From this angle, she could see that he’d fleshed out through the shoulders, put on bulk to suit a stevedore. He moved with swinging, athletic strides, and the crowd parted before him, crowing and cheering his passage.
Was he trying to outrun her? He’d be disappointed: she walked for two hours each day, and rode for two more besides. He was not the only one with muscle.
He led her out of the gallery through a hidden door that opened into a gaming room. The leather-paneled cave reeked of stale tobacco. A raffish young man with auburn hair and freckles was sleeping atop the snooker table, a cue draped across his belly.
She folded her arms and waited. It took Lockwood a good shove to wake the interloper. The youngster sat up, blinking sleepily, then set aside the cue and scratched his head. Bits of cue chalk scattered from his hair onto the green nap of the table.
“Party’s over, Wilkins,” said her husband.
“Right,” said the boy, then staggered to his feet and lurched out.
She hugged herself more tightly. “Who are these people?” A sad and pathetic lot, to be sure! “Are you running a hostel for the soused?”
Lockwood laughed—a strange sound, unsteady and abruptly over. “Oh, that’s good.” Leaning back against the closed door, he closed one eye and squinted at her. “If you had written ahead of your visit, I might have gathered a company more to your taste.”
Was he drunk? “That would require you to understand my tastes, and your knowledge on that count is outdated.”
He nodded amiably. “Been a while.”
Her disbelief felt almost hysterical. “You’ve been in London for eight months now. Eight months! You might have written. But I suppose that would have ruined the fun!”
He lifted a dark brow. “Fun?”
She would not yell. She took a long breath. “I discovered your return through a newspaper headline. Fun is one way to put it.” An unconscionable and shameless dereliction of your marital duties was another.
But she would not say that, either. She had not come to shriek and rail at him; that would suggest she cared.
“Ah, I . . .” He threw a distracted glance toward the wall, from which came a thump as somebody on the other side presumably kicked it. “I thought you would be on the island.”
If he was drunk, he did not sound it. She’d forgotten the arrogant tenor of his mannerisms, the irksome cut-glass precision of his accent—all still fully intact. “So I was.”
“You once told me that no post reaches Rawsey in winter.”
“It was a mild winter,” she bit out. “And behold: it is almost May.”
The journalists were correct, his fashions were the definition of au courant. His dark suit fit him so closely she could see the bulge of his muscled shoulder as he shrugged. “I meant to write,” he said. “Besides, you keep so busy there. I imagined I had until June at the least.”
The way he phrased it! As though she were some kenneled animal, safely ignored until summer! She opened and closed her mouth before recovering her aplomb. “Well, it’s good to confirm it with my own eyes. Your dreadful cousin kept insisting you were dead. I hope you have put that to rest. He harassed me terribly.”
Something violent flickered over his face. For the first time, she had the startled sense that he was not nearly as calm as he seemed. “What do you mean, he harassed you?”
“Precisely what it sounds like. He seemed to labor under the impression that this”—she waved a hand around the room, the leather gaudily trimmed in gilt—“belonged to him now. And my properties as well, though as I had my lawyers explain to him, even if you were dead, the Scottish estates belong to me.” She rolled her eyes. “These little English brains can hardly compass it, the idea of properties entailed through a woman.”
“Do you have any of his letters still? Those in which he said I was deceased?”
“Why should I save kindling? But you can hardly blame him, Lockwood. Three years without news—even I was tempted once or twice to bury you.”
He slumped against the door again, his smile lopsided, designed to charm. “How good of you to refrain.”
“Yes, well, I know your character better than your cousin does. Stephen’s mistake was to overestimate you; he felt certain you’d never run away for years on end. I informed him that running away had been your plan all along. I said, why, Lockwood never promised to stay at all! He married only so somebody else would fix up his estates.”
She paused briefly.
He made no denial.
You are a fool, she told herself.
“I’ll confess, though—” She pushed out a light laugh. “I did expect you to make it through the honeymoon. Especially since it promised to play to your strengths! Drinking and lounging and loafing, and not much else.”
Another man, any man with some pride in him, would have objected. But again, his only reply was a long, mildly quizzical stare. He looked the very picture of a dissolute rake: all chiseled bones and full lips, no brains whatsoever.
Her discipline began to fray. She bit her tongue hard, but could not stop herself. “You’re not even going to apologize, are you?”
Unblinking, he replied: “For what? As you say, we had a bargain.”
Snap went her temper. “You shameless fool. I did think you were dead, near the end. That money you took must have run out. What else was I to think? How dare you not write me a letter, cable a single line!”
“My apologies.” His own tone sounded very mellow. “I should have written, yes. But my travels took me to some very . . . remote corners of the world.” This appeared to amuse him; a faint smile played over his lips. “The money stretched farther than I’d expected. The telegraph wires did not.”
“Then you should have made a detour.” Her hands were fisted; she fought the urge to stalk him down, to slap some real emotion, some proper regret or repentance, into that handsome face. But the effort would be wasted, obviously.
“Well,” he said, flipping his hand to prompt her to continue. “Was there something else? As you saw, I have guests.”
She marveled at him a moment. “I don’t recall you being such a jackass.”
He laughed, a low, husky sound. “I don’t recall you cursing like a sailor.”
“Then it’s true, time does reveal all. On that note, I will be in residence for the remainder of the spring, so I expect—”
“Alas, no.” He pulled open the door to the hall. “I will send to Claridge’s to book you a suite.”
“You will not. I am staying here.”
He turned back, looking puzzled. “I’m afraid it won’t be possible.”
“I paid for every furnishing in this house.”
“And you have exquisite taste,” he said solemnly, and then laughed again.
She glared. At least he was amusing himself. “Regardless of my taste, I intend to enjoy what I have purchased.”
“But there’s no room,” he said genially. “Guests, you know.”
“Expel them.”
He hesitated, sighed, then closed the door, giving her his full and apparently earnest attention. “Lady Forth. It seems I must explain to you—”
“South of the border, I am known as the Countess of Lockwood, I am very sorry to say.”
He did not seem to register the barb. “I must explain how unsuitable the company is. You cannot stay here. Not tonight, at any rate.” He tipped his head, looking thoughtful. “Perhaps not tomorrow, either.”
He was not drunk, but something was addling him. As she advanced on him, she saw that his pupils had nearly disappeared; his amber irises were huge and unnervingly bright. “Did somebody hit you very hard on the head?” If so, she could not blame them. “I am here. I am certainly staying. If the company doesn’t suit, then it is the company that must change.”
He blinked several times—seeming confused by how closely she suddenly loomed. For she was not a small woman; on her tiptoes, she was nearly eye level with him, which gave her an opportunity to delive
r him a fulminating glower.
“Now,” she said as her hand landed on the doorknob. One swift tug sent him stumbling off the door past her, though he recovered with grace, swinging back as his own brows began to lower into a proper scowl. “Get rid of the company,” she said as she stepped through the doorway. “At once.”
He opened his mouth to reply. She shut the door in his face to spare him the effort.
• • •
A hammer was knocking on Liam’s skull.
“My lord.”
And now came the hiss of rings across the curtain rod, and an unbearable scalding light that caused him, with a groan, to drape his arm over his eyes.
“Your lordship.”
He was not going to move for another hour. “I am dead,” he said. “Go away.”
The floorboards squeaked. “Lock, it’s your—”
Eyes closed, he reached out, seizing the oncoming hand before it could shake him awake. Then, on a hard breath, he forced himself to face the full light of day.
Hanks was staring down, rheumy eyes wide in amazement. “That’s a fine trick,” he said. “I’ll never know how you do it.”
“Magic.” Dropping the man’s wrist, Liam closed his eyes again. “Now you try some. Disappear.”
“She’s downstairs,” came Hanks’s apologetic voice. He was, nominally, Liam’s valet. It was not a role that came easily to him; ironing and folding, yes, but the fussy proprietary hassling of a typical valet, no. “She’s questioning the staff. Has us lined up, introducing ourselves, explaining what purpose we serve.”
Jesus bloody—
He made himself sit up, wincing as the hammer transformed into a dagger that lanced his right eye. What in God’s name had Colthurst given him last night?
Whatever the substance, it was useless: it had not blurred his memory by a fraction. He stared blindly at a pool of sunlight on the Persian carpet, reliving in an instant the entire disaster.
His wife was here.
She was here, and famously and gorgeously in form. She had not changed a whit.
Worse, she intended to stay.
“I think she means to sack Tommy,” Hanks said.
He looked up. “What?”
Hanks gave a mournful tug of his gray beard. He was the only one of them who had not gone clean shaven at the first opportunity, but he spent an hour each night trimming and grooming his facial hair. The others had a name for his beard—“the poodle,” for how wildly it curled, and how lovingly Hanks tended to it. “Nobody was attending the front door last night,” he said. “And she ran into Tommy inside, and so takes him for the porter, and means to sack him for not minding his business.”
Liam gingerly rose, and was relieved to find that the floor remained steady beneath him. “I’ll take care of it.”
Hanks, brightening, hurried to fetch the clothing he’d laid out.
Liam sighed. “Paisley,” he said. “What did we decide about paisley, Hanks?”
The old man hesitated, considering the pile in his arms. “Ah—doesn’t go with stripes?”
“Doesn’t go with stripes,” Liam confirmed. Sometimes, very occasionally, and not without a feeling of disloyalty, he did wish he’d kept on his old valet. Morris had spent three years here sitting on his arse, cheerfully drinking his way through the cellar, skills rusting—but he had not been color-blind, and he had known what to do with paisley.
Alas, Morris would not have known what to do with his master’s new body. Liam stripped off his nightshirt, and Hanks did not so much as blink at what was exposed. Hanks had seen it done to Liam; that was the difference. All the men in this house knew more about him than he might have wanted—and he knew just as much of them.
That was why Hanks, and not Morris, now served as Liam’s valet.
Also, Liam had no idea what else to do with the old man.
He dressed quickly, Hanks fluttering around him with hands too palsied to be of use. When Liam started for the door, Hanks came up hard on his heels, and between the headache and premonitions of the disaster below, it was all Liam could do to keep from snapping.
Instead, on a deep breath, he sidestepped and waved Hanks ahead of him.
Hanks, oblivious, hurried onward. To imagine that he’d once been convicted of thieving sheep! He couldn’t have caught a sheep had one been placed before him in a state of advanced decomposition.
On the staircase, Liam got his first glimpse of the problem below. His wife had the staff lined up like a regimental formation—unaware, of course, of how much she asked. The chambermaids and the housekeeper—all of whom had been on holiday yesterday—looked to a woman very pleased by this crisis. No doubt they had dreamed of a mass sacking for months now.
The men looked torn along a spectrum from rage to bewilderment. Henneage, a squat Northman who’d been transported for leading a riot, looked red faced and indignant enough to rally a new mob. Scrawny Wilkins was weaving on his feet, barely supported by the combined efforts of Gibbs and Riley, who were muttering ominously.
“What nonsense is this?” came a strident female voice. As Liam hurriedly took the last few steps, his wife came into view. She was pacing the line, her hands clasped at her back, her lavender woolen walking gown fittingly garnished with black epaulettes and military braids. She stopped in front of Wilkins, peering down her Roman nose. “Did your nap on the snooker table last night not leave you sufficiently refreshed, sir? And to think I’d imagined you a guest! Instead, it seems, you are . . . Well? What, precisely, is your role here?”
“He’s the other porter,” said Matthew Dunning, a naval mutineer. His sly smile dissolved when he noticed Liam’s approach.
“Ah.” The countess nodded, the jeweled comb in her copper hair winking in the morning light that fell from the skylight above. “Then with Danvers you will go.” She pointed a long finger toward the corner, where Tommy Danvers huddled miserably.
Liam hesitated.
It was a delicate situation, to be sure—for as his wife had pointed out last night, and he remembered all too clearly, her money did fund this household. And although they had been married in the Church of England, her fortune was Scottish—which made it subject to laws that granted ladies a good deal more control over their wealth than did sensible English patriarchy. Liam would not want to test it in a court, at any rate.
In short, the countess could probably make his life quite difficult if he countermanded her authority in front of the servants.
He chose instead to clear his throat and say, “Good morning.”
Her shoulders stiffened, and her posture drew impossibly straighter, before she faced him.
“This household is an abomination of order,” she said crisply. Her brief, increasingly dour survey of his figure suggested that he, too, was a piece of the mess. “Were you aware that your cook has no eggs? That your porter—both of them, evidently, though why you should require two, I can’t imagine—both your porters abandoned their posts for a night of carousing. And your footmen, sir, I found loitering with their feet on the chairs in your drawing room!”
“Ah, yes.” He’d hoped that some inspiration would come to him before he finished drawling that first bit, but nothing did, so he helpfully added, “Our drawing room, you mean.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it, looking nonplussed. “I—yes. Our drawing room, with the very expensive cushions paid for by me. So you will understand if I mean to make changes here.”
It was peculiar how good he’d gotten at never thinking about her. Looking at her now, listening to her, felt surreal, as though beholding in the flesh some long-forgotten fantasy from boyhood. Her lips, for instance, were much plusher and pinker than he recalled.
He’d wanted her so badly. She’d never known just how much he wanted her.
“Change is a fine thing,” he said. Change was all he had to offer. She was looking at him as though she knew him, when in fact the boy she’d married was dead now.
She thought that boy had aban
doned her. Marvelous! He felt pity for the sap. That stupid boy had nursed grand plans for their marriage, wild and romantic hopes, while all the while his bride had held him in secret contempt—or so it seemed to Liam now. For why else would she have been so ready to believe him capable of deserting her?
She was scowling. Did his replies seem off? He did not feel quite sober, though he didn’t think Colthurst’s poison was to blame any longer. Looking at her rather nauseated him. It made him feel as though the world were tilting. No handholds, nothing to arrest the fall.
He took a deep breath. It would have been wiser to plan for her reappearance. But he’d imagined he had until mid-June. And thinking of her rather felt like grinding a burr into his brain; pleasanter to avoid.
“I am glad we’re in agreement,” she said. “The porters will need to be sacked, the footmen placed on a period of probation—”
Her voice died as he caught her elbow. “Alas, I haven’t yet had coffee.” With his hand at the small of her back, he urged her toward the corridor. “Let’s talk of this over breakfast, shall we? Dismissed,” he said casually over his shoulder, and pretended not to see the disappointment in the maids’ faces and the relief in the men’s.
Once in the hallway, he released her, his palm burning oddly, as though the wool of her gown were somehow toxic to him. Well, no doubt it was; certainly some kind of black magic was involved here, to bring her back to life so suddenly, a dead man’s dream.
She had turned pink, and was not meeting his eyes. “You should go back to Scotland,” he told her. “For your own comfort.” And for his. He felt disoriented, strange in his skin, with her so nearby. It was a dead man’s skin, a dead man’s role, which her presence forced him to adopt. “At least until I’ve straightened out the staff.”
“It isn’t all disastrous. The chambermaids appear satisfactory.”
“How good to hear.” He pushed open the door to the dining room, allowing her to precede him. “I rather like the chambermaids myself.”
She gave him an odd sharp look, but he forgot it in the next second as he drew up in amazement.
A full breakfast lay spread on the table. With china plates!