The arm across his throat tightened until Sebastian gagged.
“Mary Fairchild is not for you. Leave her alone.”
Chapter 14
A housekeeper moves silently about her duties.
Mary straightened her dark gown, adjusted the mobcap covering her springy curls, then pushed open the kitchen door. Most of the Fairchild servants sat huddled around the fire or catching a hasty bite at the long-scrubbed table. Nostalgia struck her when she heard the low buzz of conversation; just so had her own dear attendants sounded in Scotland. The scents of toast and fried rashers wafted toward her as she made her way to the empty chair. As she hoped, no one paid the slightest attention to her.
No one except Mrs. Baggott.
Mary expected no less. The meals were exquisite, the party last night had run smoothly, the manor shone from top to bottom. Mrs. Baggott was a premier housekeeper, and a premier housekeeper knew every person who walked through her domain. She stood close to the stove where pots of oatmeal bubbled and watched Mary now with narrowed eyes. Obviously she couldn’t quite place her, but Mary knew that state of blessed anonymity wouldn’t last long, so she smiled.
Mrs. Baggott lurched as recognition struck, then she bustled forward. “Miss Fairchild! What’s wrong that you’re awake so early?”
“Nothing is wrong.” Mary laid a hand on Mrs. Baggott’s arm. “I’m hungry, so I came to breakfast.”
Never had Mary seen appalled suspicion so hastily disguised. Mrs. Baggott didn’t believe her, but she wouldn’t insult her by saying so. Instead she smiled, the wrinkles on her craggy face splitting into thin snips of courtesy, and said, “Please, take a seat in the dining room, Miss Fairchild, and I’ll attend to your needs personally.”
“No, no.” Mary walked to the table and pulled up a chair. “I don’t want to put you out. I’ll just sit here.”
The servants backed away as if she were a vampire in search of blood, but Mary didn’t care. She’d escaped into her chamber last night staggering from the shock of seeing that valet in the corridor. She’d tried to convince herself he wasn’t really who she thought he was, and when that failed, she’d curled herself around the pillow that carried Sebastian’s scent and prayed.
But the habit of rising with the dawn stood her in good stead. She woke before the first rays of the sun and knew what she had to do. She had to use the skills she’d learned as a housekeeper to find that diary and steal it back. It was the only way to escape this purgatory before it became her prison.
Mary smiled around at her unwilling audience briefly, until Mrs. Baggott dismissed the servants with a snap of her fingers. “The dining room is so much more comfortable, Miss Fairchild, but if you insist, you can, of course, eat here.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Baggott. I always ate breakfast in the kitchen of Lady Valéry’s home in Scotland.”
The servants glanced among each other, clearly wondering if she’d run mad.
Determinedly cheerful, Mary continued, “It’s a bit of a backwater there, you understand, but this is a pleasant habit I would be loath to abandon.”
Silent, Mrs. Baggott placed a heaping plate of golden eggs, deviled kidneys, and crumpets with marmalade in front of her. Mary took a bite of the kippers. “The housekeeper in Scotland always kept me company, too.”
“Well.” Mrs. Baggott carried two teacups to the table and sat down, her chair creaking. “I’m glad we can make you feel at home.”
Mary left the kitchen that morning alight with a sense of triumph. Mrs. Baggott had sat with her for the whole breakfast, and they’d much in common. Not that Mary told her she had been a housekeeper. Oh, no. On that subject, she took Ian’s advice and kept silent. But Mrs. Baggott assumed that Mary had been the mistress of a large household, and Mary let her assume what she wished.
After asking for directions from a servant only once, she slipped back into her bedchamber. Looking worried and tapping her foot, Jill swung around as Mary shut the door behind herself.
“Miss Fairchild! What are you doing out at such an hour?” Jill ran her astonished gaze over Mary’s outfit. “And dressed in such a garb!”
“I just went for a walk,” Mary said soothingly.
“Without me? Unchaperoned?” Jill bustled toward Mary. “Miss Fairchild, you know better. What would the gentry say?”
“Nothing, if you don’t tell them.” Mary looked at the handful of papers Jill held. “What are those?”
“Love letters, I suppose, from your suitors. The servants have been slipping them under the door. That’s what woke me.” Jill handed over the stiff, sealed sheets. “ ’Tis the only reason I knew you were gone.”
“Yes, I had hoped you’d sleep. You were up late waiting for me last night.” Mary seated herself in a comfortable chair and looked through the notes. All the sealing wax had impressions on them. All except one. She put it aside for last.
“Sleep through your absence? Why would I want to? Miss Fairchild, don’t you realize your position here? You’re the heiress. One of these men could come along, bop you on the head, and carry you off ere anyone knew it.”
Aggass, Mary thought, noting the design pressed in the wax on the first note. “I think we can acquit all of these gentlemen of being early risers,” she said to Jill.
“For a fortune, any one of them would get up early of a morning. They’d kidnap you, and where would I be, I ask you? Where would I be?”
“With a new mistress?” Mary guessed.
“Not likely.” Jill snorted. “After Lady Valéry had taken my guts for garters, your Viscount Whitfield would take his turn. There wouldn’t be enough of me left to serve another.”
Dear Miss Fairchild,
I toss and turn, unable to sleep for want of a smile from your sweet lips…
Indigestion, Mary diagnosed, and opened the one from Mr. Mouatt. “Lady Valéry would be unpleasant, but I doubt that she’d kill you.”
“You didn’t mention Viscount Whitfield,” Jill said shrewdly. “And, mistress, don’t you see? All any of the men need to do is catch you and drag you away to have his way with you, and you’ll have to marry him.”
The generous spirit who lives in you, Miss Fairchild, must surely see that I languish for your love…
“Dear, that’s just not likely.” These notes were all nonsense, and Mary began to suspect they had been written, not by the suitors themselves, but by their secretaries. “Who would even realize I was away from my bedchamber?”
“Promise me you won’t go again.”
“I can’t make that promise.”
“Then I’ll go with you.”
“No! Jill, I was a housekeeper, and have walked the corridors alone all those many years. More than once some gentleman saw an opportunity for fun, and believe me, I know how to scream loudly and use whatever is available in way of a weapon.” She opened the last note, the one without a seal in the wax. Looking up, she smiled at Jill, then saw the girl was wringing her hands in distress, and felt contrition. Her maid was really worried. “Truly, Jill, all will be well. I feel it.”
Raising the paper, she read the words before her, and realized that never had she been so wrong.
It held only one word.
Murderess.
There she went again.
Dressed in coarse, dark clothing, Mary had crept downstairs early every morning for the past three days. She had glanced behind her occasionally, as if she were guilty, or as if she feared something, but always she disappeared into the kitchen. Ian would have never noticed, except that he’d been getting nowhere in his seduction of her.
He hated that. A sense of failure nagged at him, one made more troublesome by the fact he liked the woman. He would have thought he was immune to any Fairchild lady, regardless of her looks or charm.
Mary was different. She admired him. She didn’t seem to see the darkness that plagued his soul, and paid no attention to the sniggering caused by his illegitimacy. She was just what she had accused him of being—nice—and
he almost hated himself for plotting her downfall.
That guilt had caused him to drink so much the first night of the house party that he’d fallen asleep on one of the sofas in the great hall. He didn’t know why he’d woken when she tiptoed past; he liked to imagine it was the bond between their souls.
He used to think that, until he saw her with that wretch Whitfield.
She loved Whitfield. Ian didn’t think she knew it, but her emotions, unrealized and unacknowledged, made Ian’s scheme to wed her all the more nefarious. Still, he had to follow through.
So he followed Mary every morning and watched her disappear into the kitchen, and he plotted. Should he kidnap her? Should he entice her? Should he “inadvertently” ruin her reputation?
Ah, but Whitfield had already done that, and that irked him. Ian was no different from any other man. He would like to have a woman who adored him, but Mary adored Whitfield. He would like to have a woman untouched by a man, but Mary had been touched, and more, by Whitfield. He would like to have a woman with money…ah, money.
Moving away from the kitchen door, Ian waited for that delightful little serving maid to come out. Sally had been easily seduced into doing his bidding, and this morning she would give her first report on Mary’s conversation with the housekeeper.
Whitfield might have won her favor, but he wouldn’t get the money. Not if Ian had anything to say about it.
Daisy’s bedchamber.
Sebastian put his hand on the knob and stared down at it grimly. Another room. Another search. And, he feared, another failure to find Lady Valéry’s diary.
Hell, he already knew where it was. It had to be in that safe in Bubb’s study. So he’d tried opening the safe again. After all, Mary had thought she might be able to do it, and surely he was as accomplished as any woman. Instead, the lock had held fast, and here he was, getting ready to search another bedchamber in the west wing.
Turning the knob, he strolled in as if he owned the place. His experience—and he’d had a lot of it lately—proved that walking boldly was more effective than sneaking. Certainly a lordly attitude made explaining himself to the chambermaids less imperative.
Fortunately for him, the sun’s fading rays showed him that this room seemed uninhabited. He called, “Excuse me? Are you here?” in a falsely impatient tone, but nothing stirred. The bed’s pink ruffled curtains were drawn and petticoats were scattered about the floor. It appeared Daisy’s maid had sneaked off rather than pick up.
Good luck for a change, and about time.
He normally investigated the bookcase first, but there wasn’t one. Moving to the bedside table, he fumbled with the half-opened drawer instead. Brushes laden with long blond hair lay scattered, and he shoved them aside with distaste as he rummaged for the diary.
Nothing.
Rubbing his aching jaw, he glanced toward the dresser. Fringed shawls and lace handkerchiefs spilled out of it in such disarray, the drawers seemed to have burped.
God, he was sick of this endless pawing through others’ belongings. Not that some of his finds hadn’t been interesting. Uncle Burgess kept a large store of laudanum hidden in the back of his closet. Bubb’s twins stole freely from the guests and sequestered their ill-gotten gains in an attic room. The eldest daughter smoked opium. Wilda kept a young man’s lock of hair pressed between the pages of her journal. Ian…He’d discovered nothing about Ian. Ian lived in a room furnished so starkly, Sebastian thought he’d entered the wrong chamber. But no, the man had either been refused the luxuries so esteemed by the rest of the family, or he deliberately lived like an illegitimate son to remind himself of his place.
If only Sebastian could believe he had been refused. But seeing Ian, his restraint, the way he watched the others so hungrily, Sebastian knew the man was dangerous.
And Sebastian wondered if Ian had been the fiend who’d beaten him so severely. He didn’t think so. He’d made contact with his attacker’s face, he knew he had, but Ian showed no signs of bruising.
No one at the party showed any signs of bruising—except him.
He normally healed quickly, but the swelling from Mary’s blows had just gone down when he’d been jerked off that rope and been thrashed again. In the space of three days, accomplished street fighter Sebastian Durant had been battered by a woman and a…a stranger.
A stranger who had warned him away from Mary. And except for brief, respectful contacts, Sebastian had obeyed.
But it irked him. God, how it irked him.
With a sigh, he turned away from the bedside—and felt something crawl up his shoulder. He grabbed at it, whatever it was, and found himself in possession of wiggling fingers.
He looked at them in horror. He held a female’s hand.
Its partner caressed the other side of his neck. “Lord Whitfield, you surprise me. I’m afraid I’m not…dressed.”
Aghast, he turned toward the bed. Daisy peeked out from the pink curtains, and she was right. She wasn’t dressed. That filmy, silky thing she had draped over her could scarcely be considered clothing.
“Excuse me!” He tried to vault away, but somehow her arms had become entwined around him. “I didn’t realize…”
“That I was here? But what were you doing?” Her eyes widened and her lips parted, and she smelled of tobacco.
He hated tobacco.
“Were you looking for a memento of me?” she cooed.
Of course not, you stupid cow, he wanted to snap.
But he didn’t. He was in trouble here, more trouble than when he’d dangled from the rope, and he had to extricate himself as quickly as possible. “You have attracted my attention.” It was only a partial lie. She had been trying to attract his attention.
She lowered her eyelids. “I didn’t know that you’d noticed.”
“Noticed? I noticed.” He tried to edge away. Her nails bit into his neck. “A man would be hard-pressed not to notice you.” And run as if the hounds of hell were after him.
“Oh, Lord Whitfield.” Her red mouth puckered, her eyes slid shut, and she gave the impression of a woman on the verge of rapture. “You’ve made me so happy.”
“Good. Well. I’d best leave now.” He jerked away, sure that she’d marked him with those talons of hers. Not that he needed more marks.
“Shall I tell my father?”
“Tell him what?”
“That you’ve expressed an…interest.” Seemingly on its own, one of her breasts popped free of its confinement.
“I’m betrothed to your cousin.” Sprinting toward the door, he jerked it open. “Mustn’t betray her.”
“But, darling…”
Daisy’s reproachful voice echoed in his mind as he hustled down the corridor. He knew damn well what that woman wanted from him, and it wasn’t his manly form or his nonexistent repartee. It was his fortune. A Fairchild woman could easily impersonate a shattered innocent to get her hands on so much money.
So he needed an alibi. He needed one now.
He could go to the boxing room where the young bucks practiced knocking each other senseless. Unfortunately, there he would be forced to endure teasing about the beatings he had endured at Mary’s hands.
Of course, the last beating hadn’t been administered by her fists, but the guests thought otherwise. They had loudly speculated that he’d trifled with Mary again and come out the worse for it.
He didn’t deny it, mostly because the ton wouldn’t have believed him, but also because the constantly circling flock of buzzardlike suitors maintained a respectful distance from Mary’s fists. No other man wished to be taunted that a woman had beaten him up.
Hell, Sebastian didn’t want to be taunted. He didn’t even want to care, but he did. These people who thought so much of themselves should be inconsequential to him. But in the years before he’d made his fortune, he’d been mocked often, and found himself unable to take their sniggering lightly.
So he couldn’t go to the boxing room, and he refused to run the gauntlet of laugh
ter in the dining room where the meal was set up.
That left the game room. The gamblers were always so deep in their cards—and their cups—they wouldn’t note the time of his arrival, and they would provide a plausible alibi in case…well, in case that Daisy sought to bag him tonight.
Satisfied with his destination, he strode along the corridor. All the unmarried women were housed in the west wing, he’d discovered. Yet Mary’s bedchamber was the only one he wanted to enter. He wanted to enter it so badly, he had consciously avoided it—partly because of his fear of ambush, but mostly because she made him insane. She had him by the curly hairs, and she acted as if she didn’t know it. Worse, she acted as if she didn’t care.
He walked to her door and placed his hand on it. He felt the vibrations of her presence, and he knew she was inside. He’d seen her shudder as she walked into a gathering. He’d seen her glancing over her shoulder as if she expected to be stabbed in the back. He’d seen her grow more and more uneasy as the days wore on.
She didn’t know that he hated to see her flirting with other men, or that he found comfort in the fact she did it poorly. Yet no one seemed to be immune to her charms. Even the merchant, Mr. Everett Brindley, seemed captivated by her, and from previous business dealings, Sebastian could have sworn he was a cold fish, interested only in money and politics.
Bringing Mary should have simplified the task Sebastian had set himself. He thought that using her as a distraction would grant him the time he needed to find his godmother’s diary, secure it, and save the country—and his business—from revolution.
Instead, her presence had complicated every aspect of his life, and now his encounter with Daisy forced him to reach a reluctant conclusion. He would have to let Mary open the safe.
Well, why not? Every day they stayed, he trusted her more. Every day he liked her more. Every day he marveled at her intelligence, at her beauty…at her allure.
And he wouldn’t find her alluring if he didn’t trust her.
His breath quickened and his heart beat faster.