She stood there, gripped by the conviction that she was right: for whatever reason, he did not trust Vickers enough to let him do it. “Perhaps Jones could—”
“Get out.”
“Fine!” She set her fists on her hips. How difficult could it be? “I’ll cut your hair.”
He laughed curtly. “I was not serious.”
“But you made the offer, and I accept it. What—are you frightened that I’ll slice your throat?”
He looked up, narrow eyed. “Don’t be a fool.”
“Then tell me where the kit is.”
After a long moment, he shrugged. “The wardrobe.”
It took a bit of rummaging to locate the leather case. When she unbuckled it, she saw evidence of Vickers’s story: all the utensils, the scissors and badger-hair brush and razor, lay in a jumble, dislodged from their compartments. The case had truly taken a beating at its master’s hands. But somehow, a little stoppered vial had survived intact.
She opened and sniffed it: Castile soap, lavender, and perhaps the slightest hint of salt of tartar. Essence of soap for shaving, no doubt.
She glanced up and found his brow cocked. “You’ve no idea what you’re doing,” he said.
How insightful of him. If he wanted expertise, he could ring for Vickers. But if he was daft enough to let her do this, she certainly would not shy away from the opportunity. His hair was atrocious. “Take a seat at the dressing table, please.”
He rose, eyeing her. But to her surprise, he folded himself without argument into the chair in front of the mirror.
She took the towel from the rail on the washstand and spread it out behind him. Then she took up the scissors. They seemed quite small for scissors, did they not? She sawed them experimentally.
When she glanced up, he was watching her in the mirror, the smirk on his face revealing how very much he was enjoying her discomfort. “I prefer the Parisian style,” he said. “With a touch of the Italian on top.”
What on earth did that mean? She decided to brazen through it, lest he change his mind. “I would have thought the German would suit you better.”
He paused. “Hanoverian, do you mean? Or the Berliner? They’re so often confused.”
She stared at him for a moment, undecided, and then caught the slight twitch of his lips. He was funning her! He was making these terms up. “Whichever is shortest,” she said severely, and gave a threatening snick of the blades.
“Very well,” he said, and bowed his head.
A little shock bolted through her. She stared down at his head, all that luxuriantly waving blond hair, and suddenly felt unable to move. This job required her to touch him. To plunge her hands through his hair and . . . handle him.
For no apparent reason, she suddenly recalled the feel of his hands on her wrists. His thumbs slipping across her pulse. Her stomach somersaulted.
She pressed her lips together and took a sharp breath. How bizarre. Clearing her throat, she said, “It isn’t too late to call Vickers.” Why did her voice sound so high? “He’ll be so glad to serve you—”
“Is your spunk only for show, Mrs. Johnson? Do I detect a whiff of cowardice?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s your head.” On another deep breath, she plunged her fingers through his hair.
It was soft. Silken, even. A gentleman’s hair was as soft as a woman’s. Who would have guessed?
His shoulders jerked. She glanced up and discovered him silently laughing at her. “Your face,” he said. “So shocked. Does ducal hair feel like some strange new variety?”
“Sit still,” she snapped—and then frowned. “There’s a pun in that somewhere, but I can’t find it. Ducal hair, ducal heir . . .”
“Oh, but I’m not an heir,” he murmured. “I’m the genuine article, I assure you.”
Why that should make her blush, she had no idea. Something in his voice . . .
She went down on her knees to remove her face from his view. Her job here was not to amuse him. She pinched up a piece of his hair—really, it was softer than her own—and snipped it off.
There. Done.
Gaining confidence, she grabbed a larger piece, and lopped that off. Much better. Very quickly now she progressed the scissor across the back of his neck.
“Uncovering a talent?” he said.
She ignored him. Sitting back, she surveyed her progress.
Oh, good Lord! His hair looked like the ragged hem of some thrice-patched shift.
All right, then. It would require a bit more care. She slid her fingers through his hair to take a good, firm grasp, and felt him jolt slightly.
“Have a care with those blades,” he said softly.
“Don’t move, and I will.”
She had trimmed hair before—her mother’s, once a month, always on Sundays; and she had also done so for friends from the typing school on occasion. But cutting a man’s hair—the Duke of Marwick’s hair—began to feel quite . . . different.
As she gathered up his locks, her fingers brushed along the base of his neck. His shoulders were solid muscle—even here, at their tops. She could feel them flex a little beneath her fingertips, and the sensation made her redden.
She shifted her hand up, to avoid that muscled bulk. But now her knuckles skated along the nape of his neck, and his bare skin was startlingly warm, very smooth. Three snips bared his nape—and she found herself staring, somehow startled by it: the whole strong shape of his neck, thick and muscled, corded as he bent forward to allow her better access.
His spine made a hard knob of bone at the base of his neck. In public, his collar would always hide this nexus of muscle and bone, even when his hair did not. It was a secret, intimate, vulnerable place. How many eyes had beheld it? His valet . . . and his late wife. Perhaps she had kissed it. It seemed like a spot one would enjoy kissing, were one his lover.
His skin looked smooth, unblemished. Her thumb strayed over that hard knob of bone to test her hypothesis. Yes: smooth. How solid his bones felt. She pressed with the pad of her thumb. He must be so much heavier than her. His entire frame was built on a different scale, long and lean and tightly knit, but solidly strapped with muscle. The densely packed breadth of his shoulders strained through the lawn of his shirtsleeves, even now, when he was undernourished. And she could feel—
She snatched her hand away. She had been massaging his shoulders.
Appalled, her face flaming, she put the scissors to work again. She prayed, prayed that he had not noticed. But how could he not have noticed?
She heard him loose a soft breath. She dared not look in the mirror.
The silence felt thick, charged. She wanted to wince and curl into a ball. Instead, she snipped very quickly, not taking much care. The main thing was to shorten his hair without stabbing him. If it looked awful, it only served him right; Vickers could fix it later.
At last, of necessity, she finally had to move into his view again. She kept her gaze trained on his hair; she would not have met his eyes now for a hundred pounds. She was probably still flaming with color. Thinking of it made her flush hotter. Drat it!
The hair that flopped into his eyes—she would have to cut that. It had provided her the cause for goading him into this business to begin with. She braced herself, breath held, before stroking the hair away from his temple.
He was staring at her.
She could feel his attention like a hot brand against her cheek. She would not let herself look, but she could envision his eyes, so intensely blue, like subsuming oceans. His breath coasted over her arm, hot, soft. As she leaned in, her wrist brushed against his cheek, and she felt the roughness of his beard. Her mouth went dry.
No. This was not happening. She snipped as quickly as she dared. This close, she could smell the soap on his skin. A clean, fresh musk. Her heart was tripping now; she could not quite manage a steady breath.
She was not the kind of woman to feel this. No intimacy existed between them. She was not helping him because she cared for him.
She had a mercenary, selfish heart and a criminal intent. She was not attracted to him. Olivia Holladay did not have her head turned by any man—least of all this one.
“There,” she said finally, with great relief. But she knew that laying down the scissors would not put an end to this moment. She would have done better never to have touched him.
He tipped his head, then turned it from side to side, examining himself in the mirror. Or so she sensed—for she still could not look at him directly. “Well,” he said at last. “That’s quite . . . awful.”
A giggle exploded from her. She slapped a hand to her mouth, appalled by the vapid sound. “Yes,” she said—or gasped, rather, for she wanted to laugh again, simply from nerves. “I’m afraid it—” Another giggle slipped out, mortifying, bizarre, belonging properly to some dimwitted flirt. She made herself meet his eyes in the mirror; her own were wide, dazzled; they belonged to someone else. “I’m afraid it is.” He looked like a shorn lamb.
His lips twitched. And then, wonder of wonders, he began to laugh, too. “And now the stakes rise, for if you’re as bad at shaving—”
“Oh, no.” She stepped backward. “I won’t be lifting a razor to anyone’s throat. I’ve never done it, and I—” She turned away.
He caught her by the wrist. Her stomach flipped; it did flip upon flip, like a child’s hoop, as she slowly turned back.
“But what of Mr. Johnson?” he murmured.
She swallowed. “There is none, as you already know.”
“Yes,” he said after a moment. “But only now do I begin to think that a pity.”
She must be misunderstanding him. Surely he did not mean that to be as suggestive as it—
His thumb made a slow stroke down her wrist. That again. She sucked in a breath, then yanked her hand free. “I will—I will go find Vickers, to fix it—”
“What needs fixing?” he said lazily. “I believe this has been quite a success.”
She fled. Only halfway down the stairs did she finally figure out what he had done—and then she came to a stop, mortified, wishing the ground would swallow her.
The duke was not trying to seduce her. No, he was far more nefarious. For what he’d done, at long last, was find a way to drive her from his rooms. He’d made a mildly suggestive remark, and she’d startled and fled like a rabbit.
She gritted her teeth. The low, cunning, loutish beast—
He would regret embarrassing her. Oh, yes. For she would not fall for that ploy again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The envelope felt remarkably fat for a reference. Sitting at the window that overlooked the garden, Alastair squeezed it, tested its weight. It must enclose five sheets at the least.
Jones hovered in the doorway, stiff and quivering in his black tails. “It was all in order, Your Grace.”
“I’m sure it was.” He glanced up. Jones looked far plumper than he recalled. Perhaps that was where the five pounds of truffles had gone.
He smiled to himself. After his housekeeper had fled yesterday—if he’d not guessed her a virgin beforehand, he certainly knew her to be one now—he’d stood in front of the mirror for a minute, looking at himself.
The haircut was truly awful. But it was also undoubtedly an improvement—one that she’d fought very hard to win.
Why? He could not understand it. Nothing about her made sense. She was too young, and far too uppity, and . . . natively sensual, though she did not know it. For weeks now he’d felt her lingering glances. Only yesterday had he realized the cause for them. His housekeeper found him attractive.
Women had always admired his looks. What a strange thing to recall—and to be startled by, in remembering. Once he had known how to charm a woman. But this man, the man he was now, barely remembered his own flesh. It was a thing to ignore or to punish . . . until the moment when his housekeeper’s hands had begun to wander across his shoulders.
She had cupped his arms, stroking lightly, as a blind woman might feel a shape in order to envision it. She’d appalled herself, of course.
“If you b-but read the reference,” Jones stammered—he’d been quite abashed, explaining how he’d come to promote a maid to the lofty role of housekeeper—“you will understand, I hope, why I felt so bold as to hire her. Her Ladyship speaks quite highly of Mrs. Johnson’s abilities.”
“Yes.” Alastair stared at the envelope. Read it. That had been the point of summoning Jones, after all. Mrs. Johnson’s educated manner, her peculiar effronteries, her inexplicable determination to rehabilitate him, her touch . . . well. All of it combined had finally awakened his curiosity.
He opened the flap, conscious of a brief burst of dread.
Margaret had written so many letters. The moment he’d thought he’d collected all of them, more had trickled in. Others probably still waited in cubbyholes across town, destined one day to undo him. Letters had come to represent a great evil to him. How could they not?
But as he unfolded this reference, its neat script set him at ease. And a vision flashed though his brain, of his many piles of unopened correspondence. How absurd it suddenly seemed—that because Margaret had abused several sheaves of innocent paper, he’d become unable to look upon any others.
“Ripton,” he said as he read. The viscount’s wife had written this reference; she claimed to have employed Mrs. Johnson for some time. “When did he wed?” Alastair did not know the viscount; the man had taken his seat in the Lords and never returned. He was more devoted to business—no doubt by necessity; his family was full of wastrels and troublemakers, who must cost him a pretty penny.
“Recently, Your Grace. Very recently, I should think.”
And yet the viscountess spoke of her housemaid with the glowing familiarity of a long acquaintance. “So with whom did Mrs. Johnson serve, before Lady Ripton’s marriage? Who are the viscountess’s family?”
The floor squeaked as Jones shifted his weight. “Ah . . . it slips my mind, Your Grace. I will need to consult Debrett’s for that information.”
While Miss Johnson certainly is knowledgeable and skilled in her application of waxes and polishes, I think her potential sorely underused by such a position . . .
This was no ordinary reference, but a hagiography. Olivia Johnson was dedicated, selfless, and possessed of any number of unlikely skills: Shorthand. Typing. Mathematics. She was a past master of etiquette, an excellent hand at planning dinner parties (with a particular talent for the design of floral centerpieces), and an irreproachable manager of complex correspondence.
He snorted. Perhaps his housekeeper was older than she looked. Or perhaps hypnotism also numbered among her talents, and the viscountess had written this letter in an obedient daze.
“Jones, tell me—” Alastair glanced up and found his butler beaming at him. “What is it?”
“Oh—” Jones straightened his face. “Nothing, Your Grace.” But then the smile twitched at his lips again.
“You’re smirking.” Startled pleasure wisped through him. It seemed his ability to read faces had returned wholesale. “Speak your mind.”
“Forgive me, Your Grace. Only . . . it’s so marvelous to see you taking an interest.” Jones bowed low. “Pardon me; the remark was inappropriate. I most humbly beg your forgiveness, I can’t imagine what came over me—”
Alastair lifted a hand. “No need.” No need to pretend, or to dance around the subject: for the last few months, he had not been . . . present.
And now Jones looked like a cat in the cream, for he imagined . . . what? That the old routine had resumed? That now he would be butler again to England’s brightest hope?
Ignorance, they said, was bliss. It was what came afterward—the shattering revelations—that wounded so mortally. He would let Jones wallow in ignorance for a little while longer.
He rose. Jones made a stumbling retreat, all the way into the sitting room.
For God’s sake. His housekeeper was right: his entire staff seemed shocked whenever he moved, as though they im
agined him incapable of it.
“Where is Mrs. Johnson now?” This reference had cleared up nothing. She seemed to him all the more baffling in light of it.
“Downstairs, I believe.” Jones was wringing his wrists. “In the study. Sorting through your . . . correspondence? She assured me that she had your permission.”
Downstairs.
He smiled blackly. Very well. He was not a child. He could send for her, yes. But let the servants see that he could not only rise from a chair, he could also—O holy miracle—descend a staircase.
He strode through the sitting room. The door opened into the hallway without argument. Indeed, it swung open so easily that for a moment he hesitated, stupidly surprised.
The butler’s slightly labored breathing announced how closely he followed. Only Jones’s presence behind him forced Alastair out.
The hallway smelled of wax and flowers, like a church before a funeral. He refused to draw it too deeply into his lungs.
Familiar furnishings lined the path. A lacquer vase full of roses. The bust of his great-grandfather. Oil paintings of past battles, distant victories of empire. An easy walk. A short trip. Downstairs, so simple.
The thick carpet absorbed his footsteps. Why did this seem so difficult? He had chosen to stay in his rooms; he had not been trapped there. Why was his chest constricting? He reached out to touch the bank of windows overlooking the street, and the chill of the glass startled him, yanked him to a stop.
These windows had been warm when Margaret died. For months after her passing, he had paced their length. At night, they had glared like blank eyes, blinded by the darkness outside. Anyone might have stood concealed in that darkness, watching him.
And what might that onlooker see, but a fool whose bliss had been borne of ignorance? His achievements had been flukes, happy accidents. His defeats had been deliberate, engineered by his wife.
How cleverly she had schemed against him. She should have been the politician. He’d often told her so, by way of praise for her advice. Now he knew so, by way of her skill at betrayals.
After a time, he had started to avoid windows. His world had contracted to his private chambers, because there he need not worry what face he showed the world. The one he had worn before her death was a lie. The one he had discovered afterward was unbearable, grotesque, too much like his father’s: fit only for hiding away.