Two

THREE RULES, ANNA REMINDED HERSELF WHEN SHE reached the privacy of her own little sitting room. There were three rules to succeeding with any deception, and old Mr. Glickmann had drilled them into her:

Dress the part.

Believe your own lies.

Have more than you show—including an alternative plan.

Today, she was remiss on all three counts, God help her. A housekeeper wore caps, for pity’s sake. Great homely caps, and gloves out of doors, and there she went, sailing into the library, bareheaded, barehanded, for the earl and his brother to see.

Believe your own lies—that meant living the deception as if it were real, never breaking role, and with the earl she’d broken role badly ever since she’d brained him with a poker. He had to have seen her, arms around Morgan, even as he lay bleeding on the floor. And then, curse her arrogant mouth, she’d as good as informed him she was raised as a bluestocking—fluent in three languages, Mother of God! Housekeepers read mostly their Bible, and that only slowly.

Have more than you show, including second and even third plans. On that count, she was an unmitigated disaster. She had a small stash of funds, thanks to her wages here, and Mr. Glickmann’s final generosity, but funds were not a plan. Funds did not guarantee a new identity nor safe passage to foreign soil, if that’s what it took.

“So what has you in such a dither?” Nanny Fran toddled into the kitchen, her button eyes alight with curiosity.

“We’re to have company,” Anna replied, forcing herself to sit down and meet Nanny Fran’s eyes. “His lordship’s brother will be staying with us, and as it’s the first company since I’ve started here, I’m a little flustered.”

“Right.” Nanny Fran smiled at her knowingly. “Lord Val’s a good sort, more easygoing than Westhaven. But these two”—she shook her head— “they weren’t the ones who gave me trouble. Lord Bart was a rascal and spoiled, for all he wasn’t mean; Lord Vic was just as bad, and didn’t he get up to mischief, and nobody but Westhaven the wiser?”

“No carrying tales, Nanny.” Anna rose, unwilling to start Nanny gossiping. “I’m off to warn Cook we’ll have company, and their lordships will be dining informally at home for the foreseeable future. Have you seen Morgan?”

“She’s in the stillroom,” Nanny supplied, coming to her feet in careful increments. “Smells like lemons today, and limes.”

Anna did find Morgan in what had become the stillroom, a portion of the large laundry that took up part of the house’s understory. The girl was humming tunelessly and grinding something to powder with her mortar and pestle.

“Morgan?” Anna touched Morgan’s shoulder, pleased to find she hadn’t startled her. “What are you making? Nanny said it smelled like lemon and lime.”

Morgan held out a large ceramic bowl with dried flowers crushed into a colorful mixture. Anna dipped her face to inhale the scent, closing her eyes and smiling.

“That is lovely. What’s in it?”

Morgan lined up a number of bottles, pointing to each in turn, then took a pencil and scrap of paper from her apron pocket, and wrote, “Needs something. Too bland.”

Anna cocked her head and considered the pronouncement. Morgan’s nose was sophisticated but unconventional.

“Whose room is it for?”

Morgan made a supercilious face and arched a haughty eyebrow.

“The earl’s,” Anna concluded. “It does need something, something subtly exotic and even decadent.” Morgan grinned and nodded. She reached for a small vial and held it up for Anna’s consideration.

“Mouget du bois?” Anna raised her own eyebrow. “That’s feminine, Morgan.”

Morgan shook her head, confident in her decision. She added a few drops, stirred the bowl’s contents gently with one finger, then covered them with a fitted ceramic lid.

“I’m glad you’re done here for now,” Anna said. “His lordship’s brother will be staying with us for a time and will have need of the guest bedroom at the back of the house. Can you prepare it for him?”

Morgan nodded and tapped the left side of her collarbone, where a lady’s watch pin might hang.

“You have time, because the gentlemen will be dining here this evening. Give him plenty of scented wash water and a crock of ice to start with tonight. He’ll need flowers too, of course, and the sheets should be turned, as the ones on the bed have likely lost all their fragrance. Air the room, as well, and I’d leave the top windows open, the better to catch a zephyr.”

Morgan smiled again and breezed past Anna, who followed her out but paused in the kitchen to talk to Cook.

“You’ll be cooking for two gentlemen tonight,” Anna said with a smile.

“His lordship’s having company?” Cook asked, looking up from the bread dough she was turning on a floured board.

“Lord Valentine, his brother. He’s a year or two younger than Westhaven but looks to be every bit as fit and busy as the earl.”

“Good appetites, then.” Cook nodded, pleased. “The earl’s interest in his tucker has picked up here in recent months, I can tell you. Shall we do it a bit fancy tonight?”

“Not fancy, I don’t think.” Anna frowned in thought. “It’s too hot for anything heavy, and the dining room can be stuffy. Why not a meal for the back terrace, something a little closer to a picnic but substantial enough for men?”

“Cold fare, maybe.” Cook frowned as she put the dough in a bowl and covered it with a clean towel. “Chicken, with that basil you planted, and we’ve early tomatoes coming in. I can slice up some fruit and put it on ice…” Cook trailed off, her imagination putting together what was needed with what was on hand.

Anna’s next stop was the head footman, whose job it would be to set up the terrace for dining. Anna set out scented torches, candles, linen, and cutlery suited to an al fresco meal, then quickly put together a little bouquet for a low centerpiece.

“Mrs. Seaton?” A male voice in the small confines of the butler’s pantry gave her a start.

“Lord Valentine?” She turned to find him standing immediately behind her.

“My apologies.” He smiled down at her, a perfectly charming expression. “I called, but the din in the kitchen probably drowned me out. Would it be possible at some point this evening to request a bath?”

“Of course. Your brother bathes before retiring most nights, unless he’s going to be from home until late. There is time before dinner, but your room is only now being readied. We can send a bath up to the front guest room, if you’d like.”

“That would be marvelous.” He remained in the oversized closet with her, his smile fading. “You take good care of him, Mrs. Seaton, and it shows, though it must have been quite some blow to his hard head if it slowed him down even marginally.”

Anna frowned at his retreating back and realized Westhaven had discussed the week’s earlier mishap with Lord Val. Well, damn the man anyway.

And that reminded her, his lordship had sneaked out that morning without letting her tend him. He would scar at this rate and prolong his convalescence. Grabbing her medical supplies, Anna went in search of her quarry, hoping to find him where he usually was at this pleasant hour of the early evening, out on his balcony.

He lounged on his wicker chaise in lordly splendor, his waistcoat slung over the back of the chair, cravat folded tidily over that, his shirt open at the throat, and his cuffs rolled back.

“Your lordship?” Anna waited for his permission to step from his bedroom, feeling absurd for doing it and abruptly self-conscious.

“Mrs. Seaton,” he drawled, glancing up at her. “You’ve come to poke at my injured self. Does nothing deter you from the conscientious prosecution of your duties?”

“Craven evasion,” she replied, stepping out onto the balcony. “As when my patient disappears at first light, not to be seen until tea time, and then only in the company of his protective little brother.”

“Val is protective of me?” Westhaven scowled as he eased forward to the end of the chaise, then dragged his shirt over his head and turned his back to her. “I suppose he is at that, though he knows I’d bite his head off were he to imply I need protection. Jesus Christ, that still stings.”

“We all need protection from time to time,” she said, dabbing gently at his back with arnica. “Your bruises are truly magnificent, my lord. They will heal more quickly if you don’t duck out of a morning— and skip your breakfast.”

“It’s too hot to ride later in the day, at least at the pace I prefer.” He winced again as she went at the second large laceration.

“You shouldn’t be out riding hell-bent, your lordship. Your injuries do not need the abuse, and I can see where you’ve pulled this cut open along this edge.” She drew a chiding finger along the bottom seam of a laceration. “What if you were unseated, and no one else about in the dawn’s early light?”

“So you would come along to protect me?” he challenged lazily. She began to redress his back.

“Somebody should,” she muttered, focused on the purple, green, and mottled brown skin surrounding the two mean gashes on his back.

The earl frowned in thought. “In truth, I am in need of somebody to protect. I fired my mistress today.”

“My lord!” She was abruptly scowling at him nineteen to the dozen, as much disapproval as she dared show, short of jeopardizing her position outright.

“There is always gossip,” he quoted her sardonically, “below stairs.”

She pursed her lips. “Gossip and blatant disclosure are not the same thing. Though in this heat, why anyone would…”

She broke off, mortified at what had been about to come out of her mouth.

“Oh, none of that, Mrs. Seaton.” The earl’s smile became devilish. “In this heat?”

“Never mind, my lord.” She wetted her cloth with arnica again and gently tucked his head against her waist. “This one is looking surprisingly tidy. Hold still.”

“I have a thick skull,” he said from her waist. And now that she was done with his back, came the part he always tolerated almost docilely. She sifted her fingers carefully through his hair and braced him this way, his crown snug against her body, the better to tend his scalp.

And if his hair was the silkiest thing she’d ever had the pleasure to drift her fingers over, well, that was hardly the earl’s fault, was it?

He should have brought himself off when he didn’t complete matters at Elise’s. Why else would he be baiting his housekeeper, a virtuous and supremely competent woman? She was done with her arnica and back to exploring the area around the scalp wound with careful fingers.

“I don’t understand why you haven’t more swelling here.” She feathered his hair away from the scalp wound. “Head wounds are notoriously difficult, but you seem to be coming along wonderfully.”

“So we can dispense with this nonsense?” He reluctantly sat back and waved his hand at her linen and tincture.

“Another two days, I think.” She put the cap back on the bottle. “Why is it so difficult for you to submit to basic care, my lord? Do you relish being stiff and scarred?”

“I do not particularly care what the appearance of my back is, Mrs. Seaton. Ever since my brother took several years to die of consumption, I have had an abiding disgust of all things medical.”

“I’m sorry.” She looked instantly appalled. “I had no idea, my lord.”

“Most people don’t,” Westhaven said. “If you’ve never seen anyone go that way, you don’t fully comprehend the horror of it. And all the while, there were medical vultures circling, bleeding, poking at him, prescribing useless nostrums. He tolerated it, because it created a fiction of hope that comforted my parents even as it tortured him.”

He fell silent then stood and went to the railing to stare out at the lush evening sunlight falling over his back gardens.

“And then late this winter, my stubborn father had to go riding to hounds in a weeklong downpour, only to come home with a raging lung fever. The leeches went at him, his personal physicians doing nothing more than drinking his brandy and letting his blood. When he was too weak to argue with me, those idiots were thrown out, but they came damned close to costing me my father.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, turning to stand beside him, laying a hand on his back. He heard her sharp intake of breath as she realized her error—his shirt was still off. He didn’t move off, though, but waited to see how she’d manage. Her hand was comforting, and without him willing it, his own slid along her waist and drew her against his side.

She remained facing the gardens, her expression impassive, her breath moving in a measured rhythm, her hand resting on his back as if it had arrived there despite her complete indifference to him as a person. Slowly, he relaxed, sensing her innate decency had, for just a few moments, trumped her notions of propriety, class distinction, and personal rectitude.

She offered comfort, he decided. Just comfort, for him, upon his recounting some very dark moments and his frustration and helplessness in those moments.

But what about for her?

He turned her to face him, brought her slowly against his body, and rested his cheek against her temple.

Just that, but it changed the tenor of the moment from gestures of comfort to the embrace of a man and a woman. His arms draped over her shoulders while hers looped at his naked waist, even as he told himself to end this folly immediately, or she’d have grounds for believing he trifled with the help after all.

She didn’t end it. She stood in the loose circle of his arms, letting him positively wallow in the clean summery scent of her, the soft curves fitting him in all the right places. He urged her with patient strokes of his hands on her back to rest more fully against him, to give him her weight. He wasn’t even aroused, he realized, he was just… consoled.

When he finally did step back, he placed a single finger softly against her lips to stop her from the admonitory and apologetic stammers no doubt damming up behind her conscience.

“None of that.” He shook his head, his expression solemn. “This wasn’t on my list either, Anna Seaton.”

She didn’t tarry to find out if he would say more, but shook her head in dismay, no curtsy, no resounding whack to his cheek, no offer of resignation. She left him, heir to the dukedom, standing half dressed, bruised, and alone on his private balcony.

“His lordship begs the favor of yer comp’ny, mum,” John Footman informed the housekeeper. Except, Anna knew, the man’s name really was John, and his father and grandfather before him had also both, for a time, been footmen in the ducal household.

“He’s in the library?” Anna asked, putting her mending aside with a sigh.

“He is,” John replied, “and in a proper taking over summat.”

“Best I step lively.” Anna smiled at the young man, who looked worried for her. She squared her mental shoulders and adopted a businesslike—but certainly not anxious—gait. It had been a week since she’d clobbered the earl with a poker, a few days since that awkward scene on his balcony. She’d tended his bruises for the last time this morning, and he’d been nothing more than his usual acerbic, imperious self.

She knocked with a sense of trepidation nonetheless.

“Come.” The word was barked.

“Mrs. Seaton.” He waved her over to his desk. “Take a chair; I need your skills.”

She took a seat and reluctantly agreed with the footman. His lordship was in a taking, or a snit, or an upset over something. The faint frown that often marked his features was a scowl, and his manner peremptory to the point of rudeness.

“My man of business is unable to attend me, and the correspondence will not wait. There’s paper, pen, and ink.” He nodded at the edge of the desk. “Here, take my seat, and I’ll dictate. The first letter goes to Messrs. Meechum and Holly, as follows…”

Good morning to you, too, Anna thought, dipping her pen. An hour and a half and six lengthy letters later, Anna’s hand was cramping.

“The next letter, which can be a memorandum, is to go to Morelands. A messenger will be up from Morelands either later today or tomorrow, but the matter is not urgent.” The earl let out a breath, and Anna took the opportunity to stand.

“My lord,” she interrupted, getting a personal rendition of the earl’s scowl for her cheek. “My hand needs a rest, and you could probably use some lemonade for your voice. Shall we take a break?”

He glanced at the clock, ready to argue, but the time must have surprised him.

“A short break,” he allowed.

“I’ll see about your drink,” Anna said. When she got to the hallway, she shook her poor hand vigorously. It wasn’t so much that the earl expected her to take lightning-fast dictation, it was more the case that he never, ever needed a pause himself. He gave her time to carefully record his every word, and not one tick of the clock more.

Sighing, she made her way to the kitchen, loaded up a tray, then added a second glass of lemonade for herself and returned to the library. She had been away from her post for twelve minutes but returned to find the earl reading a handwritten note and looking more thoughtful than angry.

“One more note, Mrs. Seaton,” he said, rummaging in the desk drawers, “and then I will have something to drink.”

He retrieved a scrap of paper from the back of a drawer, glaring at it in triumph when his fingers closed over it. “I knew it was in here.” As he was back in his rightful place behind the desk, Anna repositioned the blotter, paper, pen, and ink on her side of the desk and sat down.

“To Drs. Hamilton, Pugh, and Garner, You will attend Miss Sue-Sue Tolliver at your earliest convenience, on the invitation of her father, Marion Tolliver. Bills for services rendered will be sent to the undersigned. Westhaven, etc.”

Puzzled, Anna dutifully recorded the earl’s words, sanded the little epistle, and set it aside to dry.

“I see you have modified your interpretation of the rules of decorum in deference to the heat,” the earl noted, helping himself to a glass of lemonade. “Good God!” He held the glass away from him after a single sip. “It isn’t sweetened.”

“You helped yourself to my glass,” Anna said, suppressing a smile. She passed him the second glass, from which he took a cautious swallow. She was left to drink from the same glass he’d first appropriated or go back to the kitchen to fetch herself a clean glass.

Looking up, she saw the earl watching her with a kind of bemused curiosity, as if he understood her dilemma. She took a hefty swallow of lemonade—and it did have sugar in it, though just a dash—and set her glass on the blotter.

“Tolliver is your man of business, isn’t he?” she asked, the association just occurring to her.

“He is. He sent word around he was unavoidably detained and would not attend me this morning, which is unusual for him. I put one of the footmen on it and just received Tolliver’s explanation: His youngest is coming down with the chicken pox.”

“And you sent not one but three physicians for a case of chicken pox?” Anna marveled.

“Those three,” the earl replied in all seriousness, “were recommended by an acquaintance who is himself a physician. Garner and Pugh were instrumental in saving His Grace’s life this winter.”

“So you trust them.”

“As much as I trust any physician,” the earl countered, “which is to say no farther than I could throw them, even with my shoulders injured.”

“So if we ever need a physician for you, we should consult Garner, Pugh, or Hamilton?”

“My first choice would be David Worthington, Viscount Fairly, who recommended the other three, but you had better hope I die of whatever ails me, as I will take any quackery quite amiss, Mrs. Seaton.” The earl speared her with a particularly ferocious glare in support of his point.

“May I ask an unrelated question, my lord?” Anna sipped her drink rather than glare right back at him. He was in a mood this morning to try the patience of a saint.

“You may.” He put his empty glass on the tray and sat back in his chair.

“Is this how you work with Mr. Tolliver?” she asked. “Dictating correspondence word-for-word?”

“Sometimes,” the earl replied, frowning. “He’s been with me several years, though, and more often than not, I simply scratch a few notes, and he drafts the final missive for my signature.”

“Can we try that approach? It sounds like my grandfather’s way of doing business, and so far, your correspondence has been perfectly mundane.”

“We can try it, but I am reminded of another matter I wanted to raise with you, and I will warn you in advance I won’t have you sniffing your indignation at me for it.”

“Sniffing my indignation?”

The earl nodded once, decisively. “Just so. I told you the other night I have parted company with my current chere amie. I inform you of this, Mrs. Seaton, not because I want to offend your sensibilities, but because I suspect the duke will next turn his sights on my own household.”

“What does His Grace have to do with your… personal associations?”

“Precisely my question,” the earl agreed, but he went on to explain in terse, blunt language how his father had manipulated his mistress, and how Elise had altered the plan in its significant details. “My father will likely try to find a spy on my own staff to inform him of when and with whom I contract another liaison. You will foil his efforts, should you learn of them.”

“My lord, if you wanted to elude your father’s scrutiny, then why would you hire half your footmen from his household and give him exclusive access to your valet for weeks on end?”

The earl looked nonplussed as he considered the logic of her observation.

“I made those arrangements before I comprehended the lengths to which my father is prepared to go. And I did so without knowing he already had spies in Elise’s household, as well.”

Anna said nothing and resumed her seat across the desk from the earl. He shuffled the stack, put two or three missives aside, then passed pen and paper to Anna.

“To Barstow,” he began, “a polite expression of noninterest at this time, perhaps in future, et cetera. To Williams and Williams, a stern reminder that payment is due on the first, per our arrangements, and sword-rattling to the effect that contractual remedies will be invoked.” He passed over the first two and went on in that vein until Anna had her orders for the next dozen or so letters.

“And while you obligingly tend to spinning that straw into gold”—the earl smiled without warning— “I will fire off the next salvo to His Grace.”

For the next hour, they worked in companionable silence, with Anna finding it surprisingly easy to address the tasks set before her. She’d spent many, many hours in this role with her grandfather and had enjoyed the sense of partnership and trust such a position evoked.

“Well, what have we here?” Lord Valentine strode into the library, smiling broadly at its occupants. “Have I interrupted a lofty session of planning menus?”

“Hardly.” The earl smiled at his brother. “Tolliver’s absence has necessitated I prevail on Mrs. Seaton’s good offices. What has you up so early?”

“It’s eleven of the clock,” Val replied. “Hardly early when one expects to practice at least four hours at his pianoforte.” He stopped and grimaced. “If, that is, you won’t mind. I can always go back to the Pleasure House if you do.”

“Valentine.” The earl glanced warningly at Mrs. Seaton.

“I’ve already told your housekeeper I am possessed of a healthy affection for pianos of easy virtue.” Val turned his smile on Anna. “She was shocked insensible, of course.”

“I was no such thing, your lordship.”

“A man can take poetic license,” Val said, putting a pair of Westhaven’s glasses on his nose. “If you will excuse me, I will be off to labor in the vineyard to which I am best suited.”

A little silence followed his departure, with the earl frowning pensively at the library door. Anna went back to the last of her assigned letters, and a few minutes later, heard the sound of scales tinkling through the lower floors of the house.

“Will he really play for four hours?” she asked.

“He will play forever,” the earl said, “but he will practice for at least four hours each day. He spent more time at the keyboard by the age of twenty-five than a master at any craft will spend at his trade in his lifetime.”

“He is besotted,” Anna said, smiling. “You really don’t mind the noise?”

“It is the sound of my only living little brother being happy,” the earl said, tossing down his pen and going to stand in the open French doors. “It could never be noise.” The earl frowned at her over his shoulder. “What? I can see you want to ask me something. I’ve worked you hard enough you deserve a shot or two.”

“What makes you happy?” she asked, stacking the completed replies neatly, not meeting his eyes.

“An heir to a dukedom need not be happy. He need only be dutiful and in adequate reproductive health.”

“So you are dutiful, but that evades the question. Your father manages to be both duke and happy, at least much of the time. So what, future Duke of Moreland, makes you happy?”

“A good night’s sleep,” the earl said, surprising them both. “Little pieces of marzipan showing up at unlikely spots in my day. A pile of correspondence that has been completed before luncheon, thank ye gods.”

“You still need to read my efforts,” Anna reminded him, pleased at his backhanded compliment, but troubled, somehow, that a good night’s sleep was the pinnacle of his concept of pleasure.

The earl waggled his fingers at her. “So pass them over, and I will find at least three misspellings, lest you get airs above your station.”

“You will find no misspellings, nor errors of punctuation or grammar.” Anna passed the stack to him. “With your leave, I will go see about luncheon. Would you like to be served on the terrace, my lord, and will Lord Valentine be joining you?”

“I would like to eat on the terrace,” the earl said, “and I doubt my brother will tear himself away from the piano, when he just sat down to his finger exercises. Send in a tray to him when you hear him shift from drills to etudes and repertoire.”

“Yes, my lord.” Anna bobbed a curtsy, but his lordship was already nose down into the correspondence, his brow knit in his characteristic frown.

“Oh, Mrs. Seaton?” The earl did not look up.

“My lord?”

“What does a child suffering chicken pox need for her comfort and recuperation?”

“Ice,” Anna said, going on to name a litany of comfort nursing accoutrements.

“You can see to that?” he asked, looking up and eyeing his gardens. “The ice and so forth? Have it sent ’round to Tolliver’s?”

“I can,” Anna replied, cocking her head to consider her employer. “Regularly, until the child recovers.”

“How long will that take?”

“The first few days are the worst, but by the fifth day, the fever has often abated. The itching can take longer, though. In this heat, I do not envy the child or her parents.”

“A miserable thought,” the earl agreed, “in comparison to which, dealing with my paltry letters is hardly any hardship at all, hmm? There will be more marzipan at lunch?”

“If your brother hasn’t plundered our stores,” Anna said, taking her leave.

She didn’t see the earl smile at the door nor see that the smile didn’t fade until he forced himself to resume perusing her drafts of correspondence. She wrote well, he thought, putting his ideas into words with far more graciousness and subtlety than old Tolliver could command. And so the chore of tending to correspondence, which had threatened to consume his entire day, was already behind him, leaving him free to… Wonder what gave him pleasure.

“I’d put John to setting the table,” Cook said, “but he went off to get us some more ice from the warehouse, and Morgan has gone to fetch the eggs, since his lordship didn’t take his ride this morning, and McCutcheon hasn’t seen to the hens yet.”

So I, Anna thought, will spend the next half hour setting up a table where his lordship will likely sit for all of twenty minutes, dining in solitary splendor on food he doesn’t even taste, because he must finish reading The Times while at table.

His crabby mood had rubbed off on her, she thought as she spread a linen cloth over a wrought-iron table. Well, that wouldn’t do. Mentally, she began making her list of things to send over to Tolliver’s for the little girl, Sue-Sue.

“You look utterly lost in thought,” the earl pronounced, causing Anna to jump and almost drop the basket of cutlery she was holding.

“I was,” she said, blushing for no earthly reason. “I have yet to see to your request to send some supplies around to Tolliver and was considering the particulars.”

“How is it you know how to care for a case of chicken pox?” The earl grabbed the opposite ends of the tablecloth and drew them exactly straight.

“It’s a common childhood illness,” Anna said, setting the basket of cutlery on the table. “I came down with it myself when I was six.” The earl reached into the basket and fished out the makings of a place setting. Anna watched in consternation as he arranged his cutlery on the table, setting each piece of silverware precisely one inch from the edge of the table.

“Don’t you want a linen for your place setting?” Anna asked, unfolding one from the basket and passing it to him.

“Well, of course. Food always tastes better when eaten off a plate that sits on both a linen and a tablecloth.”

“No need to be snippy, my lord.” Anna quirked an eyebrow at him. “We can feed you off a wooden trencher if that’s your preference.”

“My apologies.” The earl shot her a fulminating look as he collected the silverware and waited for Anna to spread the underlinen. “I am out of sorts today for having missed my morning ride.”

He was once again arranging his silverware a precise distance from the edge of the table while Anna watched. He would have made an excellent footman, she concluded. He was careful, conscientious, and incapable of smiling.

“In this heat, I did not want to tax my horse,” the earl said, rummaging in the basket for salt and the pepper. He found them and eyed the table speculatively.

“Here.” Anna set a small bowl of daisies and violets on the table. “Maybe that will give you some ideas.”

“A table for one can so easily become asymmetric.”

“Dreadful effect on the palate.” Anna rolled her eyes. “And where, I ask you, will we hide his lordship’s marzipan?”

“Careful, Mrs. Seaton. If he should come out here and overhear your disrespect, I wouldn’t give two pence for your position.”

“If he is so humorless and intolerant as all that,” Anna said, “then he can find somebody else to feed him sweets on the terrace of a summer’s day.”

The earl’s gaze cooled at that retort, and Anna wondered at her recent penchant for overstepping. He’d been annoying her all morning, though, from the moment she’d been dragooned into the library. It was no mystery to her why Tolliver would rather be dealing with a sick child than his lordship.

“Am I really so bad as all that?” the earl asked, his expression distracted. He set aside the pepper but hefted the salt in one hand.

“You are…” Anna glanced up from folding the linen napkin she’d retrieved from her basket.

The earl met her gaze and waited.

“Troubled, I think,” she said finally. “It comes out as imperiousness.”

“Troubled,” the earl said with a snort. “Well, that covers a world of possibilities.” He reached into the basket and withdrew a large glazed plate, positioning it exactly in the center of his place setting. “I tried to compose a letter to my father this morning, while you beavered away on my mundane business, and somehow, Mrs. Seaton, I could not come up with words to adequately convey to my father the extent to which I want him to just leave me the hell alone.”

He finished that statement through clenched teeth, alarming Anna with the animosity in his tone, but he wasn’t finished.

“I have come to the point,” the earl went on, “where I comprehend why my older brothers would consider the Peninsular War preferable to the daily idiocy that comes with being Percival Windham’s heir. I honestly believe that could he but figure a way to pull it off, my father would lock me naked in a room with the woman of his choice, there to remain until I got her pregnant with twin boys. And I am not just frustrated”—the earl’s tone took on a sharper edge—“I am ready to do him an injury, because I don’t think anything less will make an impression. Two unwilling people are going to wed and have a child because my father got up to tricks.”

“Your father did not force those two people into one another’s company all unawares and blameless, my lord, but why not appeal to your mother? By reputation, she is the one who can control him.”

The earl shook his head. “Her Grace is much diminished by the loss of my brother Victor. I do not want to importune her, and she will believe His Grace only meant well.”

Anna smiled ruefully. “And she wants grandchildren, too, of course.”

“Why, of course.” The earl gestured impatiently. “She had eight children and still has six. There will be grandchildren, and if for some reason the six of us are completely remiss, I have two half siblings, whose children she will graciously spoil, as well.”

“Good heavens,” Anna murmured. “So your father has sired ten children, and yet he plagues you?”

“He does. Except for the one daughter of Victor’s, none of us have seen fit to reproduce. There was a rumor Bart had left us something to remember him by, but he likely started the rumor himself just to aggravate my father.”

“So find a wife,” Anna suggested. “Or at least a fiancée, and back your dear papa off. The right lady will cry off when you ask it of her, particularly if you are honest with your scheme from the start.”

“See?” The earl raised his voice, though just a bit. “Honest with my scheme? Do you know how like my father that makes me sound?”

“And is this all that plagues you, my lord? Your father has no doubt been a nuisance for as long as you’ve been his heir, if not longer.”

The earl glanced sharply at his housekeeper, then his lips quirked, turned back down, and then slowly curved back up.

“Why are you smiling?” she asked, his smiles being as rare as hen’s teeth.

“I found your little parlor maid in the hay loft,” the earl said, setting out his water glass and wine glass precisely one inch from the plate. “She discovered our mouser’s new litter, and she was enthralled with the cat’s purr. She could feel it, I think, and understood it meant the cat was happy.”

“She would,” Anna said, wondering how this topic was related to providing the duke his heirs. “She loves animals, but here in Town, she has little truck with them.”

“You know Morgan that well?” the earl asked, his tone casual.

“We are related,” she replied, telling herself it was a version of the truth. A prevaricating version.

“So you took pity on her,” the earl surmised, “and hired her into my household. Has she always been deaf?”

“I do not know the particulars of her malady, my lord,” she said, lifting the basket to her hip. “All I care for is her willingness to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. Shall we serve you tea or lemonade with your luncheon?”

“Lemonade,” Westhaven said. “But for God’s sake don’t forget to sugar it.”

She bobbed a curtsy so low as to be mocking. “Any excuse to sweeten your disposition, my lord.”

He watched her go, finding another smile on his face, albeit a little one. His housekeeper liked having the last word, which was fine with him—usually. But as their conversation had turned to the question of her relation, she had dodged him and begun to dissemble. It was evident in her eyes and in the slight defensiveness of her posture.

A person, even one in service to an earl, was entitled to privacy. But a person with secrets could be exploited by, say, an unscrupulous duke. And for that reason—for that reason—the earl would be keeping a very close eye on Anna Seaton.