“Well, well, what’s bitten you this morning? A bit testy aren’t we?”
“You are the one who came crashing in here casting daggers just now—not me. If you don’t want to procure your own manservant, Prowse will see to it for you, end of issue. Now then, what say we try and have a civil breakfast?”
The meal was begun in silence. Drake studied the steward’s tight-lipped scowl and twitching mustache. Yes, indeed, he’d been away too long. Ellery had gotten too comfortable at Drake’s Lair in his absence. He’d briefly perused the ledgers, and unless he missed his guess, his quip about doing something evil with the books wasn’t entirely left of the mark. It would be best if he spoke with the accounts auditors privately… but how to manage it?
“Is everything settled at the Terrill croft?” he said, looking for a lead-in toward that.
“We’ll soon find out,” Ellery replied curtly, around a mouthful of sausage. “This flaw is a ripper.”
“I want you to go ‘round and make sure.”
“In
that
?” the steward erupted, making a wild gesture toward the windows rattling in their casings, the view obscured by sheeting rain. “Are you addled, or just jug-bit again? What about the auditors?”
“They probably won’t even make it—not in this coming from Truro,” Drake opined. He shrugged. “Like as not, they’ll stop over somewhere.” That was a bald-faced lie. Bradshaw and Mills would wade through a tidal wave to do his bidding. He paid them handsomely enough.
“Do you really expect me to go all the way out there this morning in that?”
“I do. I’m hardly asking you to ride, you know. Take one of the carriages. And, while you’re in the village, I need you to go ‘round to the livery. My trunks are due on the stage this morning, and I need you to wait there and bring them, elsewise they’ll sit in the station ‘till kingdom come. I’m expecting two horses as well, Andalusians that I purchased in Spain—well,
stole
, actually—but that’s another story. Instruct the station master that I’ll want them boarded until after the flaw, when I can get them out here safely.”
“Outstanding! You don’t mind that I drown myself in a washed out bog, but you won’t suffer two Spanish hacks to make the trip.”
“They’re hardly that, old boy.”
“Can’t you send one of the servants?”
“Who? I can’t spare Prowse or Griggs or Fry, and who will serve if I send one of the footmen? You are the one who cut back on the staff in my absence, Jim. I seem to recall quite a few more faces hereabout five years ago.”
“I shortened the staff to save you blunt, Drake. We were all but shut up here with you away. I thought you’d be appreciative.”
“We weren’t exactly in Dun territory when I left, to my knowledge, and I’m hardly a cheeseparing miser—neither have you ever been to my knowledge, when it came to
my
blunt. It’s almost as though you didn’t expect me to return.”
“My, but you are in a taking today aren’t you?” Ellery observed, studying him for a moment. “Good God, what’s happened to your queue?” he cried.
“It met with a little accident.”
“How?”
“It isn’t important. You’d best finish that and be on your way before this blasted storm gets any worse.”
“You really do expect me to go out in this maelstrom.”
“I’d go myself,” Drake said smoothly, “but there is the outside chance that the auditors will arrive, and we have a houseguest. You had already retired when we got in or I would have told you.”
“A houseguest?”
“A friend of yours as it happens… Lady Demelza Ahern.”
“Demelza… here?” the steward said, fork suspended.
“Her cottage burned down last night,” Drake informed him, casually buttering a morsel of bread. “I passed by just in time to get her out before it went up like a Roman candle.”
“The devil you say! What were you doing way out there? I thought you were coming home to rest when you left the Terrills.”
“I went for a ride instead,” Drake returned, opting not to divulge his visit with Dr. Hale. “Gideon needed the exercise, and I gave him his head awhile. It’s a good thing I did. She would have burned alive in that tinderbox. It went up in seconds.”
“Well, well, and where was I when all this was going on?”
“Snug in your bed evidently. Fry was rubbing down that nag of yours when we arrived, and then Griggs told me you had retired.”
“Demelza…
here
,” the steward said absently. “Well, that’s knocked me off my pins I daresay.”
“Do be discreet, Jim,” Drake warned him. “This isn’t a bordello. Her stay here is temporary—only until other, more suitable arrangements can be made for her. Then, of course, you can do whatever you like. Your peccadilloes are certainly no affair of mine, but regardless of how you’ve been conducting yourself under this roof in my absence, I am come home now, and I am not running a brothel. Keep your distance.”
“Bloody hell!” Ellery snarled. Scudding his chair out behind him, he vaulted to his feet and tossed his serviette down in his plate of eggs. “If you weren’t my oldest and dearest friend, I’d call you out over this, Drake. Demelza Ahern is a
lady
, though I doubt you’d recognize one any longer. There is nothing between us—not that I wouldn’t like there to be—but thus far she has ignored my overtures. Where did you get the idea we were an item?”
“From you, actually, you said she was an ‘acquaintance’. Where you’re concerned, that means only one thing—a conquest. I just assumed—”
“Well you assumed wrong, though I haven’t given up. That was a low blow. And for the record, I have
never
compromised my position here, or abused my privilege in such a manner. I believe you owe me an apology.”
“All right, all right! If I’ve misjudged the gel, I apologize. I’ll admit it—I am out of sorts. You know how I get when the auditors are due, and I’m worried about those horses; they’re worth a fortune. I practically had to sell my soul to get them away from the French.”
“Never mind Demelza, and the devil take your bloody horses! You’ve misjudged
me
. Dammit, Drake, I thought you knew me better.”
“That’s just the trouble… I do know you. But let’s not quarrel. Finish your breakfast and make yourself scarce. I want a word with Lady Demelza Ahern in private. It’s important that I have it behind me, and the topic of it settled in advance of the auditors, in case they do descend upon us. Besides, the interview is overdue. I wouldn’t want it bruited about that the Earl of Shelldrake was lacking as a host. Oh, and don’t forget to pass the word among her friends that she is quite safe here at Drake’s Lair.”
*
“You can get down now, Miss Melly,” Mrs. Laity muttered, meanwhile cutting the thread at the hem of her frock with her teeth.
Melly stepped off the stool and gazed into the cheval glass, turning this way and that. “It will have to do, I suppose,” she said, smoothing the sprigged muslin skirt. “Thank you, Mrs. Laity.”
“You’re such a tiny little thing,” the housekeeper observed. She gestured toward a pile of frocks laid out on the jacquard lounge across the way. “I’ll take up the rest o’ that lot just as fast as I can, don’t you worry. What I can’t take on, what with my other duties, I’ll give over to Zoe. She’s a fair hand with a needle and thread herself.”
“Don’t bother Zoe. I’ll hike them up with a sash or something for the present. I’ll not be keeping these frocks. I’m only borrowing them. I’ve no choice. I can’t very well go about in my nightgown.”
Blood rushed to her cheeks. The earl had seen right through that nightgown. She would never forget his hooded eyes—those strange, ice blue eyes—raking her seductively. She actually had to ask him to avert his gaze, and even at that he’d hesitated, feasting upon the sight. There was no mistaking his need when he’d pulled her against him. The ghost of his arousal still lingered.
“But his lordship wants you to have them, lass,” the housekeeper said, jolting her back to the present.
“You can tell his lordship that I prefer to acquire my own frocks, Mrs. Laity,” she replied haughtily. She would not be compromised.
“Begging your pardon, Miss Melly, but with what? You may as well face it, you’re caught without a feather to fly with.”
“
Again
!” Melly groaned on a defeated sigh. “I did have a bit put by in that cottage, too. ‘Twas notes. Gone now—up in smoke.”
“Ahhh, don’t take on, miss,” the housekeeper soothed. “You’ll put things to rights. You’ve done it before, and you’ll do it again. But in the meantime… take the frocks. They’re only going to waste with the countess gone.”
“How did she die, Mrs. Laity?”
“‘Twas dreadful,” said the housekeeper, gathering the gowns in her arms. “She went toxic. ’Twas a miscarriage—a boy it was… an heir. He came on too early—months too early, and took her coming.”
“How awful.”
“When it happened, I thought his lordship was going straight to Bedlam. He bought himself a commission instead, and took off after Wellington to join the war on the Peninsula all out straight. He was wounded at Salamanca, and then again after. That last was nearly his last to hear him tell it. He stopped writing to Mr. Ellery before any o’ that. None of us ever expected to see him again, truth to tell.”
Melly was about to pose another question, when a light rap at her dressing room door sent Mrs. Laity waddling to answer. She opened to a mousy little housemaid uniformed in black twill and starched white linen.
“His lordship wishes m’lady to join him in the study, mum,” she said.
“Take these, Zoe,” Mrs. Laity replied, thrusting the frocks at her. “You’re going to help me take up the hems. Cart them below and get to it. Measure them all by the one I’ve pinned up—the blue muslin—and mind the pins, or I’ll have to do it all over again.”
“Yes, mum,” the maid said, all but invisible beneath the mountain of lawn and muslin and china silk.
“I’ll show you down, Miss Melly,” Mrs. Laity offered, leading her into the hallway.
The maid disappeared by way of the back staircase, while the housekeeper led her below and left her in front of the study door, with a pat on the arm and a reassuring nod.
Melly raised her hand to knock, and retracted it. At best it was going to be embarrassing. He had seen her nearly naked after all.
Don’t blush
.
Not now
. But it was far too late for that. The heat of hot blood that had rushed to her cheeks had narrowed her eyes.
She glanced down at her décolleté, and tugged at the neckline trying to raise it. It was no use. Though it was perfectly in fashion, and quite proper according to the styles of the day, the frock was cut far too low in her estimation, but it wouldn’t budge, and there was nothing for it but to square her shoulders and knock.
“Come,” said a deep voice from the other side, and she lifted the gilded latch handles on the towering study doors, stepped boldly over the threshold, and faced the dragon in his lair.
“I trust you slept comfortably, my lady?” the earl greeted, surging to his feet, meanwhile setting the ledger before him aside.
She stood were she was, openly staring.
“Is something amiss?” he inquired.
She made an awkward gesture toward her hair and then his, and her hand flew to her lips.
“Oh,” he said, “my queue? It became a burnt offering last night, to what exactly, I’m not all that certain.”
“I… I’m sorry, my lord,” she breathed.
“Does it suit?”
“My lord?”
“My hair. Do you approve?”
“What matter if I approve or disapprove, my lord; you’ve already been shorn.”
“Indeed,” he said, lifting his eyebrow in a manner that riveted her with strange flutters. “Come in and take a seat. I’m expecting my accounts auditors shortly, and I have a proposition to make to you beforehand.”
“A proposition, my lord?” she said, sitting stiff-backed in a Duncan Phyfe chair across the way as he resumed his seat behind the desk. She had no choice but to sit spine-rigid. The neck of that frock most definitely was too low.
“Yes, my lady.”
“Are you mocking me, Lord Shelldrake?”
“Am I…?”
“The… ‘my lady’,” she explained.
“You are Lady Demelza Ahern, are you not?”
“I haven’t been addressed as such since I came to Cornwall.”
“That does not negate it, my lady, neither does your… having put on tick.”
“No.” She said low-voiced. Would he just get on with it and have done? She couldn’t take shallow breaths forever, and deep ones in that frock would be dangerous. He’d seen enough of her anatomy as it was. “You were saying… about a proposition, my lord?”
“Ahhh, yes, that’s intrigued you has it?” he replied. “A question first… what is between yourself and my steward, Jim Ellery?”
“I beg your pardon, my lord?” she said, incredulous.”
“It’s a simple enough question, and you seem an intelligent sort. Are you and Mr. Ellery… how shall I say… courting?”
“I don’t have to explain my personal affairs to you, sir,” she snapped, vaulting out of her chair. “That I was forced to accept your hospitality in my predicament does not give you license to interrogate me regarding matters of a highly personal nature. Why did you bring me here? You could have seen me to the Terrills—or the Tinkers, for that matter. Either would have gladly taken me in. I demand to be taken back to the village at once. You can’t keep me prisoner here!”
“No one is keeping you prisoner, my lady. The Terrill croft has not been proven sound since we attached the new roof. I’ll likely be taking
them
in before the day is out, what with the way that wind is driving the rain out there. Besides, that cottage is barely large enough to accommodate the five of them. And I do not foist gentle ladies off on Gypsies in the dead of night—even if they are camped on my land. It offends my sensibilities.”
“You have my permission to see me there now. They are my friends.”
“Unfortunately, I cannot. Jim has gone into the village on an errand, and in his absence I must be in residence for the auditors. Besides, you aren’t going anywhere in this flaw. It simply isn’t safe.”
“You deliberately let Mr. Ellery go off without me?”
“Aaa
haaa
! So there is something between you.”