She realized she was crumpling the newsprint, and forced herself to let go. So much for the ironing. Her fingertips were smudged.
“It is a short distance to this table,” she said encouragingly.
His reply came very softly: “That should trouble you.”
She gripped her hands very tightly at her waist. If she bent to him now, handed over the newspapers, then he would withdraw and slam the door. And she might as well book her passage to France, for she would never get a look at the papers he kept there. Not if his improvements did not lead to him
leaving his bedroom.
“If you would . . . if you would only come fetch these papers, you might learn yourself of all the marvelous developments—”
“
Fetch
them?” He made some abortive movement and she clapped her hand over her mouth to contain her squeak. “I am not your damned dog!” he roared.
She pressed her lips until they hurt. What a
mortifying sound to have made. He had reduced her to a mouse.
But what of it?
He
squirreled papers in his den like a dog with old bones. This was all
his
fault, really—wasn’t it? If he only left his rooms like any normal man, she would have no need to harass him.
Yes,
there
was the dudgeon she required. It straightened her spine. She nudged up her spectacles and narrowed her eyes at him.
“No, you are not a dog. I have it on very good authority that you are a man, a peer of the realm, a duke no less. But a very curious species of man, I must say—looking so shaggy at present that one could be forgiven for mistaking you for a sheepdog.” She blew out a breath. “How
can
you see through all that hair?”
He bared his teeth at her, then retreated out of sight. Panicked, she wracked her brain for some goad to lure him back. But none came to mind that she dared to speak. The point was to lure him out—not to lure him into murdering her.
He filled the doorway again, a book in his hand—something very old by the crumbling cover. “Do you know,” he said pleasantly, “what distinguishes man from beast?”
A very good question. “I should think . . . a haircut.”
He made a contemptuous noise. “The ability to make fire, you tart.”
“Tart?” Aghast, she crossed her arms. “Termagant,
perhaps,
but tart, I think not!” And then suddenly it dawned on her what he was threatening. “You can’t mean—”
“Say good-bye to this book.”
“You
heathen,
” she cried. “You shaggy mongrel!”
“Mongrel I am not,” he snarled. “And so help me God”—he smirked—“or shall I say,
the Devil
”—she gasped—“but if you do not bring me those goddamned newspapers this minute—”
“Woof!”
she cried. “Woof woof, yap away!”
She clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified. Where had
that
come from?
He, too, seemed shocked. He gawped at her for a long, silent moment. Then he pivoted away.
“No—wait!” That poor book! She started around the chiffonier—checked when she heard him loose a roar—more leonine than canine, to be fair—and then came a great, thunderous crash.
He swung back into view. “Your books,” he said with a savage grin, “have seen better days.”
He had toppled the bookcase. “You boor! You—” She hauled together the newspapers and carried them in a great armful toward the sitting-room hearth. “Fuel for the fire! What use has a hermit for news anyway—”
Hands closed on her shoulders. They spun her around so violently that she lost her balance, and grabbed onto the nearest support, which turned out to be—
him.
Her jaw dropped. Yes, those were her hands gripping his arms.
His
arms. Like iron, they were.
He was out. He was outside his bedroom.
Her fingers sprang away as though from lit coals. But her retreat was stopped cold by his grip on her elbows. He crushed them down to her ribs, and held her pinned there before him as his breath came and went as hard as a bellows.
She made herself look at him. His face was a terrible mask, the force of his rage apparent in the pulsing vein in his temple. Her gaze bounced away from his, the
awful, glassy fixedness of his blue, blue eyes, and landed on the newspapers, piled on the floor.
As far as final views went, it was not so inspiring.
“You,” he said very low, and then paused—a hush like the moment before the guillotine dropped.
That sentence would go nowhere good. She made her lips move, though they felt stiff as wood. “How good,” she croaked, “to see you out of your room.”
Bull’s-eye! He recoiled from her, staggering back a pace. He looked around blindly, wildly, as though only now realizing where he stood.
Here was her chance. She would run.
And he would run, too—straight back to his bedroom.
Her joints felt rusted, congealed, so hard did they fight her as she stooped to the floor and gathered up the newspapers. “Here,” she said, and held them out, praying he did not notice how they shook in her grip. “Read them on this sofa.” The suggestion came out as a hysterical shrill. “The light is very fine here!”
Staring at her, he reached for the papers like a man underwater, moving slowly, slowly—but his hands, instead, closed on her wrists.
She flinched and froze, or tried to—the instinct of a cornered hare commanding her to go still. But the terrified pounding of her heart rocked her in her boots.
You’re in it now,
a mocking little voice nattered in her brain.
His hands were very large; they engulfed her wrists, wrapping like hot manacles around her. His thumbs pressed directly against her pulses.
He knew precisely how hard her heart was beating.
“How do you dare?” he said softly.
She looked up into his face. His eyes had lost their glassy blankness. He was—the realization jolted through her—
looking
at her, studying her, with great intensity. And his expression was far from blank.
She stared back, surprised so completely that she had no defenses against that look. She fell into it headfirst, fascination engulfing her suddenly and completely. What did she see in his face now? What, in her own face, could possibly inspire such riveted, arrested attention?
“How do you dare?” He whispered it again, as his fingers flexed around hers. And then, without warning, his thumbs stroked over the sensitive skin of her inner wrists.
Her breath fled her. She felt a flush of heat, bizarre, weakening. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes. You do.”
His thumbs stroked again. She swallowed. The sensation bothered her. It affected her far too deeply. She felt the pull of it in her belly. She had to look away from him. In a moment, she would.
“Woof?” he said.
A blush stung her cheeks. “Well. You must admit, you
do
need a haircut.”
A faint smile ghosted over his mouth. His fingers loosened; they slipped over hers as they withdrew. “Is there anyone in this house whom I could trust to wield the scissors? I have given them all cause to aim for my throat.”
Was that a joke? Miracle of miracles! “Come now,” she said hoarsely. “Be sensible. Dead men pay no salaries.”
His smile flickered to life again, then guttered out.
He frowned and turned his face away. “Send someone to straighten the bookcase,” he said gruffly.
Another miracle. “At once, Your Grace.”
She picked up her skirts and dashed out the door—straight into Vickers, who caught and steadied her.
“My God,” he whispered, his eyes huge. “My God, Mrs. Johnson.”
She pulled free of him. She had no time for nonsense. “Didn’t you hear him? You
were
eavesdropping, weren’t you? I must fetch the maids. We’re to clean his rooms.”
Vickers dashed after her as she flew down the stairs. “I didn’t hear him say that. Only that somebody was to straighten the bookcase—”
She cast an impatient glance over her shoulder. “Clearly,” she said, “you don’t know how to
listen
.”
* * *
She returned an hour later—far longer than she would have liked, but the maids had proved ridiculously recalcitrant to accompanying her; it had taken several threats to persuade them. Threats! And
her!
She had never fancied herself a bully, but Marwick was proving an excellent tutor.
She left the girls waiting in the hallway, looking pale and anguished like martyrs on the eve of execution, while she entered to make a quick survey of the battlefield.
The reigning lunatic sat on the sofa, immersed in the pages of the
Morning Herald.
She breathed a sigh of relief. He must have heard her, for he lifted his brows, but did not look up. “I’ve brought the maids—”
“No,” he said, and turned the page.
She decided she had not heard him. “And the footmen will right the bookcase,” she continued. “How good to see you’re still out here. Well done. Of course, you must forgive me for congratulating you on such a simple trick—remaining in place; it’s not as though you were a toddler, and liable to crawl off. But you must know how they talk—downstairs, I mean.”
This taunt was a calculated risk. Had he any pride left? If so, it would be useful.
He blinked. And then looked up, his face darkening.
“Downstairs?”
Yes, she knew enough of him now to guess he would not like being the subject of gossip. “Below stairs.” She gave him a sympathetic smile. “Your staff, I mean.”
He made some curious noise. And then he stood, knocking the sofa back a foot. “You’re saying my staff is
doubting
my ability to inhabit my own bloody sitting room?”
“Oh, well”—she shrugged and gave a trailing little laugh, which sounded perhaps a
touch
more nervous than she intended—“idle hands
are
the devil’s playground. And when you don’t let anybody in to clean, how else are they to occupy themselves?”
He thrust his hand through his blond hair and turned full circle, as though looking for something. “Where is Vickers?” he snapped. “God damn it, how are you always getting in here?”
She stifled her own snort. But how amusing, to imagine
Vickers
trying to stop her. “Your valet is in the kitchen, loitering with the cook’s assistant. When not there, you will typically find him in the hallways, flirting with the maids. I warn you that his suit on all fronts
is too far advanced for comfort. I am predicting a surprise, or several, in nine months’ time.”
His mouth twitched. It must have been a passing spasm, not a smile, for it faded instantly. He turned on her a narrow, assessing look. “How indelicate of you, Mrs. Johnson.”
Was she a
missus
now? How gratifying. “I am prone to indelicacy,” she admitted. “It is a flaw.”
“One of several,” he bit out.
“Yes, but who’s counting?”
With a snort, he sat back down. He’d unbelted his robe, and it parted now to show that his shirttails were untucked. How much weight had he lost? Those trousers barely stayed up.
What was wrong with her? Surely she had not just entertained a flicker of curiosity about what she would see if they
fell
?
His lunacy must be catching. Feeling itchy and out of sorts, she said, “May I ring for tea for you? The girls will happily clean around you, provided you promise not to menace them.”
“No.” But he said it very quietly.
“No tea, quite right, far too early for that. Stay right where you are. This won’t take above an hour.”
And then, before he could countermand her, she dashed out and grabbed Polly’s wrist. “Come on, then.”
Polly in turn grabbed Muriel’s elbow. “I won’t go!”
“Oh, Lordy,” Muriel squealed, her feet sliding as Olivia dragged Polly—and, by extension, her as well—toward the door. “Doris, run for your life!”
Doris turned tail and broke for the stairs.
“Not another foot,” Olivia shouted. “Back here at
once
.”
Doris’s shoulders slumped. Haltingly she turned back.
“I won’t go,” Polly shrieked. “I won’t—” She fell silent in mid-squeal, her face graying.
Olivia glanced over her shoulder, and discovered the duke in the doorway, staring in plain disbelief at this scene.
“I told you, no need to get up,” she said brightly. She dropped Polly’s wrist. “It’s perfectly all right,” she said. And then, angling her body so Marwick could not see, she gave Polly a sharp shove on the shoulder.
* * *
The maids went about their business, rustling and timid as mice. He ignored them. They were irrelevant. His mad housekeeper, hair as red as a bullfinch’s breast, irrelevant. All he cared for was this editorial he had uncovered, at the back of the
Morning Herald.
It had been written by a man he’d once counted a friend—a man who probably had no notion of how offensive and ludicrous this headline was: LORD SALISBURY’S JUDICIOUS CHOICE.
Beneath it, in slightly smaller print, lay the thrust of the piece: BARON BERTRAM A BOON FOR ENGLAND.
He made his jaw unlock. He took a deep, deep breath.
Archibald, Baron Bertram: a distinguished man of fifty-odd years, unctuously pleasant to his political opponents, fastidiously proper in his manners. A regular attendee of services at St. George’s Hanover Square, Wednesday and Sunday both. The best, most irreproachable choice to lead the Liberals now, or so fools
and naïfs believed: a godly and principled man, devoted to family and empire.
Margaret had entertained several men. But all of them had been his political enemies, save Bertram. Bertram had been his ally in the House of Lords. His coconspirator, his main support.
Other words popped out from the article:
Meritorious. Dedicated. Humble . . .
The illustrator had rendered a fine likeness of the smug tilt to Bertram’s nose.
Alastair grew conscious of the bed in the next room. It was new, a replacement for the bed where he’d lain so many nights beside Margaret, never imagining how she made a fool of him.
Margaret would not have dared bed Bertram in this house. But for his own satisfaction, Alastair had stripped the duchess’s apartment, put the furniture to auction, and disassembled that grand, canopied bed where she had slept. He had taken it apart with his bare hands and donated it to a workhouse for kindling last spring.