He held her gaze a moment more, making sure, and then he raised his eyes to look at the man his sister had taken as her lover.
Makepeace stood still in the doorway. Smart. Makepeace might outweigh him, but had Val continued his trajectory, the other man would’ve lain bleeding on the floor.
“Why?” Val growled at him.
“I love her.”
Val squinted at Makepeace. Cocked his head. And then shook it.
Of all the possible answers, he’d never considered that one. It made no sense at all. Love… didn’t matter. Love—as he understood the term—wasn’t a reason for marriage.
He looked at Eve.
And saw sadness lurking in her eyes. “It’s true. He loves me, Val. As I love him.”
“So…,” he said cautiously, feeling his way, “you’ll… marry him.”
“Yes.”
“Ah.” He tried to think of something to say to that—perhaps something wise and elder-brotherly, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of a thing. “Do you still have that dove?”
“Val,” Eve said, ignoring his perfectly civil query. “You should come to the wedding.”
He winced. “Must I?” He glanced at Makepeace, sure the other man didn’t want him there.
But it seemed all were arrayed against him today.
“Yes,” Makepeace said, and he didn’t even look to be under duress.
Was the world mad?
“Are you mad?” Val asked, just to make sure.
Makepeace snorted.
But Eve was still looking grave. “Did you ever leave England? Because Asa only proposed to me last night at Harte’s Folly. I’m sure the news swept London, for he did it in front of a crowd, but even so, there’s no way you could’ve come from the Continent so fast.”
“Of course I left England, darling Eve,” he replied, staring straight into her eyes, never blinking, letting his habitual smile play about his mouth. “I arrived just last night and heard the news this morning.”
The corners of her mouth drooped and he felt an odd panicked twinge somewhere in that empty space where a heart might dwell in other people.
“The trouble,” Eve said, “is that I’ve never been able to tell when you’re lying to me and when you’re not. It wouldn’t matter, I suppose, but that you don’t care if you lie to me or not. And I do. I used to not. Or maybe I used to tell myself I didn’t care. But Val,” she said softly, looking at him with his own eyes, “now I do.”
She turned and, taking Makepeace’s arm, very quietly left the room with her fiancé.
And it was a very good thing, Val thought, that he hadn’t a heart.
Because it might’ve broken then.
BRIDGET CAUTIOUSLY PRESSED open the hidden door in the duke’s bedroom and held high her candlestick. She didn’t know how long the duke would be gone—he’d simply hared off to see his sister—but she couldn’t let the opportunity to investigate his hidden lair slip away.
The space revealed by her candle’s flickering flame was narrow, naturally, but bigger than she’d expected, perhaps five feet by at least ten. A small table, crowded with a treasure trove of bejeweled objects, was set up directly next to the door with a stool stowed neatly under it. Over the table was a single shelf, jammed with books. Just past the table was a cot with rumpled bedding. And beyond the cot was more corridor—too long to be illuminated by her candle’s small light. Dear Lord. Just how extensive were his hidden passages in Hermes House?
She set the candle down and looked cautiously around. The room was comfortable after a fashion, but it was very Spartan for a duke—especially for the Duke of Montgomery. She couldn’t imagine him spending one night here, let alone months.
Unless, of course, he wasn’t entirely the man she thought him.
The notion disturbed her. She’d worked in the duke’s house for over three months now, and even though he’d been supposedly absent for all but two weeks of those three months, she’d been complacent in the idea that she knew the man. The Duke of Montgomery was a wicked, vain blackmailer. Evil and duplicitous. Not a man who should merit a second thought from her beyond her duties.
And yet she had thought about him quite a lot since this morning. That muscled bottom, those knowing predator’s eyes, and the way the corner of his mouth had curled just before he’d bent as if to kiss her…
Bridget pressed her lips together and set her mind firmly to her task, reminding herself she might have very little time.
She pulled out the stool and sat, noticing as she did so a small wooden disk affixed to the wall with a nail at the upper edge. She touched it and the disk swiveled aside, revealing a peephole. Bridget paused a moment and then leaned forward to put her eye to the hole. She could clearly see the far end of the duke’s bedroom, including his enormous bed and his desk.
Damn! She sat back, remembering with some consternation when she’d picked the lock on that very desk. She’d thought she heard a chuckle at the time, but had disregarded it as the sound of a mouse.
He must think her a fool.
Well. There was nothing for it but to outwit the Prince of Schemes and Diabolical Plots. Bridget examined the treasures on the narrow table without touching them. A ship took up most of the space, as long as her forearm. It was a fanciful—and no doubt expensive—thing, with mother-of-pearl sails, a gold hull, and tiny enameled sailors manning the glossy deck. A key projected from one end of the ship. Perhaps it had a secret compartment. Bridget turned the key.
Immediately there was a click and a soft whirring sound.
Bridget raised her hands in alarm.
What—?
On the ship’s deck, a miniature trumpeter set his instrument to his lips and tinkling music played as the sailors marched around, the captain saluted with his sword, tiny cannons projected from the sides of the ship, and—oh, Lord!—the ship began sailing forward.
The cannons suddenly exploded with miniature bangs! and billows of smoke. Bridget squeaked as she just caught the gold ship before it sailed itself off the table. She held it cradled in her arms, gasping, as the captain seemed to give her a little bow.
A monkey ran up a rope ladder and exposed its buttocks to her.
Bridget scowled at the little enameled beast. It slid back down to its starting position and the ship went quiet. Gingerly she placed the clockwork ship back on the table, half-afraid it was going to go off again, but nothing happened.
She took a relieved breath and noticed a very small pair of copper tweezers lying on the table. Beside the tweezers was a small dish with infinitesimally tiny cogs and wheels. Surely he hadn’t been tinkering with the golden ship? She couldn’t even begin to imagine the sort of skill—and money—it would take to build such a thing. The little ship was completely frivolous, like the duke himself, and yet… she touched the tiny captain. It was also amazing and wonderful… and beautiful. If she were as rich as a duke, with money to spend on anything she wished in the entire world, why… she might spend it on such a thing as the golden ship herself.
Bridget jerked back her hand as if it had been burned.
Silly thought.
She turned determinedly to the rest of the table. There were four jeweled snuffboxes—two of them with quite scandalous pictures on the insides of the lids. None of them held snuff. Three were empty and one contained a sort of perfumed unguent. Bridget frowned over that a moment and then set the snuffbox aside. Three gold watches were piled together, along with a jeweled magnifying glass and a little penknife. One of the watches was completely in pieces and she imagined the duke sitting here, taking the thing apart, inspecting the pieces with inquisitive azure eyes, and then putting it back together.
Had he been bored waiting to emerge from his walls? Impatient? Stifled?
She shook her head and resumed her inventory. A scatter of broken quills and a small glass-and-gold ink bottle—stoppered—attested to the duke’s having written letters in his little hideaway hole, but as far as she could tell, there
were none here.
She looked up at the bookshelf and couldn’t prevent a small smile.
The volumes ranged in size, shape, age, and degree of wear. Some were small and gilded, perfectly beautiful. Some cracked and with the pages falling out. She ran her finger across the spines reverently and then took them down one by one and shook them out gently to look for papers hidden in the pages. Here was a tiny illustrated volume with men in turbans charging across a flower-strewn field. Another book—quite old—was in Latin and held a skull and crossbones on the title page. She was oddly surprised by a volume of poetry by John Donne, not at all by Machiavelli’s The Prince in the original Italian. One of the larger volumes opened naturally to an engraving of men in classical dress standing to either side of a map of the Greek isles.
Bridget stilled, looking down at the illustration. Oh… she traced with her finger, finding Athens and Corinth and Thebes and the Aegean Sea. Such exotic names. Such wonderful names.
She stared for a moment more and then mechanically went through the book. There was no letter hidden within its pages.
Carefully she replaced Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War on the shelf with the other volumes. As she did so, her knee brushed against the table and she heard something rustle to the floor.
Bridget picked up the candle and peered under the table. A sheet of paper was lying there. She glanced at the underside of the table. Two thin strips of wood were fixed against the underside. They were just big enough to have held the paper.
She picked up the paper and tilted it so the light shone upon it and felt her heart shudder to a stop.
It was her reference—the reference that Lady Amelia Caire had given Bridget. The one she’d shown the duke’s man of business, along with her other letters of reference.
Without thinking, she touched her mobcap, but it was in place. Her hair was covered.
Bridget looked up, examining the room without moving, like a startled hare. Everything seemed nearly the same as when she’d come in. She straightened the ship, pushed the stool under the table, and, taking both her candle and the paper, quickly left the hiding hole.
Her breath was coming too fast, but she made an effort to walk sedately out of his bedroom and down the hall. Mustn’t let the other servants see her in emotional disarray. She hurried down the grand staircase, through the back hallway, and into the kitchens, nodding at Mrs. Bram and one of the footmen as she passed.
To the side of the kitchens was her own tiny room and she gratefully shut the door behind her, leaning back against it. Here was her single bed, neatly made, a chair, a row of hooks to hold her shawl and hat, and a small chest of drawers. On top of the drawers were a washbasin and pitcher.
She crossed to the chest of drawers and, using one of the keys at her waist, opened the top drawer. Inside were her most valuable possessions—all she had in the world, really. A small purse of money. An illustrated Gulliver’s Travels. And her letters of reference, neatly stacked. He must’ve picked the lock on her dresser, just as she’d picked the lock on his desk.
She laid the letter from Lady Caire atop the others and stared at it. Why take that one? Was it mere coincidence? Or did he know?
She closed and locked the dresser drawer and went to the small round looking glass beside the door. Slowly she raised her hands and drew off her mobcap. Underneath, her hair was tightly twisted into a knot at the back of her head. It was black, save for a pure white streak that started just over her left eye. She stared for a moment at her very distinctive hair. The white threads had started only a few years ago, when she’d turned three and twenty, but she knew already that in another ten years her head would be entirely white.
As her mother’s was.
Bridget tucked a few loose strands back into place and replaced her cap. She made sure her skirts and apron were properly aligned, properly neat.
Then she straightened her shoulders and opened her door. She left behind any foolish dreams of Grecian isles or golden clockwork ships and walked out of her barren room as the housekeeper.
Nothing more.
Chapter Three
The baby’s mother wept and his father (the old king) stomped and roared, but the physician merely shrugged. There was simply no way to replace a missing heart.
And that was that.…
—From King Heartless
“And here are the kitchens again,” Bridget said briskly that evening as she led Mehmed on the last stage of her tour of Hermes House.
She had started Mehmed’s tour later than she’d originally planned due to the unfortunate dismissal of one of the footmen that afternoon. She’d discovered George in the duke’s study, bent over his desk and holding a gold snuffbox, and really there wasn’t much poor George could say after that, particularly since he wasn’t supposed to even be on the upper floor at that time of day.
A sad task and one that made her feel something of a hypocrite considering she’d rifled that same desk only weeks before, but there it was. She couldn’t have a thief on her staff.
She turned to the boy. “We take breakfast promptly at six of the clock, have tea at ten, luncheon at two, tea again at five, and supper after His Grace has eaten. Mrs. Bram is in charge of the kitchen and you will address her as ma’am or Mrs. Bram or Cook. Is that clear?”
Mehmed, looking slightly overwhelmed, nodded.
Bridget permitted herself to unbend enough to give him a very small smile. It was hard enough for an English boy to come to a first position in London—the pace was faster, the accents and people new and different. What must it be like for a lad from a different country altogether? She wondered in that moment why the duke had chosen Mehmed for his second valet. Was it merely a whim to take the boy from his home so far away?
She’d found—to her relief—that the boy was a little older than she’d first thought him. He was sixteen rather than the thirteen or fourteen she’d originally placed him at.
Still.
If the duke hadn’t been joking when he’d called Mehmed his catamite…
She pushed the thought aside. What her employers chose to do in their bedrooms was not her concern until and if they decided to include her or another servant who did not wish to participate.
As far as she could tell Mehmed seemed happy at Hermes House.
“You’ll do fine,” she murmured quietly to Mehmed. “The duke likes you and that, after all, is what matters most in the end.”
Mehmed gave her a shy smile, but darted a nervous look at Mrs. Bram.
The cook, who was putting the finishing touches on her roast, gave him a skeptical side-eye. Mrs. Bram had been none too pleased to discover, early in the tour, that the boy didn’t eat pork of any kind—not ham or sausage or even bacon. Bridget had hastily led the boy away, leaving Mrs. Bram muttering about “heathenish” ways. She’d hoped that the cook would’ve forgiven the boy’s dietary oddities in their absence, but such was obviously not the case.
Bridget cleared her throat, raising her voice to address the servants in the kitchen. “Mehmed will be the duke’s second valet, serving under Mr. Attwell and sleeping in His Grace’s dressing room. You will accord him the respect of a second valet.”
She made sure to glance about the room slowly, letting her words sink in. Londoners in general were fairly sophisticated folk, used to exotic foreigners from all corners of the world. London was, after all, a port city. Still, it never hurt to place a new servant firmly within the ranks. A valet was in a rather nice position—above the footmen and below only the butler, had there been one.
There was not. The butler at Hermes House had retired very soon after Bridget had been hired and she’d never seen the need to find a replacement. Why hire a man who might think it his right to order her about, after all?
In any case, she wanted to make sure Mehmed would find acceptance at Hermes House. Attwell seemed to treat him with a sort of benign indifference that she supposed was better than hostility, but not by much.
Bridget nodded briskly. “Good. Now, Mehmed, if you would like to attend to Mr. Attwell and your duties in the duke’s—”
“Ma’am.”
She turned, irritated at the interruption. It was Cal, lounging in the doorway to the kitchens, his handsome face marred by the sneer on his lips. “Yes?”
“He—I mean, His Grace—wants you.” His emphasis on the honorific was almost an insult.
Bridget eyed the footman a moment, but decided to let the matter go. Cal had been in the Montgomery employ for years—ever since he’d been a youth, in fact. For all she knew there was some sort of fondness or loyalty between him and the duke. Better to find out first before making any moves.
Too, she was already a footman short after this afternoon.
Therefore she simply asked, “Where is His Grace?”
Cal jerked his head behind him. “In the dining room.”
“Thank you,” she replied drily, and swept past him.
She hadn’t crossed paths with the duke since this morning’s odd reception. She found her pulse beginning to quicken as she neared the dining room, wondering what he’d called her for, what strange question or request he’d put to her. Or had he tired of her after this morning? Would he simply dismiss her finally?
He couldn’t.
She’d spent three months searching for her mother’s letter—and the miniature she’d found last night. The miniature belonged to a friend of her mother’s, Miss Hippolyta Royle, a wealthy heiress, whom her mother had asked Bridget to help. But with the duke’s “return” she’d had only a few minutes this morning in his hiding hole and less than that this afternoon to search one of the lesser-used salons. She needed more time. Specifically, she needed more time spent with him.
Bridget paused before the dining room door.
It might take weeks more—months more—to find all the duke’s hiding places. But if she were to talk to him, observe him, might not she discover his secrets simply by catching him unawares? Perhaps she needed to… well, not seduce him—he was the one for seduction—but engage him more in discussion? Let herself… loosen? He might give himself away when he was talking on and on, thinking he was the cleverest person in the room.