Everything I Ever Wanted (46 page)

"I would not have Margrave think I am grown tolerant of the opium. It was for his benefit only."

Lady Margrave's dark eyes narrowed a fraction as she studied India's carefully schooled features. "I do not think I believe you."

Under the countess's scrutiny India felt herself faltering. "It was a touch of light-headedness only. I am fine."

"You are certain you will be able to thwack him?"

India smiled faintly. "Oh, yes."

"Good."

South climbed the servants' stairs to the east wing, a bucket of coal in each hand. His progress was slow and deliberate. He had accustomed himself to the idea that someone might be watching him. It was a consequence of working at Marlhaven, he was learning. One adopted the manner of the staff whether one wished to or not. After a full sennight spent in the company of the servants, he had come around to their way of thinking. The Earl of Margrave had a disconcerting habit of appearing in odd places at unlikely moments.

Thus far, South had managed to avoid him. On occasion it had been a narrow thing. There had been the morning Margrave had come to the kitchen just as South was leaving. Had Mrs. Hoover not shooed him away from her soup kettle, he would have come toe-to-toe with the earl. Margrave's visit to the underbelly of the great house was a curiosity to South. He was not certain his own father knew where the kitchen at Redding was, and he could say the same for any number of his peers. The kitchens were purposely built far from the dining rooms so the cooking odors would not assail the family and guests. If the food arrived coldand it often didthen so be it. At least the delicate olfactory senses of the aristocracy were not offended.

South's cynical smile turned into a grimace as one of the pails he was carrying hit the lip of a step and jarred his arm all the way to the shoulder. A few coals were thrown out of the pail and bounced on the stairs. Swearing softly, he set the buckets down and retrieved the bits of coal, tidying up as he went.

Bending over his work, he had a sudden vision of the picture he made, his long, loose-limbed frame hunched in the narrow stairwell, small dustpan and brush in hand, sweeping up the rear servants' passage and making a bloody good job of it lest he be let go like so many others before him. The thought of what his friends would make of it made South's sardonic smile return. He hooked the dust pan and brush on his leather apron, hefted the pails, and continued up the stairs.

There had been a second incident where his path had almost crossed the earl's. He had been leaning on his shovel in the doorway of the coal house when he saw one of the grooms leading a striking cinnamon-colored Arabian from the stables. He watched their progress across the yard and realized the mount had been prepared for the earl. Hoping to learn where Margrave's morning ride might take him, South left his shovel in the doorway and started to follow.

Margrave surprised him, though, coming from the rear of the manor and walking briskly through the crusty snow in South's direction. Not wishing to tempt fate by testing the strength of his disguise, South had ducked his head. It wouldn't have mattered. Margrave passed within two feet and never noticed him. South had stood there for some time, watching Margrave accept a leg up, then marking the earl's route to the northeast.

South had waited until moonrise before he left his bed in the airless cupboard near the kitchen and walked the same route, following the Arabian's trail for miles in the cold before admitting to himself it led nowhere. There was no hunting lodge or trysting cottage, no vacant tenant's house or crofter's shed where Margrave had secreted India away. The earl's morning ride had been without any purpose in regard to India. It had been meant only for his own pleasure.

That realization managed to work its way under South's skin as nothing else had. There was no one to rail against. No one save himself to curse. He was alone in a way he had never been before, and he would have felt exactly the same surrounded by his friends at White's. This aloneness was not about who was with him, but who was not.

It required no special talent on his part to bring her laughter to his ears or her hesitant smile to his mind's eye. She was by turns sassy and shy, confident behind the footlights, cautious in front of them. He heard her softly accented voice say his name. He was never"my lord" to her now. Matthew, she said. The sound of it was carried on the back of the wind.

Was she frightened? he wondered. Or merely resigned. When she heard his voice, what was it that he said to her?

You cannot expect that I will always save you, Hortense.

The echo of those words, the first words he had ever spoken to her, left him with an ache in his chest where he thought he was only numb. Hidden in a moon shadow cast by a stand of trees, Marlhaven an ominous silhouette in the distance, South finally surrendered to his grief and wept.

Straightening as he reached the top of the stairs, South also pulled himself back to the present. He paused and peered down the long hallway. A phalanx of brass sconces lined the walls and provided arcs of candlelight the entire length of the corridor. South's explorations in and around Marlhaven had been largely accomplished at night after most of the staff had retired, but this area remained unknown to him because of Margrave's presence. During the day, the position he held had not afforded him opportunity to visit the upper floors of the east wing. Although he carried coal into the house, it was the duty of the liveried footmen or chambermaids to distribute it among the 127 rooms that required heating.

This evening, however, there had been no one save him to answer the ring when more coals were needed. Although it seemed to pain Mrs. Hoover to do so, she had warned him to step lively and sent him on his way. The earl, she whispered, had no tolerance for sloth or infirmity.

South knew he was supposed to leave the coal buckets at the top of the stairs and remove himself quickly from the corridor. It had never been his intention to do so. He started down the wide hallway, pausing at each closed door, listening just a moment for voices and movement.

The presence of a hallway in this wing struck South as an oddity. There were additions to the house and improvements made over the centuries, but the east wing was original to Marlhaven and was likely to have served as the family's private apartments for much of that time. Hallways were not common to Elizabethan structures. People moved through adjoining rooms and connecting doors, not along an outside corridor. Privacy in the bedchamber and lady's boudoir was provided by great four-poster beds with their heavy curtains drawn around. South wondered at the costliness of carving up the rooms to add the hallway, and what purpose had been served by it. He could think of only one from Margrave's perspective: to keep others out.

South counted five doors along the hall. He knew there were more than five rooms on the other side, but that each door probably represented the entrance to a suite. If India was a prisoner in this part of the house, then he would have to find the proper entrance to her suite, and finally the room where she was being held. Getting her out could prove as difficult as getting in. In this case, one entrance meant one exit. South understood the nature of Margrave's trap on this occasion.

The metal pails clattered loudly as South dropped them on the hardwood floor. The noise was meant to bring Margrave out, and it was successful within seconds. South barely had time to tip one of the pails and scatter coals before the earl was stepping out from the door at the far end of the hall. Kneeling, South bent quickly to his task of cleaning up the mess just as he had on the stairs.

"Bloody hell," Margrave said, striding down the hall. "What's this? What's happened here?"

"Beggin' your pardon, my lord." South kept his head bent as he gathered the coals. Margrave's foot came down on South's hand as it curled around one of the bits. The action was intended to hurt, and South could not pretend that it didn't. He grimaced under the grinding weight that Margrave applied to his knuckles.

"Where's Smythson?" Margrave demanded. He eased the pressure on South's knuckles but did not remove his foot. "Why isn't he here?"

"I don't know, m'lord. I was the only one who could come wi' the coals."

"Weren't you instructed to leave them at the end of the hall?"

"Aye. But which end? I was thinkin'."

Margrave was unamused. "Stupid old man." He ground his foot again, harder than he had done before. "Clean them up."

South could not accomplish the task single-handedly, and he could not ask the earl to remove his foot. He picked up as many coals as he could reach with his free hand and awkwardly managed the dustpan and brash to sweep some of the soot. It was only then that Margrave stepped back. South's fingers uncurled slowly around the bit of coal cutting into his palm. His hand tingled with the rush of blood. In his hurry to answer the earl's bidding, the gloves he usually wore to haul the coal had been left lying on the stool by the kitchen hearth. He'd had nothing to protect himself from the heel of Margrave's grinding boot.

What he wanted to do was grab the earl by the ankle and upend him in the hallway, smash his face with a well-planted fist, then push a bit of coal into the space he'd make by breaking most of Margrave's teeth. It was a tempting and satisfying picture. The problem was that it would not necessarily lead him to India. If she wasn't behind any of the doors in the east wing, Margrave might never reveal where she was after he'd been attacked.

South flexed his fingers, shook out his hand, and proceeded to finish his work. There was not a moment when he was unaware of the earl's hovering. Upon completing his work, he sat back on his haunches and awaited direction.

"Leave the pails here," Margrave said, his voice clipped. "Go. And inform Smythson that you are not to be sent here again."

South stood slowly, bobbing his head slightly as he rose. He did not come to his full height. Rather, he remained stooped, his posture stiff as though every bone ached when he tried to unfold his hunched frame. Behind his spectacles, South's eyes remained respectfully downcast. His weight shifted from one foot to the other. "Yes, my lord. Of course."

Brushing his blackened palms on the apron, South began to back away. He came very close to bumping one of the coal pails again. Margrave's sharp intake of breath halted him in his tracks.

"Go," Margrave repeated, impatience rife in the single word.

South turned sharply on his heel and hurried away as quickly as the limping gait he'd perfected allowed him. He disappeared into the servants' stairwell and descended half die steps before he stopped and waited. He stood there for several moments, listening for Margrave's approaching footfalls. When they didn't come, South knew he had not been found out. The earl had no reason to follow him. Quietly, with the utmost care, he began retracing his steps to the top of the stairs.

As he approached the rise, he stopped again and slid sideways into the shadow against the wall. He looked down the corridor and saw that Margrave was still standing beside the coal pails. He looked as if he had not moved at all. His head was bent as he studied something in the palm of his hand.

Watching him, South was first struck by how slight a figure he was. It had not seemed so earlier when he had brought his weight to bear, nor a few days ago when Margrave had strode from the house wearing his heavily caped greatcoat and polished beaver top hat. The earl had a presence about him; South would give him that. He held himself perfectly erect, the manner more haughty than merely proud, but also with a certain grace that South had seen in India as well. He was self-possessed in a way she was not, and there, perhaps, South thought, was the chink in his armor.

It was difficult at first to see Margrave as Mrs. Garrety. South had to look past the straight Roman nose and reshape it with putty and paint to imagine the aquiline beak at the center of the dresser's face. In his mind's eye he placed a dark mole on the earl's right cheek and gave it three frighteningly aggressive hairs for good measure. He added deep frown lines to the corners of Margrave's mouth, and a wig of coarse gray hair. He could see the hunch in the earl's back and the sharp, jutting elbows that were used so effectively to remove the rabble from India's dressing room.

Margrave had expressed his disapproval without once clucking his tongue or using the shrill tones he affected as Mrs. Garrety, but South had no difficulty recalling them.

He thought about his interview with Marlhaven's dowager countess several weeks ago and the description Doobin had given him later of Lady Margrave. South knew now there had been nothing wrong with his instincts. The woman he metindeed, the woman he had spent almost an hour with, making inquiries about Indiawas not the countess but her son.

Margrave had not meant his disguise to look like his mother. He knew South and Lady Margrave had never met. It was enough that he had simply fooled South into thinking he was his mother. As the dowager countess, Margrave had expressed a precise mix of disdain and contempt, doubt and concern. The remarkable performance sent South from Marlhaven believing that India and the earl must be in London. He remembered thinking then that Lady Margrave might be moved to protect her son, but she would not do so at the expense of India's well-being.

The slim smile that shaped South's lips was grim. He had been well and truly gulled. There was little solace in the realization that he was not Margrave's only victim, merely one who had managed to live long enough to discover it. Mr. Kendall had not been so fortunate. Neither had Mr. Rutherford.