Instead, she said sharply, “Very true, Your Grace. Bedlam is quieter. I imagined you must be disassembling your furniture.”
He shifted a little, bringing his upper half into clarity. He was undressed from the waist up.
She startled back into the door frame. His leanness brought into prominence the sort of muscles generally stored beneath a healthy layer of fat—and clothing. “If I have interrupted—”
“What of it? It seems to be a habit of yours.” He reached for his shirt, drawing it on. His abdomen flexed with every movement. Rather a fascinating effect.
She yanked her attention back to her cause. He seemed more voluble today. That wasn’t saying much, but she would press the opportunity while she found it. “These rooms should be cleaned, Your Grace.”
“No.”
“I am informed that you’ve forbidden the maids entry for a month or more. And to be frank . . .” She made herself look directly at him, willing herself not to redden. “It smells in here.”
Momentarily he looked astonished. It was the most animated expression she had ever seen him wear, though it consisted merely of the widening of his eyes, and the briefest lift of his brows.
And then, miracle of miracles, he laughed. Not for long, not with much energy, but it was definitely, distinctly, a laugh. “And what do they smell like, ma’am? Pray tell me, how do I stink?”
“Like perspiration, I’m sorry to say.”
He gave her a mocking smile. “How shocking,” he said. “God alone knows what I’ve been doing up here.”
If she staged a fire, he’d flee this room quick enough. But how did one stage a fire without setting one? Arson was a step too far for her. “It would not take above an hour,” she said. “A very quick cleaning—”
“Must I sack you again?” He stood, emerging from the shadow of the canopy. His disordered, shaggy blond hair lent him a piratical quality, amplified by his wolfish smile. “The newspapers will enjoy that detail: being fired twice.”
She inched toward the door. She saw no bottles at hand, but for all she knew, he might throw a chair. “Indeed not. However, I think your mood would profit from cleaner surroundings. And perhaps you might open the curtains”—in for a penny, in for a pound—“for if one wallows in the dark, one cannot complain if one’s mood follows suit, you know.”
All expression slipped from his face as he regarded her. She had the uncanny sense that she was losing him; that although the curtains could not block out all the daylight, he was falling into darkness again, all the same.
“The room stinks,” she repeated, to goad him.
His face tightened again. “Are you aware,” he said, “that you are speaking to your master?”
“My employer. Yes, Your Grace.”
A line appeared between his brows. “Precisely what I said.”
If there was one thing she could not abide, it was the sloppy use of language. She would have expected better from him, but clearly he had lost his faculties. “Not so, Your Grace. You employ me, but you hardly master me.”
His brows rose. He looked her up and down. “Have you struck your head recently, Mrs. Johnson?”
She laughed.
His expression did not change. Apparently that had not been a joke. He’d lost his wit, too.
“No,” she said, “but I thank you for the concern.”
“It was not concern.” Now he spoke through his teeth. “It was simple logic, for I can think of no other reason for your bizarre and impertinent behavior. Again.”
No, of course he couldn’t. It would take a great leap for him to guess that she lay awake at night stricken by fear that Bertram’s man would somehow locate her here; that every hour that passed led him closer, while she squandered her chance to escape to safety, somewhere far from London, and all on a desperate gamble that among Marwick’s papers might lie the only chance at freedom she would ever receive—
“Forgive me,” she said. “But I think of your well-being.” And that was true. Her motive was not entirely selfish. It did . . . concern her . . . to see a man in his prime lounging about like an invalid. So his wife had betrayed him. So he had made himself into a strange, maniacal, bullying hermit. What of it? He had the freedom to make a new start. If he wished, he could redeem himself, patch up matters with his brother, acquire a new wife who would help him forget that sordid business with the last one. Recover the man he’d once been.
But all of this would be difficult to accomplish from his bedroom.
Why, she was irritated with him. If she could resist the impulse to pity herself, he certainly should be able to do the same.
She turned around and yanked open the curtains.
The sudden flood of light revealed an atrocious amount of dust. Dust danced crazily in the air; dust coated the writing table; dust lined the edge of the carpet. “Goodness,” she said. “It’s a wonder you can breathe at all.”
“Mrs. Johnson.” His voice was rife with disbelief. “Get the hell out.”
She turned, prepared to defend herself, and the words fell apart in her mouth.
To have seen him in the gloom was one thing. But in the light, his beauty was radiant. His hair blazed. His thickly lashed eyes looked as blue as jewels. His skin was tawny by design, fine-grained, and shadows girded the dramatic blades of his cheekbones. Her gaze dropped to discover that he had shoved up his sleeves, revealing blond hair that glimmered on his muscled forearms.
Light was his natural element. In it, he became blinding, a golden creature who might easily write sonnets to outdo Shakespeare’s—or inspire them . . .
She turned away, disconcerted, nervous in some strange new way. Her gaze fell on the hearth. She frowned at it, then stepped forward and ran a finger across the mantel. It came away a sooty gray.
Turning back, she held up this finger for his edification, and made a tsking noise. “No wonder you feel unwell.”
He was staring at her as though she were the lunatic. He looked as disconcerted as she felt. How . . . diverting. She was suddenly beginning to enjoy herself.
Oh, dear. No, no, no. This determination rising within her was unwise and unwanted. She had promised herself she would do only the bare minimum. Marwick and his disorderly house were not her problems to solve.
But the bully needed bullying. It was so obvious, suddenly. Whether or not he realized it, Marwick was badly in need of her direction. And she meant to direct him out of this room.
He bent down in one graceful move and retrieved something from beneath the bed. When he rose, he held a bottle. “This seems to be a language you understand.”
As their eyes locked, a sense of déjà vu overcame her. In the space of a heartbeat, she placed the feeling: this was not so different from the recent scene with Polly.
He was trying to intimidate her. But if he wanted to throw the bottle, surely he already would have.
And if she was wrong?
She squared her jaw. She could survive a blackened eye from a bottle—but Thomas Moore, she was not so hopeful of. “Do you want to live in squalor? And all these books”—she nudged a pile with her toe and sent it toppling—“would do better on a shelf. Why . . .” Her voice failed. The collapse of the pile had knocked open one of the volumes. Surely that painted illustration wasn’t . . .
She fell to her knees. “This is an illuminated manuscript!” She snatched it up, studying the gilded halo of Saint Bernard. “This Romanesque style—it dates from the thirteenth century at the latest!”
He said something she didn’t catch, for now her eyes were darting from pile to pile, the possibilities multiplying, wondrous and fearsome at once. “What else have you got lying about on the floor?” On the floor. “What are you doing to these books?”
A hand caught her arm. He was pulling her to her feet. Dragging her toward the door. But her eye had caught on something. Good heavens, it couldn’t be.
She ripped free and lunged across the room, lifting away a copy of Leviathan and Don Quixote in the
Spanish, to uncover . . .
She held it up, balancing it on the flat of her palms, suspended between awe and rage. “This,” she whispered, unable to remove her eyes, “is Newton’s Principia. An original edition.”
Silence.
She looked up and her heart tripped. He was towering over her, his face thunderous. He had not finished buttoning his shirt. His collar sagged apart to expose a generous triangle of skin, and—heavens above, his left nipple lay exposed to her sight.
She clasped the book to her chest and goggled. She had seen a variety of male torsos in her life, most of them belonging to adolescent country boys who cast off decorum at the sight of a fishing pond. None of them had looked like this. He had hair on his chest. Who could have guessed it?
“Have you a death wish?” he snarled. “Or have you, perhaps, lost the ability to understand English?”
She backed away from him, angling toward the door. He matched her step for step, prowling like a lion on the scent of a lamb—not a comfortable analogy. But these innocent books. She was stumbling over them, gilt-edged, calfskin-bound, priceless. She must save them from him.
She had one foot out the door when she caught sight again of the illustrated manuscript. She could not abandon it here. The poor darling! She lunged forward and snatched it up.
“Put that down!” he roared.
“You may keep them all,” she cried. “Move the entire library up here, but you will not keep them on the floor!”
She hopped backward and pulled the door shut in his face.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I need two bookcases from the library.” Olivia took a seat opposite Jones’s desk. “At once. I don’t . . .”
She leaned forward to take a better look at the newspaper beneath Jones’s elbow. No, she was not imagining the headline: BERTRAM’S BID PROVES VICTORIOUS.
“This cursed matter of the truffles!” Jones rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I have reviewed an entire month’s worth of meals. We certainly did not use them. None of the dishes required them. And I’ve spoken with every member of the kitchen staff. Nobody claims to know—”
She cleared her throat. “I will find out. Only give me two strong footmen to move the bookcases first.”
He frowned. “What? Where do you wish them moved?”
She knew very well how he would respond to her truthful reply. “Just give me the shelves, and I will solve the case of the truffles”—she snapped her fingers—“quicker than Scotland Yard.”
“I don’t think Scotland Yard cares much for missing truffles.” Jones sounded mournful. “Besides, I have already spoken to everyone who might have accessed them.”
Her eyes strayed again to the newspaper. In what had Bertram proved victorious? A glorious death, dared she hope? “Give me the bookcases,” she said absently.
He sighed and shut the ledger. “Very well. Have Bradley and Fenton move them.”
“Thank you.” She rose. Just walk away. Don’t torment yourself. “Are you done with that paper?”
He glanced toward it. “Oh—yes, indeed. Do you follow the news?” He smoothed a fond hand across the newsprint. “Time was, I ironed four newspapers a day. His Grace had a prodigious appetite for them. But now he refuses to read a one. Were it not for me, nobody in this house would have a use for them.” He grimaced. “But the fashion magazines, Mrs. Johnson—and the racing sheets, and cheap novels—you should see the rubbish that goes into the bins each week.”
She made a sympathetic noise. “I’m a great reader, myself.”
Jones handed the paper to her. “Of course, I must admit that the news does not always make for pleasant reading.” A click of the tongue conveyed his disgust. “You will see that Salisbury has filled His Grace’s post. It was only a matter of time, of course, but it does pain one, to see it.”
She scanned the first paragraph. Why, Bertram had been appointed to the prime minister’s cabinet. And had shown a ‘laudable degree of Christian humility’ in his acceptance of the post. That hypocritical snake. No wonder he wanted her dead: her very existence put the lie to his entire façade.
She stuck the newspaper beneath her arm. “At the very least, Mr. Jones, the news makes wonderful kindling.”
* * *
Under Olivia’s supervision, Bradley and Fenton carried the bookcases one by one to the top of the stairs. But as soon as they realized their next destination was the duke’s chambers, they stopped dead and began to bray like quarrelsome mules.
Olivia was tempted to swat them on their hindquarters with the newspaper. “Have you no pride? Bawling like children in the dark. What do you imagine he’ll do to you?”
She regretted the question as soon as it left her mouth. “Don’t answer that,” she said hastily, and left them squawking in the hall while she proceeded onward.
A very small part of her was nervous about this plan. The rest of her was furiously, even self-righteously resolved. There was nobody but her to look out for the sacred treasures lying abandoned, defenseless, on Marwick’s floor. Forget his punches and bottle throwing; of all unforgivable debaucheries, she could think of none more depraved than tossing Newton onto the carpet.
The door to the duke’s bedroom stood shut. She tried the handle and found he had locked it. Coward.
She put her face to the crack. “Listen,” she said. “I do not like to use threats, but for the sake of those books, I shall.”
Silence.
She took a deep breath. He left her no choice. “If you refuse to let me place your books on proper shelves, I shall slip laudanum into your food so you have no choice but to let me do it.” She paused, expectant. It was a very foul proposal; surely it merited another sacking at least.
But he did not reply.
“Very well,” she said. “A man can go without food. But can you go without water? I will drug that as well. You are hoarding a good portion of mankind’s priceless heritage, and I shall not let you destroy it.”
The dead bolt scraped. She skipped backward, positioning herself by the exit to the hallway, poised to flee.
He stepped into the doorway, staring at her. His hair stood up every which way, but at least he had buttoned his shirt. “You are insane,” he said flatly.
“Coming from you, Your Grace, the diagnosis is very persuasive.”
His eyes narrowed. He seemed curiously unfazed by her roundabout accusation that he was the household authority on lunacy. “Didn’t I sack you? Why are you still here?”
She had been wondering that, too. “Likely because you haven’t told your butler of it yet.”
“I will remedy that.” The door started to close. “Go pack your bags.”
She crept forward. “And who will answer you when you ring? Everyone else is too terrified to come to your door.”
The door paused. But he stood somewhere behind it, so she continued. “Indeed, you’re lucky there’s a dumbwaiter, or you would have starved by now. Say, you could send your notes down with your dinner tray.”
The door opened again. He looked bored. “Eager to be sacked, aren’t you?”
“No. But for those books, I will gladly take the risk.”
“Ridiculous,” he said mildly. “Are you sure you weren’t an actress in your past, Miss Johnson? A very poor one, I might add—no doubt you were sacked from there as well. But you were well suited for farces, I don’t doubt.”
“Principia is not a joke! That book—”
“Is mine,” he said. “To do with as I please.”
She resented his reasoning, chiefly because she could not think of a convincing way to refute it.
Instead, she put her hands on her hips and took another step toward him. “Perhaps Jones has not sacked me because, thanks to me, your house no longer resembles a zoo. It’s cleaner now than it has been in months, not that you would know it. But I assure you, your rooms could be cleaner, too—and far less pungent.”
The door slammed shut.
“But I will settle for the books!”
she called at the door. “Only let me bring in shelves for them!”
In the ensuing silence, she listened intently, not daring to breathe. The dead bolt did not turn. That was surely as good as an agreement.
She rushed into the hallway. The footmen were halfway down the stairs. “Come back at once,” she yelled down at them, “or I will say you were the ones who stole the truffles!”
Bradley looked up and sighed. “We’ll take it as far as the sitting room,” he said. “But no farther, ma’am. I’m sorry to say we like our heads in one piece.”
* * *
“But he has never actually thrown a bottle at anyone,” Olivia said. She had gathered the upper staff into her small sitting room after supper. Jones was nursing a cup of tea that Cook had brewed to “settle his nerves,” which, so he said, were suffering greatly, now that he knew what Olivia had done with the bookcases.
“You just wait,” Vickers said gloomily. Whenever Jones and Cook looked away, he was sneaking slugs from a leather flask. “You only got them into the sitting room. They won’t ever go farther.”
“They might have, if only I could move them myself. You didn’t see him—he didn’t mind them so very much . . .” Olivia hesitated. “Well, all right, I’m not certain he knows they’re there; he didn’t come out into the sitting room to see them. But he didn’t argue with me, either.”
Vickers sputtered on his mouthful. “He’s a bloody duke. P’raps you’ve never seen him with all his sails flying, but trust me, it ain’t his way to argue with the likes of us. You say the wrong word, and he’ll simply . . .” He drew a finger across his throat.
“That’s true,” Jones said—making his first contribution since he’d lapsed into a choking fit a quarter hour ago, in the wake of Olivia’s confession about the new location of the bookcases.
Nevertheless, his remark was enough to win him a pat on the arm from Cook. “Quite right,” she agreed. “You must watch yourself, Mrs. Johnson. Being turned out without a reference . . .” She shook her head. “You won’t like it, dearie. Happened to me once, and it took years to recover from it.”