She sniffed with disdain, but he suspected a glimmer of fascination in the depths of her chocolate eyes. That was impossible. Seraphina was a lady of quality. In all reality, he should not feel such a thrill of satisfaction at ludicrous fancies. When he was finally able to declare himself to her, he’d have already sold the Fair Winds. Sneaking her in for a secretive visit would be both nearly impossible and foolhardily undo much of his work in preserving her reputation.
He sketched a bow. “I shall likely see you in the morning.”
“Please do not stay out too long,” she said. “We’ve quite a lot to accomplish.”
Chapter Eight
Sera watched Fletcher disappear up the curving staircase. For a roughhewn, bulky man, he certainly moved with an economy of flourish that ought to serve him well in society. But even in the fact of his departure did he violate the rules of propriety. He ought to have asked after her welfare and seen her settled in some quiet activity before he disappeared to attend business.
In a way, she was relieved he’d not known his lapse. It left her free to explore her new surroundings.
She wandered unchallenged through the bottom floor of the mansion. Once again she encountered hardly any servants. A downstairs maid or two should have been seeing to the cleaning. Dust lay over mantles and tables in a faint haze. Driving back the soot of London was an occupation that required constant application of diligent effort.
The grand dining room was unprepared for the evening meal. The huge table, which looked as if it could seat twenty easily, forlornly went without either cloth or platters. The crystal chandelier had been converted to gaslight, but it was dim. The staff was likely used to their employer’s evening departures.
At school, she’d usually been the last served, but now she was a guest in a supposedly fine house. Someone should have seen to her wishes. Though she’d prefer a tray brought to her room over eating alone among the grandeur, she should have been asked.
She left the dining room and peeped into rooms off the wide hallway. More parlors. A morning room that seemed little used. In the study she found a lived-in quality most of the other rooms lacked, with papers strewn in stacks over a large desk and the remains of a breakfast tray that carried a pot of coffee and a plate of crumbs. Three dirty glasses piled up next to decanters of liquor. Unacceptable. Any dishes should be cleared away immediately, not left to molder.
At the far end of the hallway, Sera found a glass-walled conservatory. The rattan furniture came the closest to comfortable as any she’d seen in the entirety of the house. She trailed a hand over the back of the divan as she drifted through the room. Perhaps she’d have her dinner sent in here and enjoy the leafy fall of ferns that had been crammed into the room—the better to screen the lack of greenery outside. The conservatory edged into a small garden, but beyond it high brick walls barely kept out the creep of the undesirable neighborhood. Tiny slits served as windows in the building next door, yet some intrepid woman had hung her laundry out to air, including a very obviously displayed set of drawers.
Sera couldn’t begin to imagine the ignominy of hanging one’s undergarments out for everyone in the neighborhood to see.
Yet Fletcher had decided to build his expensive, luxurious mansion in the middle of all of this. What a strange man.
He likely wished to stake out his territory more clearly. Such a move is exactly what his father had done, establishing himself as the king of a small sliver of the city.
A trilling, chirping noise made her jump from her reverie. She spun, looking for the source, and saw nothing but ferns and tiny potted orange trees. To the south side of the room was a small bank of orchids. Perhaps the chirps had come through the glass windows.
No, there it was again and too near to be obscured by the walls. Not to mention, it didn’t sound like the cooing of hardy pigeons, the most prevalent birds who survived this area of London.
She pushed aside a bank of slender ferns and found them. Two pale-breasted birds with red-feathered crowns snuggled together in a cage that was an approximation of an Indian temple. On first glance, the concrete-styled cage seemed to be decorated with bird pairings. Further inspection revealed they were actually birdlike people, all contorted in the throes of carnal passion. A petite twist of wings made up a smaller bird woman who knelt at the feet of a bulkier man, her mouth on his member.
Chuffing a noise of disgust, Sera ignored the tingle deep in her belly and left the room.
In fact, as she looked closer, every decoration revealed something sensual. The large painting over the dining room mantelpiece was another work of angels who, at first blush, appeared to be lounging in the heavenly gardens while singing the Lord’s praises. In reality they pressed entirely too close to each other. Drapes of their linens displayed scandalous lengths of limbs.
Sera sped more and more hurriedly over the thick hallway runner as she fled. Victoria and Lottie hadn’t understood her determination to move into this den of iniquity. For the moment, she didn’t understand either. Her heart was pumping too quickly for her to think. Her skin seemed alive, a stranger infiltrating her own body.
Once Sera’s eyes were opened, she saw depravity everywhere. On a table in the hallway clustered a collection of miniature bronzes. Every single one was a half-nude woman with a similarly clad man curled around her. One woman sat in her partner’s lap, tiny bronze head thrown back in obvious delight.
Sera’s breasts swelled. The tips abraded against the inside of her corset that had previously felt inoffensively smooth. Now she could feel the warp and weft of every single thread. She clutched the marble balustrade as she climbed the stairs, cooling her overheated palms with chilled stone.
Neither had Victoria and Lottie understood why Sera insisted on this foolish scheme to earn the endowment. They never needed to think of it beyond the academic consideration of the women they assisted with their school. That was play for them, a way to avoid the realities of their home lives. Sera hadn’t the words to explain how she refused to be her mother—and that this silly plan was the best way to
not
be indebted to a male. Though she’d sometimes like to believe Fletcher was the Digger she remembered, she couldn’t fool herself for very long. Not when she watched the thick play of his muscles under his jacket as he walked away.
She couldn’t be her mother. She wouldn’t. The past years had been any normal woman’s fill of charity. She could stand it no longer.
Would
stand it no longer.
Sera teetered on the precipice. Owe a man too much and who knew what type of trade he’d demand. Convincing Fletcher she’d made a difference in his business endeavors, even by smoothing out his social and home life, would ensure he didn’t think he owned her. Not as his father had owned her mother. Not like the other men had owned Mama. Not like the other girls at Waywroth believed they owned Sera.
She tossed open the door to her temporary room, determined to hide in its quietness. Anything inappropriate that lingered in the corners would soon find itself tossed out in the hall.
But she found worse than a licentious statue.
Her belongings had been strewn about the room in total disarray. Every gown was piled across the bed. Dozens of books tumbled open, their spines cracked and pages fanned out. A snarl of hair ribbons had been plopped under the window seat.
With one hand gripping the wooden doorframe, Sera blinked. And then blinked some more, unable to believe what she saw.
At first she wondered if some poorly trained maid had begun unpacking for her, only to be called away. She saw more malice than that. The lace collar of her best day dress had been rent at the seams.
Pain lanced through her teeth from grinding together. Her nails curled into the wood as her anger flamed into a hot, mean kernel.
Spinning away, she stormed down the corridor, tossing open doors on each side. In the third bedroom she caught a red-haired maid on her knees before a footman. The man’s back was to the door, but the uniform was unmistakable. His head had dropped down to his chest, his hands sunk into her curls. When the door banged the wall, the girl leaned aside to peer around the footman’s hips. Her mouth was wide and slick with fluids, her eyes almost as big.
Sera didn’t let the bawdy scene disturb her righteous fury. She pointed. “You two. Tell everyone to assemble in the foyer. Immediately.”
The girl nodded.
Sera slammed her way down the hallway. She was a woman on a mission and nothing, not even tartish maids and whore-mongering footmen, was going to stop her.
She found her goal at the very last door on the far end of the house. The room had pale blue wallpaper and a sitting room that was everything manly. Hard, looming furniture and dark colors.
Across the room, Fletcher stood stripped to his waist, bending over a basin.
His shoulders were every bit as broad as they’d appeared under his jacket. Maybe even more so, without the dark colors to minimize his impact. Golden skin was tinged ever so pinkish from scrubbing with the cloth in his hand. His waist was trim before it nudged out into a gentle swell at his hips. He gripped the basin’s mahogany table, and small muscles along his spine twitched and stretched with the movement. The white pull of a scar rounded over his thick—oh so thick and wide—shoulder.
Sera snapped shut her mouth, pulse racing. Her wrists throbbed with it, and she felt lightheaded, though she’d never been one for artful faints. She’d let her anger verge into hysteria, surely. There could be no other reason.
“I demand your assistance.”
He didn’t flinch or jump or demonstrate any other indication of surprise. His motions were as slow as honey when he straightened and reached for a length of Turkish toweling hung on a bar at the side of the table. He rubbed it first over the back of his neck, where tiny droplets of water absorbed the golden gaslight, then dragged his hand down, down over his torso while he turned.
“You…
demand
?”
His hands kept up the idle movements over his torso, drying himself. Two heavy curves of muscle banded the top of his chest. His belly was bisected into individual ridges that were almost boxlike, except that they moved and shifted with every breath.
It was indecent to be so muscled. Surely.
Not that Sera had much experience with the male form beyond the artistic interpretations of the Greeks and Romans. Those had been more lithe and lovely than anything else. Not hard. Not everything powerful, like he could hurt her without thinking twice.
She gulped.
She was being scandalous as well. Bad enough she was in his private chambers. She shouldn’t be gawking, no matter how imperious her intentions. She forced herself to look away, at a corner in the ceiling—where a long-legged spider had spun her web. Disgraceful.
This whole household was disgraceful.
“Cat got your tongue?” he purred. Even his voice was contemptible, the way it promised things that shouldn’t be hinted, even in the dark of night between husband and wife. Evil appetites. Hot lust. “Or are you reconsidering your choice of words, considering you have established yourself in
my
home?”
“I reconsider nothing,” she snapped.
“Nothing?” Clothing rustled, soft linen on warm skin. Hopefully he was getting dressed. “Not ever?”
“I always mean what I say.” She risked a glance out of the corner of her eye, solely to see if he was decently attired. He’d covered his torso in a snowy white evening shirt. Turning, she folded her trembling fingers in front of her stomach. Concern over her room had faded, as if a laudanum haze had taken over her brain.
He snapped his braces over his shoulders and buttoned them inside his waistband. For the bluntness of his body, his fingers appeared deceptively elegant as they dipped into forbidden territory. He shrugged into a red-and-gold-embroidered waistcoat. Fat, opulent roses wound down the sides, like some sort of dime-story American gambler. “And you demand my time.”
She swallowed against the clutch of her throat. The air in the room had gone thin. “I wouldn’t but for the situation I’ve found myself in.”
His coat slipped over his shoulders like a loving caress. “Which situation would that be? Living in what was so recently a bachelor’s abode, with a hastily acquired old woman to chaperone? Not to mention I’ve yet to reconcile myself to your school. You’ve made very interesting choices with the life I’ve provided.”
She pressed her lips flat. His supposed benevolence lost much glamour when often mentioned. At least her body was comfortably under control now that he was dressed. She understood why propriety demanded such layers and yards of fabric—for the world’s defense. If men such as Fletcher roamed unclothed, women would throw themselves at him as he walked down the street.
“I do not have the time for placating you now. I need your assistance.” A regrettable thread of temper wound through her voice.
“I am at your service,” he said, and for an instant the hot light in his eyes fooled her into believing it was true. He was a glib man, filled with facile charm that meant less than fairy dust.
“I must impose upon you to introduce me to your staff.”
“Now?” He fastened a pair of ivory and jade cufflinks at his wrists. “If you don’t mind, I’ll leave it ’til morning. I’m expected.”