Since he’d taken Bridget in his arms, Vail had done an impressive job of avoiding his bibliophile housekeeper. He’d kept a wide berth; conducting his business the same way he had before she’d arrived, away from his residence, at meetings. And when he wasn’t overseeing upcoming transactions and finalizing sales, he was attending the business of his siblings.
Given that, it would be his damned vexing brother, Edward, who forced her back into his thoughts.
“I came to visit Mrs. Hamlet.”
Disgruntled, Vail continued reviewing his upcoming meetings with clients and potential clients, “Did you?” So that is why he’d come then when there’d been no planned meeting. Feigning nonchalance, he continued skimming the page. “And how does Br—Mrs. Hamlet fare in her new post?” Mrs. Hamlet whom he’d taken pains to avoid.
At Edward’s answering silence, he looked up. Standing between the wingback leather chairs, there was a besotted glitter in Edward’s eyes. Vail thinned his own. Why…why…his book-loving brother was fascinated by the lady. It shouldn’t matter. It didn’t matter. And yet…he growled.
Edward spoke, slashing across that damning sound of his fury. “I must confess, when I’d initially received her credentials from Lord Stanwicke, I was, at best, skeptical.”
Good. Talk of Stanwicke and the lady’s references was far safer than an irrational annoyance with Edward’s fascination of Vail’s new housekeeper. “Anything coming from Stanwicke should be received in such a way,” he agreed.
Now that he had secured Vail’s attention, Edward claimed one of the chairs. “In my requests with the employment agency, they provided me Stanwicke’s references of the young woman. He’d spoken with such high praise for her handling of his texts and her keen understanding of their content that I’d doubted that such a woman existed.” Edward gave his head a bemused shake.
It was not uncommon for London’s leading book collectors to staff households with men and women who knew how to care for those valuable tomes. And yet, even with Bridget’s skill and competence, that man had released her from his employ? Vail frowned as, for the first time, doubts were born. “If Stanwicke was so pleased, how did the lady come to be looking for work?”
“A disagreement with the Lady Stanwicke,” Edward explained, looping his ankle over his opposite knee. “The marchioness took umbrage with the inordinate amount of time Mrs. Hamlet spent within the marquess’ office.”
The sliver of doubt about the lady’s presence here gave way, replaced, instead, with a dark, simmering fury…and different questions flitted forward. Ones about the lady’s previous employer. Nor could there be any doubt with Bridget’s proficiency in literature and her cultured tones, she was anything but a lady. “Did the gentleman…?” He left that question vague, even as a red, hot fury burned under the surface and threatened to spill over.
“Stanwicke?” Edward scoffed. “With his obsessive fascination with his books, I’m stunned the man’s gotten an heir and a spare on his wife.”
Yes, but the man’s wife was not in possession of Bridget’s talents…those skills would earn any bibliophile’s attentions. That dark, unwanted possibility that the lady had fled after a handsy employer forced his attentions on her.
Edward grinned, that affable expression at odds with Vail’s dark thoughts. “You know I don’t conduct my work seeking praise…”
At the unfinished thought, Vail tossed his pen down. “Good. Then do not begin now.” He blighted that teasing set-down with a grin.
Edward’s smug smile deepened. “However—”
“You intend to begin now, then?”
“—given my rather poor showing in hiring Mrs. Peach, Mrs. Batch, and, most recently, Mrs. Kelly, I’ve quite outdone myself with your new housekeeper.”
Who could have imagined that finding a reliable, effective housekeeper who knew her way around his books would have been such a bloody chore? “She’s been here but five days,” he said, far more grudging in the appreciation he favored a new person on his staff. “I believe applauding yourself and extoling the lady is premature at this time.”
“Ah, yes,” his brother dropped his other foot to the floor and, leaning forward, wagged a finger. “But I’m the one who has spent the better part of the week with her.”
Edward’s words conjured images of the pair, tucked away in Vail’s library—alone. And this time, it was not Vail who had her in his arms, but his brother. Something insidious slithered around inside. Something that felt remarkably like…jealousy. He scoffed. Jealousy? The lady had lived in his household for less than a week. In that time, he’d had three meetings and a handful of other polite, perfunctory exchanges when she brought coffee—which Gavin had, in fact, been correct on. The woman brewed a masterful cup. What in blazes…?
“Are you listening to me?” Edward asked impatiently, snapping Vail back to the moment.
“Yes.” No.
His entirely too-besotted brother proceeded to tick off on his fingers. “The woman knows how to properly handle antique books. She not only knows how to care for them, but also has an appreciation for the contents within. And she fluently reads and speaks Latin, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.” And with Edward’s regard for literature, his awestruck visage told the tale of a man more than half in love with Mrs. Bridget Hamlet.
Having already gathered her skill with antiquated texts, only one revelation about his new housekeeper commanded Vail’s attention. “Latin, French, Italian, German, and Spanish?” Surely, he’d misheard the other man.
Edward nodded.
Vail opened and closed his mouth several times. Only wealthy, highborn ladies were generally in possession of those skills. And even then, how many were fluent in Spanish, as well? Further questions about his peculiar housekeeper whispered forward, deepening his suspicions.
“Mm, mm,” Edward protested, already shaking his head. “Don’t you do that.”
“Do what?” Vail sat back in the comfortable folds of his chair.
“You’ve got the same cynical stare you don when dealing with purchasers and sellers.”
At that accurate charge, Vail remained silent.
“You don’t deny it?” Edward asked, relentless.
“I don’t think there is reason to.” He’d not make apologies for being skeptical…of anyone. He’d witnessed firsthand, as a boy, then as a soldier, and then as a baron doing business with the ton’s leading nobles, the evil a person was capable of.
“I’ve already found you the ideal housekeeper. If she could brew a perfect cup of coffee, then I’m fairly certain she’d be the perfect woman.”
“She does brew—” Vail closed his mouth. Alas the damage was already done.
His brother rounded his eyes.
“It is among her responsibilities,” he grumbled, resisting the urge to squirm. When she set one of those cups down at the front table in his offices each night and inquired about the books he studied, it had become one of the unexpected pleasures of his day.
“Humph.” Edward hopped up. “Then, it is official: accomplished in foreign tongues, capable with antique books, keen of mind, and skilled at making coffee? I’ve found you the perfect woman. No thank you is necessary,” he said, starting for the door.
“Where are you off to?”
Edward paused at the doorway. He glanced back. “I’ve a meeting with Lord Tennyson.” In deep from too many years of whoring, wagering, and drinking, the man had a recent reversal of fortune at the tables—which he’d promptly lost. And each time he did, he sold off another parcel of his collection. Edward, with his knowledge of books, was always the first to make contact and inventory the titles. “I just came to see how Mrs. Hamlet fared her first day without supervision.”
“How very devoted you are to Mrs. Hamlet,” he said in even tones, eliciting a blush from his brother.
“Yes, well, then.” Color on his cheeks deepening, Edward touched his brim and made to go…but then stopped. “I understand why you’re wary of people.” Having found Edward in one of those seedy clubs in the Dials, his younger brother’s life was largely a mystery that he didn’t speak on, and one that Vail didn’t force him with questions over. “But sometimes,” Edward said, the same way a tutor might dole out instruction to his student. “A person is exactly as they seem.”
And sometimes they weren’t. “I didn’t say she wasn’t.” He’d merely identified peculiarities about the lady.
Edward snorted. “I may only know you these five years now, but I know you well enough to gather precisely what you’re thinking about the young woman.”
The fortunes Vail earned in the course of his sales were what allowed him to care for the children Ravenscourt had littered about England, and see they no longer struggled or suffered. Erasmus’ face trickled forward, once more… “You’d ask me to trust a fortune over to a stranger’s care?” A ball of regret and sorrow lodged in his throat.
“Hardly,” Edward shot back. “You can spend time with her yourself and ascertain whether or not your cryptic worrying is, in fact, merited. Or have Colin investigate her as he does those dregs of London Society,” he drawled.
“I’m not employing Colin to investigate her.” Not because he was at all opposed to using Colin’s services. His brother, Colin Lockhart, was one of the best Runners in London. He’d taken on plenty of work about clients and members of Vail’s staff over the years.
With a doubtful snort, Edward lifted his hand in parting and left.
“Cryptic worrying,” he muttered. Vail would hardly characterize cautiousness as a flaw on his part. As Edward had accurately pointed out, life had given each of them proper reason to be wary of all. He drummed his fingertips together and stared contemplatively over them at the doorway. After kissing his housekeeper, he’d resolved to keep his distance from Bridget. Mayhap, his brother was correct in this regard. After all, it would be unwise business to not monitor her work…at least periodically.
Shoving to his feet, Vail quit his rooms. A short while later, he found himself at the entrance to one of his seven Collection Rooms. He stood a long moment in the open doorway.
I should enter. I should, at the very least, announce myself loudly, so she might hear my approach.
Instead, he lingered, proving himself a literal and figurative bastard, and observed her at work. Her back presented to him, she’d the regal bearing most queens couldn’t master, a noble carriage that only further cemented this woman’s connection to the peerage. And yet…it was not questions of her origins, background, or history that compelled him in this given instance—he swallowed hard—but rather the pull of the sapphire muslin fabric as it stretched at her trim waist and generously flared hips. Fighting an inner battle—and losing—Vail dipped his gaze downward, to her rounded buttocks. Even in her modest muslin gown, Bridget Hamlet was a study of lush carnality. Lust bolted through him.
You depraved bastard. You are your father’s son. Get a damned grip on yourself, you lecher.
Mindful of what she’d revealed earlier that week in regards to her left ear, he called out loudly, belatedly alerting her to his presence. “Never tell me you’re cataloguing out of order?”
Bridget cried out and spun around. A book slipped from her fingers and she made a desperate grab for it. It landed with a dull, unsatisfying thump on the hardwood floor.
Silence hung in the cavernous room.
Horror and fear wreathed the lady’s delicate features. “Oh, God,” she whispered, the words coming out as a prayer. She hurriedly sank to the floor.
Vail rushed over and dropped to a knee. Pietro di Piasi. One of the titles he’d intended to keep for his own collection.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, reaching for the copy now lying indignantly on its spine. “Oh, God,” she repeated, as she rescued the book.
“It is fine,” he said in the tones he’d used with Atlas when he’d gone fractious just before battle. “It’s not even intended for auction,” he said as a way of reassurance. Even if it hadn’t been, he still wasn’t one of those ruthless employers who beat his servants or sacked them for errors.
“But it matters to you,” she protested. “You’ve indicated everything,” she motioned about the room. “Can be purchased or sold and, yet, not these copies. So, they matter to you and therefore are more important than the ones you’d sell.”
Vail paused. His whole life he’d taken a person’s appreciation for material items as a vile attribute of the nobility. Whereas he? He’d operated for so long as profit-driven, and a need to amass an even greater fortune so he could know security for himself and his family. What this woman before him spoke of ran anathema to everything he’d based his existence on. “I’d not thought of it that way before,” he said, clearing his throat.
“Well, you should,” she said softly. “It is all right to prize things for what they mean to you and not what they show off to others.”
How did she see so much about him…things he’d not even known about himself? That is precisely how he’d come to view all material possessions. They were just another sign of the peerage’s misplaced priorities. With a gentle smile, Bridget returned her attention to her organization of those books, even as her words ran through him.
The lady spoke her mind and stated her beliefs with such ease. Existing amongst Polite Society, more an outsider than anything, he’d found the ton’s ability to prevaricate, exasperating. Not a single person—lord, lady, or servant—had demonstrated an ability to freely speak their mind. How very…refreshing it was.
I should go. Even as his brain urged his legs to move, he remained rooted. “Have you read those titles?”
She briefly glanced up, with some surprise. Was it the fact that he remained here, putting personal questions to her, still? Or had she dismissed his presence? That thought oddly grated. No man cared to be forgotten. Particularly not by a woman who’d some inexplicable hold on him. “I have,” she said guardedly, studying him as he started back over. “They’re dark. Bleak. And there’s enough misery that I never really cared to read them again.”
Of course, having been a bookseller’s wife, she’d no doubt been exposed to many volumes and collections. Did the lady realize she also painted an image of the life she herself had known? “On the contrary,” he said, picking up the previously dropped book.
She paused and studied his handling of it, lingering her gaze on his hands.
“As a child, I witnessed the vices that men and women of any station were capable of. Greed. Gluttony. Lust. Envy. Dante presented the world in such a way where we have control over all of it. That we determine our path.” He set his jaw. “We set our fate.”
Bridget met his stare. “One might say that is naïve of you, my lord.”
His annoyance stirred at both the station barrier she’d resurrected between them and also her ill opinion. He’d countless other matters that commanded his attention at any given day and time. This one was no exception, and yet he could not bring himself to abandon a debate with the direct woman before him. “You disagree, then? You’d make excuses for Dante’s sinners?”
“Not excuses,” she protested, shaking her head. “I, however, would not find all sinners the same.”
“Neither did Dante,” he pointed out, collecting Purgatoria. He flipped to one of the wood-carved plates of a winged serpent guarding the entrance surrounded by mournful souls. “There are different degrees of sinners and, inevitably, they all end up in hell, just varying places within it, for their crimes.”
A small, sad smile played at Bridget’s lips. “Do you know, my lord,” she began, moving around the table so she stood directly opposite him. “When I was just five, I had a governess who insisted I paint.” She waved a hand about. “She claimed all ladies needed to be proficient painters and insisted I memorize the twelve colors upon the color diagram.”
At the unexpected turn of the discourse, he cocked his head. “And, did you enjoy it?” he asked, attempting to follow that abrupt shift.
“Painting?” An inelegant snort escaped her. “I hated it. I was rot at it. My sister was quite skilled, but drawing images I’d created with my own hand never spoke to me the way the written word did.”
Her gaze grew distant and she went silent for a long moment. He used her distraction to study her. The lady had a sister. Not for the first time, he wondered about the circumstances that had found her in her current station. Had she abandoned all for the love of a bookish man?
Bridget chuckled. “One day, my governess fell asleep in the middle of my lesson.” A mischievous smile on her lips, she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I despised her as much as I did painting. So, I was quite content to let her slumber away.” A smile pulled at his lips as he imagined her, as she would have been, a girl too clever for even her own governesses. “While she dozed, I experimented with those twelve colors. I mixed every color together. Ones that she said should never be paired,” she spoke with an animated glimmer in her eyes, gesticulating wildly as she spoke. “Green and red, purple and blue, orange and blue. With those colors, I made black and white, and from that, gray. Do you know how many shades there are of that dreary color?”
He shook his head. “How many?”
“Thirty,” she said, widening her eyes. “Thirty variations of it. Can you imagine?”
“No,” he said quietly, mesmerized by her telling and enthusiasm.
Her smile dipped; a somberness erased that earlier glimmer and he mourned the loss of it. “One might see red and green and yellow and purple, but sometimes buried within are other shades…” She paused. “Like gray.” Bridget held his eyes and the significance of her words settled in. “Life, much like color, doesn’t exist in a neat, orderly way, no matter how much easier it might be to categorize it.” She turned her palms up, as if in supplication. “People are no different. You cannot neatly file them as sinners or saints. We are all simply people, flawed by our own rights…surviving in an uncertain world.”
The solemnity of her words ushered in a heavy silence. He curled his fingers around the antique text in his hands. She’d ask him to challenge every basis with which he’d made sense of his existence and that of everyone around him. She might accuse him of naiveté, however, he’d witnessed the scores of lovers his mother had taken, he’d given his heart to a woman whose avarice had triumphed over love, and, now, a man grown, met daily with men whose souls were just as black. And then there had been Erasmus, put into a place not even fit for a rabid beast. His throat worked as the same piercing agony of finding his brother that day slammed into him as fresh as when he’d stepped inside that rancid hospital. “Your words are poetic,” he said at last, filling the void. “But ultimately, the decisions we make define who we are.”
Something flashed in her eyes and he tried to make sense of the silver flecks dancing in those cerulean depths. Was it pity? Sadness? Regret?
“Yes, mayhap you’re right.” And he knew the moment she’d marked their discussion at an end and had restored him to the role of employer. Which is what I am.
Swiftly setting down the book, he bowed his head. “Is there anything you require?”
She shook her head. “No, thank you.”
He hesitated and turned to go. But stopped. Puzzling his brow, he faced her once more. “How did you know those titles mattered to me?”
A pretty blush stained her cheeks. “Mr. Winterly mentioned…” So Edward had been chatting about him with Bridget.
“And what did he mention exactly?” he encouraged. Had the lady asked questions about him? Or had Edward freely volunteered it? And Vail wasn’t certain why that should matter…and yet, it did.
She gave her head a shake as he came closer. He walked a path around her. The scent of her, a blend of hyacinth, lilac, and fresh rosewater, wafted about his senses, intoxicating him. “Do you think I’d sack my brother?” he asked, infusing a droll edge to that query. He stopped before her, so she might see his lips.
Bridget chewed at her lower lip. “I don’t know?”
“There is a question there,” he pointed out. He didn’t have a right to be offended by her truthfulness, especially given his own earlier reservations and Edward’s charges.
“No question,” she said quietly.
He’d taken many lovers to his bed. Inventive women, obvious in their ploys, who’d emphasized their physical attributes. How much more appealing and enticing Bridget’s husky contralto, in fact, was.
She must have mistaken his silence for displeasure for she spoke on a rush. “I don’t know you, beyond a handful of conversations and our brief exchanges when I bring you coffee and pastries in the evening. I can’t truly know what kind of man you are in the short time I’ve been here: whether you’re kind to servants. Or whether you’d berate a clumsy maid who dropped a book,” Bridget looked to the forgotten leather tome. “Particularly one worth more than most country cottages and some estates.”
Her words hit him. “Do you think I’d do that?” The question exploded from his lungs, harsh and shocked.
Bridget shook her head. “I don’t. But I don’t truly know you.”
The meaning of what she spoke pierced his hurt indignation. His brother’s earlier revelations about her previous employment slipped forward. She didn’t speak of him. She spoke of…another. “Do you know something of that, Bridget?” he asked quietly.
“No,” she said quickly, twining her hands before her.
Having attended every last detail of a person’s movements and actions had saved him more times than he’d deserved on the battlefields of Europe. As such, the telltale twisting of her fingers, those long digits clenched so tight she’d drained them of blood, spoke more truth than her words did. The sight of it roused a primitive fury inside. He managed two words: a name. “Lord Stanwicke?”
Surprise alighted in the lady’s eyes and she swiftly swept her thick, long auburn lashes down, concealing all emotion there. “I don’t—”
“Did he put his hands on you?” Because if he did, Vail would take him apart with his bare hands and do it quite gladly. His mother had one protector who’d left marks upon her neck and arms. As a boy, Vail had vowed to never be one of those reprobates and, more, he’d promised himself he’d knock a bastard out who did so.
“He never put his hands on me,” she spoke so softly he strained to hear, but he did.
“And yet you witnessed such treatment?” Had it been a husband?
She skimmed her fingertips along the edge of the table, and he followed that back and forth distracted movement. “I did.”
That was it: two words that confirmed that which he’d already suspected since Edward had broached the topic of Stanwicke.
Who? The urge to ask that of her hit him like a physical force.
Bridget trained her gaze on the gilded lettering of Dante’s Inferno. “I’d simply come to expect that intemperate lords quick to anger, and even quicker to exercise their fury, was just the way all noblemen were.”
It wasn’t. Not the way all noblemen were. His friend, Huntly, was proof that there were some powerful peers who treated others, regardless of station, with decency. And yet…Vail moved closer, placing himself close to her right ear. “Many of them are careless in their restraint,” he agreed. “I witnessed that as a child.”
She lifted her gaze.
“I’m the Bastard Baron, son of a courtesan.” He paused, letting the enormity of that settle between them.
Bridget stared up at him for a long moment. “And do you expect that should matter to me?” she asked, her question rich with disappointment. Not for the first time, he questioned the life she’d known before this. Her cultured tones and grasp of classic texts marked her highborn.
Only the most ardent bibliophiles and desperate lords in need of a fortune pushed their unwed daughters into his path. “It matters to everyone,” he said, veiling his eyes. It had mattered to Adrina, who’d married an old, doddering earl, and only came to Vail years later when he’d been titled and rich by his own work. It mattered to everyone, it would seem, except this woman.
Bridget claimed his hand in hers, twining their digits. His heart pounded. Odd, in all the carnal acts he’d known with clever lovers and wanton widows, never had he properly appreciated how the simplicity of joined palms could elicit such a potent eroticism. “Society has its views of what perfection is and who belongs amidst their noble ranks.” Her husky contralto washed over him. “If one is a bastard or not of noble birth, or…” She laid his hand upon that large crescent mark upon her cheek. “Otherwise, imperfect, one is treated the same.” She held his gaze. “I would never be a person to treat anyone differently.”
How could she not see her beauty? “Imperfect?” he murmured. “The ton is full of fools.” She fluttered her lashes and leaned into his touch. Soft as satin and despite the words she’d uttered to the contrary, ones that rang with conviction—she was beautiful.
It was Bridget who broke the quixotic spell between them and he mourned the shattered connection. She disentangled their hands. That movement forced his hand back to his side.
Recalled to the moment, he looked at a point over the top of her head. “Your opinion is far more forgiving than members of Society. Through my mother, however, and what she did to survive, I encountered all different levels of humanity. Some of her protectors were kind.” Men who’d voluntarily offered funds to pay for a tutor as long as Vail’s mother had been their mistress. His jaw tightened as a memory slid forward. His mother, with a cold cloth pressed against a swollen cheek.
Bridget caught his hand again. “And the others?” she gently urged.
“Most were self-serving. And then others were ruthlessly violent.”
Her gaze softened. “That is the reason for your opinion on the vices of men.”
“Not just men. Men and women alike are capable of the same degrees of treachery, deception, and evil.”
She gave his fingers a slight squeeze. “I’m so sorry,” she said gently.
All the muscles in his body jerked to tautness under the staggering realization—she sought to comfort him. What had begun as a discussion to learn more about the woman he’d trusted his collection to, had dissolved into something intimate, details of himself he’d shared with no other soul—not Huntly, or Huntly’s sister, Cecily, whom he’d called friend since he was a child. Not the brothers or sisters he’d tracked down through the years.
Feeling exposed, Vail drew back. “I should leave you to your task.” And he who’d faced soldiers with blades, guns, and bayonets drawn on him on the battlefield, for the first time in the whole of his existence did something he’d never done before—he retreated.