Etiquette With The Devil (10 page)

“Can’t keep up, Dawson?” He stopped, tilting his head to the side as he smiled. Not an honest smile, but one that felt expected, as if he were playing a role.

Clara stopped too, the darkness of the house wrapping around him during his ascent, half-shadowed, half in light. Judging by his unshaven jaw and bloodshot eyes, she suspected he’d spent another sleepless night at Burton Hall. She often heard him roaming about the house during the late hours, especially the nursery. He checked on the children often and once, from behind her door, she heard him roughly sing to a fussy Grace.

She didn’t respond. There was nothing to say. She shrugged and took a few more steps, expecting him to continue. Mr. Ravensdale stayed still, as if waiting for her.

“I expect your bed was preferable to the floor?” His voice was gravely. The span of three steps that separated them seemed far less, as if he had just closed her up in tiny box with her in one corner and him in the other.

Clara gaped at his boldness, flinching as she caught herself staring at his shoulders, wondering what it had felt like resting against him. “I was doing my job,” she answered firmly. She tugged at the too-short sleeves of her sludge-colored dress and walked around him.

“And I thought I had been doing mine,” he said behind her.

*

Clara climbing the stairway before him made one thing abundantly clear: He should never have touched her, should never have allowed himself the pleasure of having her body pressed against his, however innocently.

Even behind the opium last evening, she had stirred something within him that wouldn’t quiet now. Hours later and his body still burned, his fingers itching to touch her and hold her, and his mouth eager to discover the pleasure that surely rested upon those beautiful lips.

She had condemned him, and she hadn’t even been awake.

He swallowed another bitter mouthful of coffee and followed after her, silent. Even in a dress that looked as if she had been dragged through a pig pen, the woman was alluring.

She hummed, waiting at the top of the stairs as he took a hard left and pulled open a dusty navy curtain, then fumbled through the keys in his hand to find a match for the ancient door lock.

“After you,” he said, waving her through into the old abandoned wing of the house. And because he needed her to hate him, he added, “
Dawson
,” just for spite.

She hedged by the doorway, testing her worn boot over the soft wood of the rotten floors. “Maybe you should go first, unless you’re planning on getting rid of me.”

“Is that a joke?” He laughed, dropping the curtain behind them.

“Of course not. I’m quite serious.”

He wasn’t sure himself if the floor would hold them, but he needed a crate of papers he remembered his father spoke often of. They detailed the estate, bank information, the crop history of the land and the tenants. That information was all oddly missing from the ledgers, which were filled with only household expenses and debts down in his office. After combing through those, his father not only abandoned Burton Hall, but left Bly’s mother behind, a peasant. He wouldn’t see that happen to his nieces and nephew.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To the old housekeeper’s room. There is a crate of papers there that we may need.”

“You need me to escort you to find a box of papers?”

“Nothing is ever that simple.”

He swatted away the cobwebs, taking in the slow decay of the house with each step. The once-polished herringbone floors not only suffered water damage, but so did the caving ceilings and rippled plastered walls. Must and dirt filled the air, stagnant and full of a slow death that left Bly unsettled. This was the family’s legacy, and it had been abandoned to rot.

He peeked over his shoulder at Clara following behind, her hands clenched at her sides, her head held high. He had to give her more credit. She might be a small thing, but she sure tried her hardest to bluff to the world that she was brave. If only he could break through that tough exterior and discover the true reason she was here at Burton Hall, the truth behind that nasty cut on her scalp, and if he was right, the injury on her side that she had been favoring since arriving.

They stopped at an old oak door with a fragile-look porcelain door knob. He tried to open it, but the handle in his hand wobbled precariously as if it were to break off, and the hinges wouldn’t give. He looked down to her questioning glace, her hands folded primly in front of her, then he shoved his shoulder into the door. The door gave way enough for them to squeeze through, despite the large crash that echoed on the other side.

Ebony-stained furniture, some elaborately carved, was stacked high to the ceiling. A gilded sofa sat rotting beneath a filthy window, shredded by mice judging by the nests within the frame. With each step, the pair stirred up years of dust, and the air grew thick and gray.

“This house a damn mine field,” Bly muttered to himself. The sharp slap against a covered bureau behind did not seem like much of a coincidence. Clara Dawson, governess and prude.

Bly wound through the narrow paths of stacks, tossing things out of his way. He had spent enough of his life searching for relics, but the ones that clogged this room weren’t priceless, they were ghosts. Ghosts of his grandmother’s drowning, of his father’s twisted sense of responsibility, of his mother’s own suicide. He shoved a sideboard out of the way, tipping it over. “This room is a trash heap.”

Tucked away in a corner, and wedged under an unused baby cot from his childhood nursery, stood a wooden crate, covered with a thick layer of dust.

“Here.” He kicked the side of the crate.

Clara coughed as she brushed against another piece of covered furniture, dust blooming out around her.

“You can clean this room too if you find it so appalling.”

“The children need a proper home. Washing the floors and sorting out a school room doesn’t hurt you at all, but it will certainly aide with their adjusting to England.”

Another set down, another reminder of how impossible this woman was. Bly shrugged, then dragged out the crate so they could both sort through it. He tried to pry it open, but it wouldn’t slide. He kicked it next, grinning when it budged a sliver. When he attempted a second time, he wasn’t so successful.

“Why couldn’t Mr. Barnes help you with this task? You don’t seem to need me at all.”

That couldn’t be further from the truth. He wanted to kiss that furrowed brow of hers, prop her up on the crate and teach her all sorts of improper things that involved fingers and flesh and far less clothing.

Need
was relative, and the distance between their understandings was as wide and deep as the Himalayan range.

Clara shook her hand, then flapped her arms. “Well, are you going to open it or stare at me, Mr. Ravensdale?”

He tried again with both his arms, but it remained shut.

“Go on,” she prodded, not hiding her satisfied smile.

He tried once more for the sake of his manhood, but found to his disappointment that the damn lid still wouldn’t budge.

“I wish to ask you about something.” She shifted on her feet, the tips of her worn boots peeking out from beneath the stiff cotton of her dress. “That is, I plan on opening the schoolroom tomorrow…”

“You push on that end and I will pull at mine.”

“Very well,” she answered primly. Clara bent forward, her lovely hands resting over the rough wood of the crate. “Both Lady Minnie and the earl need a schedule.”

He yanked at the cover so hard that the crate budged forward. Clara tripped a step backward.

“Christ,” he shouted, kicking the crate again. “Stop addressing them so formerly. I swear to you they are still children who prefer James and Minnie instead of their damn titles.” This wasn’t worth the effort, surely. This whole scatterbrained plan of his brother’s to see his children raised and educated in England couldn’t be worth the trouble. Yes, many children of the Raj were sent back, but hadn’t some stayed and made it to adulthood successfully?

“They need a schedule,” she repeated, her chin out. “They need to know that this is not some grand adventure, but that it is their responsibility to do their family proud. They have obligations…”

“Just give it a good push,” he grunted, yanking at his end again, his knuckles white from the effort. She must think him an idiot. Better yet, why did he find himself caring?

Clara straightened, slapping her hands over her thighs, blowing away a piece of hair that had fallen over her eyes. “Maybe you should wait for Mr. Barnes. Or try a hammer, maybe?”

“Come on, don’t hide behind the lie that you’re the weaker sex. You’re capable and strong enough.
Push
.”

“I can do my part, Mr. Ravensdale,” she continued. “But at some turn, you must do yours as their uncle and offer them some guidance.” She widened her stance, then dove down to shove at the crate’s lid, taking him by surprise.

Bly bent and pulled, his boot braced against the crate to keep it sliding. “Stop calling me that.”

“I will not. You are my employer and with that comes expectations of decorum.” Her breath skipped, her cheeks growing pink as she continued to push.

“I employed you as a governess, but now you are rearranging furniture and cleaning like a maid.”

She glared up at him from across the crate. “And why is it a fault that I wish to help, especially when it is needed?”

“Push,” he leveled, his tone cold. The woman was exasperating. And as for icy disposition, apparently it was catchy, because he felt much the same himself in that instant. “And it’s not needed. I can handle the affairs at Burton Hall.”

“You can’t open this crate, Mr. Ravensdale, never mind dress a toddler.”

This is why he was positive that not only exhaustion had set in while in Ceylon, but that his brain must be addled as well, because he could not fathom how this woman could be so exasperating and attractive at the same time. One moment he wanted to kiss her quite speechless, the next he wanted to send her packing, back to wherever it was she was running from.

“True, Dawson, but you can’t lie for shite, and you’re as stubborn as a mule.”

She gasped, her ivory skin coloring red. Instead of pushing, Clara began to pull. “You have no right to address me like that.” She wiggled her hips, sticking her behind in the air. “And I have never lied—” She flew back as the crate slid open, the lid clutched tightly in her hand until it knocked against her head, and she landed with a thud.

Bly wasn’t able to catch himself in time and tripped over the crate, the lid suddenly missing from his grip to steady him. He landed beside Clara, the breath knocked out of him on impact against the old wood floor.

The room groaned around them both, its bones arthritic from years of disuse.

He stood on his knees and grabbed the lid from her hands. Clara winced, shaking her head over the floor as cobwebs and dust floated down around the pair. Rain gathered against the window sashes, softly, then more loudly until the sky opened up and water began leaking from the cracked ceiling above.

Drip, drip, drip.

Her breathing was even, her eyes still wide and staring up above. He swore no matter the light, no matter the dress, Clara was the most bewitching woman he’d ever set eyes on. Clara pushed up to her elbows, wiping away a cobweb fastened to her pale golden hair.

A deep, throaty laugh escaped him as he watched, nerves hitting his stomach as if he had found himself in a boxing ring, not alone in a room with a woman.

“I fail to see the humor.”

Bly rose to his feet and stretched out his hand for hers, laughing until he caught a faint glimmer of amusement in her eyes. That would do. That small spark of hope that she could get more out of life than following her damn rules. Her hand slide into his, cold and shaking, and he pulled her upright.

They stood silently as the rain echoed around in that decaying room, secrets of Bly’s life feet away, the secrets of this unknown woman much closer. He held her hand, his thumb swiping over a scar across her cold palm, before letting go. Clara stepped away with a small exhale, casting her eyes about the room as if she couldn’t bear to look at him a moment longer.

He grabbed a pile of aged papers and sank to the floor, disregarding her lofty nose. One day he would kiss that nose, then those lips, then that creamy neck of hers….

No, he would not, he corrected himself. He was getting on a boat next week if he had any say. He was going to leave the ghosts of Burton Hall behind him in England once more. He had no business walking around the halls of this cursed place. He did not deserve what he had begun to build here.

“Are you hurt?” he found himself asking as he quickly shuffled through the stack of documents, scanning the faded ink.

Clara paused by the window, clutching onto the carved grandfather clock, nearly double her height. “No, but thank you.”

He had lost her again. The small, faint voice of hers had returned, as did the frightened stiffness that set into her slim shoulders. Her grey eyes lost their green spark as the rain struck against the brittle glass, and softly, so softly he barely heard, she exhaled.