out of his grasp. “You don’t need to do this! I was leaving!”
He stood facing her, his full lips parted, his breath audible, his long, elegant hands flexing at his sides. Another hot wave rippled through her at that sight, at the knowledge—God help her—that those hands were flexing around the feel of her. “What do you mean?” he said slowly.
What was the point of this ruse? “You don’t need to run me off.” Her hands shook; she knotted them into her skirts. “You were the one who came in. I am going.” She turned on her heel.
His hand on her elbow hauled her back. “Run you off?” His smile looked disbelieving . . . and then delighted. “Is that what you think I’m trying to do?” He reached up and nudged her spectacles into place. “Look more closely,” he murmured. “Or perhaps you’re truly blind.”
He was pulling her into him. Millimeter by millimeter, he was drawing her close. And she let him do it, because there was something in his expression . . . Who had ever looked at her that way before? As though her face were a spell, a piece of hypnotism, to which he played the willing, fascinated victim. His eyes were oceans, and she was lost in them . . .
Their lips met again. She did not move. Did not breathe. Gently his mouth molded over hers. She did not understand. If he wasn’t trying to run her off, then . . .
He was kissing her simply because he wanted to.
Everything suddenly became clear and bright. Her eyes drifted closed. Her hand found the back of his head, the shorn hair, still so soft; the feel of his skull, solid and curving. His mouth opened, and so did hers. Their tongues met. He was perfectly tall; they aligned as though designed for each other. His hand stroked her waist, and it felt as though he had unlocked something; her hips loosened, became sinuous, as she pressed against him.
Like that moment when the off-key string finally came into tune and joined with the chord, and the air vibrated with purity: her lips belonged with his; her body came into tune with him. Only she hadn’t guessed until this moment, as the kiss lengthened and opened a world of new sensations, that rightness could sing through her, a pure and perfect completion, and reverberate through her blood, and make it leap.
This was desire. Before it had manifested only in symptoms. But here was the full illness, and in his lips lay the cure. His mouth, his tongue, were wholesome to her, hot, exactly what her body craved . . . what it needed . . .
“Oh!”
The shrill exclamation brought Olivia to her senses. She leapt back, whirled, and found Polly hastily closing the door.
“Oh!” She felt the word slip through her fingers, and only then did she realize she was covering her mouth. “Oh!” She looked back at him, appalled.
He gave her a roguish half smile. “Oh.”
Sanity pierced her like a needle. It drew her loose limbs back into tight, rigid alignment. She narrowed her eyes at him.
He leaned back against the desk, raffish and unashamed. “Find a new employer.” He shrugged. “Or, if I am so lucky, don’t.”
On a strangled hiss, she fled.
Once in the hallway, the door slammed shut behind her, she sank against the wall. Her legs felt weak. She stared blindly at the suit of armor standing guard opposite. My God! That had actually happened! He had kissed her. And she’d reacted like a wanton.
A strange smile seized her, stupid and amazed. She had behaved like a wanton. Who would have guessed it?
She made herself scowl. This was nothing to be proud of.
But Mama had always told her that passion could make one a fool, and she had never believed it . . . until now. For there came a sound from within the study, the creak as his footsteps approached the door, and all she wanted to do was remain right here, waiting for his exit, to see what he might do next . . . and what she might do, what she might learn of herself, that she had never before suspected.
Instead, she snatched up her skirts and hurried down the hall—and then skidded to a stop by the staircase. Polly stood leaning against the banister, arms crossed, brows raised.
Mortification flooded her. Good God! After all the stern lectures she had delivered on proper behavior, to be caught frolicking with Marwick—
“It’s your half day, ain’t it?” Polly smirked. “P’raps I might go out with you.”
Mutely she shook her head. She did not take half days. Why risk leaving the house to be spotted?
Polly made a little chiding click of her tongue. “I heard Jones saying just this morning that he wanted you to fetch the fancy stuff from the market.”
You shouldn’t eavesdrop. She folded her lips together. After what Polly had seen, how could she make such pronouncements? Oh, heavens—Polly would tell everyone.
It doesn’t matter, she told herself. She would be out of this house within the week. He had left his rooms now, hadn’t he? Less than a week, then.
She wanted to sink through the floor.
“Well?” Polly’s devilish grin showed how much she was enjoying this—and how little she cared to disguise it.
Olivia cleared her throat. “Yes.” Her voice croaked. “That’s very true.” To ensure the kitchens suffered no additional thefts, Jones had proposed that she purchase all the expensive and rare supplies, and deliver them directly to Cook, whose knee prevented her from going to market herself. “But I didn’t think—”
Polly looked pointedly over her shoulder. “Oh, here comes His Grace. Interrupting again, am I? Is that why you can’t go?”
Olivia sucked in a breath. “All right, then.” Perhaps she could buy Polly’s silence with an ounce or two of saffron.
On a sunny afternoon, Piccadilly was a tangle of omnibuses, shouting cabmen, lady shoppers promenading beneath parasols, errand boys bearing packages, and impatient gentlemen who seemed to believe everyone should yield the road to their high-strung thoroughbreds. The entirety of the city seemed out to carouse, and the aisles of Swan & Edgar’s were crushed.
It took Olivia ten minutes, and a very sharp tone of voice, to flag the attention of a young female salesclerk. The girl seemed peculiarly ungratified to be making such a significant sale, a small fortune’s worth of spices: cardamom, Ceylon cinnamon, mace, saffron, and white pepper. As the goods were packaged, Olivia waited for Polly to say something—some sly remark to hint at what she required to keep quiet.
But Polly showed no interest in the proceedings. Her elbows on the counter, she faced out toward the crowds, looking with transparent curiosity at the grand dames and the harried bourgeois mothers, whose brawling broods quarreled and chased each other through a sea of skirts.
As they exited back into daylight, Olivia started for the cabstand, but Polly caught her elbow. “Why not a stroll?” she said. “We’ve the time for it, aye? And St. James ain’t a far walk.”
Olivia knew better than to trust her. They had crossed swords far too often for that. But out of doors, Polly looked different somehow—far younger, less sour. The natural light lent her olive skin a flushed, vigorous radiance that one more often saw on young children. And the light in her amber eyes did not seem greedy or calculating, only wistful.
Perhaps she saw Olivia’s indecision, for she said softly, “I don’t want to go back to the house just yet.”
And Olivia remembered suddenly how Vickers had pinned her up against the wall. “Is the valet still bothering you? I spoke to him, but—”
“It’s not that,” Polly said. “Only it’s so pretty out, and soon it won’t be. I don’t like the winter.”
Lingering outdoors was a risk, but surely a minor one. With so many crowds on the pavement, and a netted hat on her head to disguise her hair, Olivia felt that a passerby in a coach would never take note of her.
With a shrug and a nod, she turned down Regent Street for the park.
In the meadow, the milkmaids were selling milk straight from the cow at a penny a pint. Olivia purchased two mugs seasoned with nutmeg and cinnamon. Polly rented a gingham cloth to whip across the grass. After a moment’s indecision, Olivia set down the packages and joined her on the ground.
She had not lolled on her bum since she’d first donned a corset. Mama, who had hailed from rural Kent, had been intent on raising Olivia to a finer standard—or what she had imagined to be finer. London ladies don’t behave so: it had been her favorite reproof. But Mama had never actually been to London. How it would have disappointed her now. For all around them, other girls were lolling on similar blankets, enjoying their afternoon away from work—and the grass, to Olivia’s surprised pleasure, was quite comfortable.
The silence, however, was not. As she sipped the milk, she felt herself on edge again, waiting for the penny to drop.
The wardrobe of passersby—some grand, some humble—at last furnished material for a halting discussion. “There’s a smart gown,” Polly said, pointing at a woman in bronze silk. “Bit flash for the afternoon, don’t you say?”
“A bit.” Olivia’s mind began to wander. Find a new position, he’d said. Was that code for I will ravish you if you stay? And why did the thought make her stomach flutter? She should be horrified.
“Look at the clouds,” Polly said.
Olivia glanced up. Overhead was no typical London display: the sky was clear and bright, the clouds fat puffs of blinding white.
“We could be in the tropics,” she said. But only if one did not note the crispness in the air—or look around the park, so English with its severely tamed trees.
Polly reclined on one elbow. After a moment, feeling very daring, Olivia mimicked her. She was practically lying down in public.
The slight chill was refreshing, the sun a pleasant balm on their faces. “I’m going to freckle,” Olivia muttered as she readjusted the netting on her hat.
Polly shaded her eyes to deliver a wry look. “Ma’am, that milk was spilt long ago.”
Startled, Olivia laughed. “True enough.”
The silence between them began to feel easier. Polly gazed up, lost in the show the heavens were putting on. Olivia shut her eyes. How long since she had allowed herself to loll about, doing nothing? She could remember such afternoons in Elizabeth’s employ, but they seemed distant, part of a long-ago dream.
He had kissed her. She had liked it. How could she feel so relaxed?
“Can I ask you something?”
Tensing, she opened her eyes. “Of course.”
Polly inched closer, so their shoulders brushed. “You got some special knowledge of His Grace? Before today, I mean?”
“Of course not! Why should you think so?”
Polly shrugged. “He’s different since you came. I thought maybe that was the reason he listened to you.”
“You’re wrong,” Olivia said. “I never—” She must be red as a cherry. “He is simply on the mend,” she said sharply. “And a bit—disordered in his thinking, which explains what you saw. But that has never happened before.” Emphatically she added, “And it won’t happen again.”
Polly pulled a face. “Does he know that?”
Olivia sat up. She could not remain at such close range to that searching look. “Of course he does.”
Find a new employer . . . or, if I am so lucky, don’t.
She swallowed. His intentions were immaterial. Now he’d left his rooms, it was only a matter of days—perhaps even hours—until she found what she needed, and fled without notice.
Polly was watching her. “You don’t fancy him, do you?”
She hissed out a breath. God in heaven, what an idiot it would make her if she fancied Marwick. Yes, there was a certain vain pleasure in feeling oneself instrumental to the rehabilitation of a once-great man. But that was where her interest ended. She had one task here. She could not afford to be distracted by mooncalf sentiments.
And he was the last thing from a proper suitor anyway. A duke and a lunatic—recovering, thanks to her, but no matter. And not any duke or lunatic, but the Kingmaker: a man who burned with such rage that his heart rightfully should already have turned to ash. A man who stroked pistols during his sulks.
“Fancying him would make me the greatest fool alive,” she said. “And I assure you, I’m not a fool.”
Polly sighed and sat up. “You know how many girls have fancied their masters? Not all of them fools. But I don’t need to tell you where they are now.”
Olivia frowned. “Where?”
“The street corner.”
“Oh.” She flushed. “Of course.”
More gently, Polly said, “It never goes nowhere but ruin.”
Was this girl trying to counsel her? Against her will, she felt rather moved. “Of course. But what you saw, Polly . . . you mustn’t misunderstand. And I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention it to anyone—”
“Oh, they’re already talking.”
Olivia gaped at her. “Are you joking?” The staff thought her a seductress?
Polly shrugged. “You’re always going up to his rooms.”
How bizarre! Olivia battled a very inappropriate urge to laugh. She had always been far too gawky, far too tall, and (she would admit it) rather too prickly to be mistaken as a temptress. “I am his housekeeper.”
Polly snorted. “Mrs. Wright did her best to stay away from him.”
“Then that was very wrong of her. I simply . . .” She hesitated. What possible excuse could she make for her harassment of Marwick? For obviously the truth would not serve: I need to pry him out of his rooms so I might pry through them.
But perhaps she need not lie at all. For a sudden realization dawned on her. “I simply like him.” To her amazement, it was true—and idiotic enough in its own right.
She could not blame Polly for bursting into laughter. “Like him!”
That laugh was raucous enough to draw several passing stares. Olivia waited, crimson. “He’s not so bad.” Twisted and melancholy, yes; but he was also wonderfully erudite, with a very dry sense of humor. Before his wife’s death and the revelation of her betrayals, he must have been magnificent.
Gasping, Polly knuckled at her eyes. “Oh, aye, to be sure. What bunkum. Fancy him, fine; he’s not hard on the eyes. Fear him, why not? But like the man? He’s made of ice.”
Feeling stubborn, Olivia scowled. “I suppose I like an underdog.”
“Underdog! The duke? What, does he require another coach-and-four, another house in the country, before you rank him on top?”
Olivia shook her head and made herself recline again. So, too, did Polly.
In the pause that followed, she imagined that the topic had been laid to rest, and was grateful for it. She felt a little shaky, as though she had brushed up against something that might kill her. A close escape, indeed. Fancy him. What a disaster that would be.
Her mother had fancied a man far above her status, once. Mama had loved Bertram; had given him everything. And look what it had gotten her. Oh, Olivia would not fault Mama for loving a man outside wedlock. The villagers of Allen’s End had made that their main pastime. Olivia had no interest in their brand of morality, which produced only unkindness and spite. But if one was to fall in love, better to do so with a man capable of returning it in kind.
“I’m waiting,” Polly remarked. “Very keen, I am, to hear how a duke should be an underdog.”
Olivia felt a wisp of annoyance. Class snobbery ran along both sides of the divide. “One doesn’t require poverty to be wretched. Why, my former employer—”
“The viscountess?”
“No, El—” She bit her lip, shaken by how close she had come to slipping up and speaking Elizabeth’s name.
Perhaps reclining was a poor idea. She sat up again, brushing stray bits of grass from her sleeve. “Yes,” she said. “Viscountess Ripton.”
Polly, unmoving, watched her curiously. “Plenty of nobs got your sympathy, eh?”
Olivia sighed. Amanda also had been something of an underdog before her marriage, though Polly was not owed those details. “A person’s wealth has little to do with their spiritual state. Anyone who feels alone in the world, and put upon, and friendless—I call that person worthy of fellow-feeling.”
Polly grunted. “That’s mighty kind of you. Very Christian. Only you’ll note that some of these lost souls deserve where they’re at.”
“You think the duke deserves his unhappiness?”
“I ain’t got any complaints against him. He’s never done wrong by me. But seems he mourns awful hard for a woman who was as chilly as ice in January.”
“What was she like?” Olivia asked slowly. “The duchess, I mean?”
Polly pulled a face. “No, that’s a road I won’t help you walk down.”
Olivia felt an oncoming blush. “I don’t ask for that reason.”
Polly looked away, the full curve of her cheek showing her youth. “You’ve a soft heart,” she muttered. “Mush, I think. Better save your concern for yourself.”
Olivia realized then how foolish she must look, worrying over great folk who had never known a simple care—where to get their daily bread, or whether the rent could be paid this month.
“I’m not weeping for him,” she said. “You’re right, his troubles aren’t matters of life and death.” Not . . . technically anyway. But she remembered how he had stroked that pistol. “It’s only that . . . well, he’s human, isn’t he? And even if his suffering isn’t on the same plane, it also can’t feel so different from anybody else’s.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it that he suffers at all,” Polly muttered.
Was she truly the only person in England to understand that Marwick, too, had a heart?
Good heavens. Had she survived so long, safely above the fray, only to succumb now to feminine foolishness? And for Marwick, of all people?
“I don’t fancy him,” she said flatly.
“I won’t say otherwise.” Polly hesitated. “But in return, I’d like a favor. Ma’am.”
Olivia snorted. “Of course you do.”
The duke’s journey downstairs occasioned great excitement among the staff. Over the next two days, Marwick roamed the halls quite freely—going so far as to open new correspondence and post replies (this according to the porter, who had no notion of discretion). What next? The servant’s quarters buzzed. Would he leave the house?
Olivia was less sanguine. From a safe distance, well out of Marwick’s eyesight, she monitored his schedule. There was, alas, no predictability to it. He would shut himself in his study for ten minutes or twenty, and then return to his quarters. Or he would leave his apartment only to pace the corridor outside. Where was the opportunity to slip into his bedroom without risking exposure?
On the third day, she steeled herself and accompanied the maids to his quarters for their daily rounds. The girls’ moods were very grumpy, for at breakfast Jones had cautioned them not to expect holiday celebrations this year, His Grace still being on the mend. Vickers had further soured the atmosphere with bitter muttering over Polly’s gentleman visitor, whom Olivia had invited inside for tea last evening, claiming him to be a distant cousin. Such, alas, was the price of Polly’s silence.
Upstairs, Marwick was nowhere in evidence, but with the maids industriously bustling about, Olivia could do no more than glance again through the papers on his bookcase, none of which were of use to her. Worse, Doris noticed her interest in them. “He won’t let us put those away, ma’am.”
She snatched back her hand. “Oh? Well, no bother then.”
“I did try to put them away.” Doris sounded both proud and amazed by her own efforts. “I carried them to his trunk, where he was putting all the others.” She nodded to the chest at the foot of the bed. “But he said to leave them where they was, and never touch them.”
Her pulse escalating, Olivia surveyed the chest. It bore a padlock that looked far sturdier than the one on the desk in the study. “I see,” she said. “Well, we must respect his wishes.”
That night she sat up until the clock chimed three. Getting into that chest would require breaking the lock—which, in turn, would require more than a few minutes’ solitude in his bedroom. Afterward, she would need to leave directly, for there would be no way to hide what she had done.
On the fourth day, she woke up sick with nerves, for she was determined on her course. Marwick withdrew to his study at a quarter past ten. When the door remained closed on her third pass, she grew bold. Or desperate. Some inspired mix. She made her way quickly up the main staircase, into the upstairs hall.
In the corridor she hesitated one last moment, realizing by how hard her heart was drumming how ill suited she was to these shenanigans—and how very little she wished to betray him.
She touched her lips, picturing how he had looked at her before he’d kissed her. You do yourself credit, he’d said. You have cause to be proud.
She made a fist and forced herself to think of the little cottage. Ivy along the walls, a lamp burning in the window. A place to settle. A sense of rootedness, and a garden in the spring. Safety.
Even if she dealt honestly with Marwick, he would never offer her those things. At most, all he offered was the road to ruin.
She opened the door to the duke’s sitting room.
“Mrs. Johnson.” The duke was sitting by the window in the full flood of the afternoon light, his attention fixed on a picked-over chessboard. “Did you want something?”
She grabbed the door frame for balance. A hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat. I want you to stay downstairs until I’m done stealing from you. “I knocked,” she said. “I heard no response, so I thought . . .” She cleared her throat and straightened. “I have come to say that I agree with you: I must look for a new position. But I will stay here until you’ve found my replacement.” That would take a little time—which was all she needed, surely, now that she’d found the courage to do this.
He glanced from the chessboard to the newspaper folded in his hand. “What a shame,” he said absently, in a tone that suggested he could not care less.
Her vanity pricked. How idiotic of her. He had probably forgotten all about that kiss. She started to pull shut the door.
“Wait.” He did not look up. “The match in Hamburg between Blackburne and Mackenzie—have you read of it? This new move, Blackburne’s Gambit—I’m trying to understand it. But I’m missing something.”
He was sitting here working out a chess game? Surely he could have done that in his study. “No,” she said tartly. “I’ve not read of it. I see I’m interrupting—”
“Scampering off to hide again?”
She flushed, a very irritating sensation. “I can’t imagine what you mean.”
He laid down the newspaper, giving her a slight, maddening smile. Vickers must have attended to him this morning, for his jaw was smooth-shaven. His hair lay in a close, even crop across his well-formed skull, the severe cut complementing the sharp bones of his cheeks and jawline. “Of course you can’t,” he said. “What a pity; we are back to formalities.” And then, tilting his head: “You mentioned that you’ve played chess. Have you any talent at it? Perhaps you can help.”
First he kissed her, and then he accused her of hiding from him, and now he wanted her help with a silly game? “I was not very good,” she said coldly.
He looked at her for a moment, obviously puzzled. “You’re a terrible liar, Mrs. Johnson. You do know that, I hope?”
And he was a terrible judge of liars. He caught all the small deceits, and none of the large ones. “Perhaps I was rather good,” she allowed.
“Then come here,” he said, “and help me understand this gambit.”
Wariness gripped her. “I have decided,” she said again, “to look for a new position.”
His smile was all innocence. “Yes, I heard you the first time. You enunciate very clearly, Mrs. Johnson. It must have been all those tutors. Now come and show me what else they taught you.”
On a sudden temper, she stepped inside. “Very well.” If he wished to be shown up, she would not deny him. In fact, she planned to enjoy it.
Forty-five minutes later, they were still hunched over the chessboard, having disentangled Blackburne’s peculiar piece of genius and then moved on, by the duke’s insistence, into a proper game of their own.
Olivia studied the board with rising surprise. Marwick’s opening moves had suggested a great deal of rust on his brain. She had grown careless, certain of an easy victory—until he’d suddenly recovered the way of it. Now she had begun to play in earnest again, but it was dawning on her that he might win anyway.
That rankled. She was not accustomed to being outwitted, particularly by a louche idler. She moved her knight. “Check,” she said.
It was an empty threat; he had several routes of escape. But two of those routes would lead him into a very bad position, four or five moves from now.
He chose another one entirely. She bit the inside of her cheek—and then regretted it when she realized how closely he was watching her.
Her effort to straighten her face made him smile. “You would do very poorly at cards, Mrs. Johnson. Your face tells all.”
She lifted her brow. “A good thing I would never gamble, Your Grace. Money is to be saved, not wasted.”
He sat back, studying her. In his dark suit and crisply knotted tie, one might have mistaken him for civilized. Only the impish quirk to his mouth gave him away. “A Puritan, are you?”
“A woman of foresight, in fact.” She foresaw his defeat in five moves, if he only shifted that bishop his hand was currently overshadowing.
“A sound philosophy on gambling,” he said. “I agree with you: it’s terrible entertainment. I never understood it.” He abandoned his bishop to castle, puzzling her greatly. “Of course, the basic principles do come in useful elsewhere. Politics, for instance: what is success in that field but knowing when to calculate the odds, how to gauge one’s opponents, when to hedge one’s bets, and when to cast everything on a single wager?”
Squinting, she sat back to get a better view of the board. Provided he was not declining into mediocrity again, there must be some possibility she had not yet glimpsed for him. “How very reassuring,” she said absently, “to hear that national affairs are best handled like a poker game.”
“At best,” he said wryly. “At worst, like a shoot-out in the American West.”
“I suppose one might wish you gambled, then. Or dueled.”
“And why is that?”
“Because England needs you.” She moved her pawn forward to menace his knight.
“Let’s not go back there,” he said evenly. “I’ve only just put away my pistol.”
She glanced up at him, surprised that he could speak of that incident so lightly. He offered her a rueful smile—which slipped from his lips as he leaned toward her. “How remarkable,” he said. “You realize you tip your spectacles down when you wish to have a look at something? Or someone.”
She directed her frown down to the chessboard. Bertram had once said that one could tell a great deal about a man by the way he played chess. While she hated to ascribe him any wisdom, he had a point: Marwick played with caution, taking time to survey all his options. But once his mind was made up, he moved without hesitation. And when it was his opponent’s turn . . .
“Are the spectacles not meant to aid your vision, Mrs. Johnson?”
When it was his opponent’s turn, he tried to distract her with idle remarks.
“It is bad etiquette to taunt one’s opponent,” she said tightly. “This is not, as you have noted, a game of poker.”
“Good etiquette rarely makes good strategy.”
She cast him a severe look. “Au contraire. Good etiquette is the key to civility, and civility is always good strategy.”
“Goodness,” he said mildly. “Could it be that you fancy yourself mannerly?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I couldn’t imagine how you would disagree.”
He gave an easy shrug. “How shall I say it . . . In future positions, I recommend that you cultivate a somewhat more reticent demeanor than you’ve shown me.”
They were speaking now as if she’d already left her post. Perhaps that accounted for his casual manner. He was no longer troubled by the need to maintain a proper distance between them. Not that it had troubled him in his study.
Butterflies emerged in her stomach. She promptly willed them dead.
As she craned over the board again, she thought of the bedroom behind her, and the chest she must search before her replacement was found. It would take time to arrange interviews, of course. But sometimes, if a sterling recommendation came from a family friend, none was conducted.
“Yes, precisely,” said Marwick. “This silence is very becoming of a servant. A very nice show of meekness, Mrs. Johnson.”
She pulled a face at him. “Now you’re having fun.”
He grinned. “Indeed I am,” he said—and then looked fleetingly startled. He turned his gaze out the window, his smile fading.
She could sense the downward pitch of his mood. He had recalled that his role was a recluse, to whom laughter and company were denied. And in a moment, he would cast her out, thereby avoiding his own defeat. For the perfect series of moves had finally revealed itself on the chessboard.
“To answer your question,” she said, “I do fancy myself a great admirer of etiquette. But I allow it has its particular place and time. Occasionally, to do a kindness, one must bend the rules.” She made a pointed pause. “Were it not for my temerity, these rooms would not smell nearly so nice. And you would not be reading about chess matches in the newspaper.”
He looked at her narrowly, as though he was marshaling his thoughts back from a faraway place. And then he gave her a half smile. “Quite right,” he said softly, and reached out very suddenly to clasp her wrist.
She froze, her fingertips hovering a fraction away from her queen, her pulse suddenly in her mouth.
He lifted her hand to his lips. “A breach of etiquette,” he murmured against her knuckles. “But a kindness. You do not wish to move your queen.”
Let go of me: her tongue felt like clay, unable to speak the words.
“Lovely hand,” he said, and turned her hand over to press a kiss into her palm.
She pulled free. A breath shuddered out of her. Her palm seemed to burn where he had kissed it. “This—this is not—”
“Your move,” he said mildly.
She fisted her hand in her lap. “Why do you do this?”
He gave her a meditative smile. “Better to ask, why do I seem to be the first? Were the men blind as well, where you were raised?”
The chessboard had turned into a riddle. She stared at it, her heart pounding.
“Where were you raised?” he asked.
“Stop.” She rose. “I will—”
“Very well. Sit down; I will behave.” His voice was low, calming, as though he knew what he had done to her. That gooseflesh still prickled over her skin. “And I will stop the imaginary clock, too, so you do not feel baited. Take your time with your move.”
Why did she sit back down? Curiosity, she supposed. She had never before been flirted with.
But new mountaineers did not begin their careers on the Matterhorn. To indulge her curiosity was tremendously stupid. She knew it, but she sat there, breathless, looking at the board, baffled by the pieces, her hand still tingling.
“I will confess that I remain curious,” he said. “You do look over your glasses when you require a clear view. You’re doing so right now.”
She shoved her glasses up her nose and glared through the lenses. “I see you very clearly, Your Grace.” And then, because he lifted a brow as though in skepticism: “I see a man who lacks faith in his own game, and so resorts to underhanded measures to distract the superior player.”
He gave a strange, edgy laugh. “Is that a challenge, Miss Johnson?”
Miss again, was she? “I think a challenge would be redundant, given we are playing against each other.” Her voice sounded too high for her comfort.
But really, who was this man? He had taken, over the last few days, to dressing formally again: his dark jacket opened over a striped waistcoat, which clung to his flat belly. Kitchen gossip suggested that he was taking five meals a day, and he looked far better for it. The shadows had cleared beneath his eyes, and the hollows beneath his cheekbones were filling in. The stark shape of his jaw had not softened, though. That was simply the architecture of his bones, which a woman would probably call flawless, if she felt inclined to admire him.
She was not admiring him. She simply observed the way he lounged, his long legs extended and crossed at the ankles, in a posture that seemed almost like a dare. Notice me, it said.
It was a dare. For whatever reason, he was animally attracted to her. He wanted her attention.
A flush bloomed over her skin—all of her skin; even the backs of her knees felt suddenly too hot. How intoxicating, how appallingly thrilling, to find oneself in an attraction—even if utterly, wildly, abominably inappropriate.
You idiot, she told herself. You are going to steal from him.
“Now who is baiting whom?” he asked mildly.
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I can only assume your intention is to discompose me.” He cocked a brow. “Certainly such a fixed stare cannot be considered encouraging. Or am I mistaken?”
“F-forgive me,” she stammered. “I didn’t . . .” She shook her head and turned back to the board. There was no hope; she could not figure out his plan for the game. Casting caution to the wind, she moved her knight forward.
Instantly, he sent out his queen to menace it.
The rapidity of his move boded ill. She moved her forward pawn to protect her knight, then scowled at the board. What was he planning?
“There,” he said. “You’ve done it again, Mrs. Johnson.”
She looked up. And then wanted to kick herself, for she knew exactly what he meant. Quickly, she nudged her glasses back to their proper place.
“I do wonder . . .” He tilted his head, his eyes narrowing so that crow’s-feet fanned into visibility at the corners. She found herself riveted by them, these small, secret signs that he had once been a man given to more serious pastimes than lounging. “Have you worn the glasses very long?”
She struggled to maintain her calm façade. “I cannot imagine how it interests you, Your Grace.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised. Curiosity is a great entertainment.”
“I am sorry to hear that you’re in need of entertainment. Perhaps your boredom might be cured by leaving the house.”
“And thereby deprive myself of your sharp tongue?” He gave her a threatening smile. “How might we blunt it? I can think of several possibilities.”
She pretended not to have heard this. “Curiosity, of course, is the most dangerous solution for tedium.”
“Why, Mrs. Johnson!” He propped his chin atop his fist. “Did you just imply that you were dangerous? Lady Ripton failed to mention that, I fear.”
“No need for worry,” she said sweetly. “I have just given notice; you may hire someone very staid to replace me.”
His laugh offered her a view of his straight white teeth, and the cleft in his chin, normally disguised. “Touché.”
She felt herself on the verge of a smile, and instead folded her lips together. They should not be amusing each other. Anyone looking in at this scene, anyone who did not know them, would mistake them for pleasantly bickering lovers.
What a strange thought. She understood now how lovers might be said to quarrel without animosity. It rather took her breath away.
“Ah!” He lifted his brows. And she realized she had reached to adjust her glasses again.
“They have a smudge.” She removed them to polish with a handkerchief—and he promptly reached over and plucked them from her hand.
She lunged to her feet. “Give those back!”
Too late: he had held up the lenses to squint through them. Then he looked up at her, his expression amazed.
She sat down rigidly, her heart beating very fast. To wait for his inevitable remark was agonizing. He knew now that she did not require spectacles in order to see; that the lenses, while thick, were in no way corrective.
Silently he held them out to her. Their fingers brushed, and she flinched, for the contact sent a shocking spark along her skin—as though his kiss to her palm had sensitized her, and now she had no defenses.
How humiliating. She set the glasses back onto her nose, feeling sick. He would ask now about them, and there was no explanation she could offer that would not sound ridiculous.
He cleared his throat. She braced herself. But instead of questioning her, he bent over the chessboard, making an intent study of the pieces.
He was giving her a chance to compose herself.
No. She wanted to believe she misunderstood him. But a lump was forming in her throat. Kindness was a very underrated quality. She had vowed once that she would never neglect to appreciate it. Only she had never expected to find it in him . . .
She hid her confusion in a study of her handkerchief, which she folded, end over end, into a tiny, tight square.
He moved his rook. “Check.”
She tucked the handkerchief away and made herself sit forward. Her king was menaced. There was an easy way out of this trap, she felt sure of it. But she could not concentrate. What reasons must he be imagining for her disguise? He must think her daft—but what of it? He himself was no model for reasonable behavior.
She shifted her queen to block the rook—realizing, a moment too late, that she had moved that piece into reach of his knight. He would checkmate her in two moves, no help for it.
His hand moved toward the knight—hesitated there for a fractional moment—and then moved onward to his bishop.
“Don’t,” she burst out.
Their eyes met. Again, that hot shock—as though he had touched her. His eyes were intensely blue. Sapphire was the word. “Don’t what?” he asked, but there was something hot and devouring in his gaze, which said far more than his words did. She could not look away. A woman could fall into his eyes. Drown there. She would, gladly.
The thought echoed, panicking her. What was she doing? “You know what I mean,” she said. “I’ve lost the game. Don’t take pity on me.”
Sitting back, he offered her a rueful smile. “As you pitied me during the first half of this match?”
“That wasn’t pity.” Oh, she did not want to like him! Especially not if his eyes could cast spells on her, and his lips could reduce her to a gibbering ninny. What a perilous combination. “A servant cannot pity her employer.” And he was still her employer, no matter that she’d told him to find a replacement for her. He was the Duke of Marwick. Her next victim. “It was only good strategy on my part.” And avoiding him was good strategy, too. Why had she come inside?
He shrugged. “Once again, you parse diction. But I will call it pity, Mrs. Johnson, when a slip of a girl must yield her pawns to salve the pride of a man who once fancied himself a chess master.”
Had she heard him right? A slip of a girl? Nobody had ever used that phrase to describe her. It made her sound diminutive, fragile, when she stood almost six feet in her stockings.
She dug her nails into her lap to punish herself. She should not feel flattered by the idea that Marwick viewed her as feminine. He might be kind, very well. He might have gorgeous eyes. But he was not—could not—be a man to her. She had no wish to make a fool of herself. Say this spark between them was mutual. It only became an invitation for him to take advantage of her. And then . . . what? She would steal from him regardless.
She made herself give a devil-may-care shrug. “Hardly a slip of a girl. Why, I’m taller than most men.”
His arrested look made her realize her mistake. Her remark revealed all too clearly that she had fixated on his description of her. That she cared how he saw her.
Which she didn’t.
“True enough,” he said. “But since I happen to be taller, I have the luxury of failing to notice that.” He smiled again, a slow, openly suggestive smile.
She cast a panicked glance toward the door. That it stood shut had not bothered her before. But now the sight left her breathless.
He followed her glance. “You may open it if you like,” he said casually. “But I insist that we finish the game.”
“I have duties, Your Grace.”
“They can wait.” He toyed with one of her captured pawns. His fingers were long but not slender, his hands large, his palms broad: the strong hands of a workingman, misplaced on an aristocrat. Only his nails suggested his privilege, neat and clean. “As you say, it is good strategy to coddle one’s employer.”
“I never used that word.” He wore two rings now: the signet on his pinky, and a gold medallion on his middle finger. “Coddle, I mean.” At this rate he’d be bejeweled as an empress by spring.
“I beg your pardon. Then it is good strategy, as you would say.” He eyed her. The smile playing at the corners of his mouth made him look boyish, mischievous. “You really did miss your calling when you declined to become a governess.”
His flirting outclassed hers by far. She stood. Here ends the lesson. “Regardless, I am a housekeeper. And there are several items remaining on my—”
“And there’s the starch.” He leaned back, linking his hands together behind his head as he surveyed her. “You carry it off very well. Once you have a few lines in your face, a bit of gray in your hair, you’ll be fearsome indeed. Small children will flee, and all the housemaids will scrape and cringe.”
Something trembled inside her. She knew she had a starchy aspect. Did he imagine she was glad of it? She had no desire to be a Medusa. “Don’t mock me.”
“Oh, I don’t,” he said softly. “But the glasses do give you away, Mrs. Johnson.”
She hesitated, riven by twin impulses: the burning desire to know what he meant, and the fear of what he might say. That he might somehow say something true.
What a terrible thing it was to wish to be known, to be seen, when one’s life depended on remaining unnoticed.
He could not know her. A man of his station lacked the insight—and she could never permit it anyway. Nobody could know her until she was safe. She gathered up her skirts. “I must go.”
“You don’t wish to hear my theory?”
A flash of anger made her turn back. When had he ever known the kind of vulnerability a woman must suffer, when left on her own to face the world? How could he know that a woman might seek any strategy to render herself ineligible, invisible? “I am sure it will be very entertaining,” she said. She was, after all, a curiosity to him, was she not? A cure for his boredom, that was all.
“I don’t know about that,” he said gently—yes; to her amazement, there was no other way to describe his tone. “You’re a woman who has made her own way from a tender age. Unusually tall, conspicuously redheaded, very young, quite intelligent, and driven from your last position by a man who took unwanted note of you.” He tipped his head. “Mrs. Johnson, I would guess there is only one reason for you to wear those glasses.”
“And what is that?” she whispered.
“You wear them to hide.” He gave her a wry half smile. “Alas that we don’t all have the luxury of a townhome in which to closet ourselves. But you are welcome here to play chess any time you wish. You are, after all, far better at it than you wanted me to know. But to my credit . . . I’d rather suspected you would be.”
She gaped at him. The force of her reaction overwhelmed her: distress, shock, embarrassment, gratitude. For he was right. She was so much more than she permitted others to see. Yet he had seen it anyway. And imagine what it would be like—what it would mean—if his remark was an offer of true friendship. For with a man like him to aid her . . .
Why, he was one of the few men in the world with no cause to fear Bertram. Quite the opposite: Bertram should rightfully fear him.
But what madness! She meant to deceive him. She already was deceiving him. She could not bear to think his offer was genuine—that his sympathy might be more than a passing lark. For what would that make her?
The outright villain of this piece. Again, the villain.
“I must go,” she said, choked.
He nodded. “Go, then.”
Only after she had shut the door did she realize, with a pang, the strangeness of their final exchange: she had not been asking his permission, but telling him what she must do. And he had not given permission. Instead, in a very small way, he had ceded her the authority.