Not Quite a Lady

by Loretta Chase

  Darius grasped at the lifeline. “Indeed, I haven’t. What do I know of cooks and housekeepers and scullery maids? What do I know of proper furnishings? Should one paint the walls or paper them? What color goes with what? Is this piece of furniture too ornate or unfashionable? I hear women speak of these things and it makes me dizzy. I should rather tackle a hard problem in trigonometry.”

  “That is perfectly understandable,” Lady Lithby said. “One cannot expect a man to deal with these matters.”

  “But they must be dealt with,” said Mrs. Badgely. “Are we to excuse him on grounds that he is a man?”

  “Yes, we must,” said Lady Lithby. “You may put the house out of your mind, Mr. Carsington.”

  “Thank you,” he said, resisting the childish temptation to stick out his tongue at Mrs. Badgely.

  “I shall be happy to do what needs to be done there,” Lady Lithby said.

  Then Darius saw, too late, the pit yawning in front of him.

  Ye gods, the Marchioness of Lithby, accustomed to a bottomless purse, renovating his house.

  In his mind’s eye, Darius saw ledgers with long columns of expenses, totaling in the thousands. He would have the devil’s own time turning a profit as it was. How could he do it if he refurbished the house?

  But only a madman would attempt to speak to women of money. First, the subject was vulgar. Second, ladies of the upper orders had no notion of basic rules of economics. He might as well try to explain Ampère’s Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena to Lord Lithby’s pig.

  Third, and most important, his pride would not permit it. He’d be hanged before he’d reveal anything of his financial or time constraints.

  “I shouldn’t dream of asking you to add this burden to your present responsibilities,” he said. “You are expecting a large party of guests, I understand, next month.”

  “Entertaining guests is nothing,” her ladyship said. “We do it all the time.”

  “But to take charge of another household, one that is in complete disorder, without adequate staff—”

  “Your agent Quested is completely reliable,” she said. “I shall apply to him for staffing. And you must not fret about how much work needs to be done. Work is what I seek. I recently redecorated Lithby Hall from top to bottom. We were obliged to make some architectural changes as well. While Lithby is happy with the result, he has made me promise not to do it again until the youngest boys are at university. I am at leisure, you see. Too much so, in fact. You would be doing me a favor.”

  “Beechwood House is in a ghastly state,” he said, though he had no idea, having not yet darkened its door. “The rats—”

  “I shall bring Daisy, my young bulldog,” she said. “She will enjoy catching rats. Charlotte, too.” She signaled to her stepdaughter.

  “To catch rats?” Darius said. He watched the stepdaughter approach. She still wore the vacantly agreeable look.

  Lady Lithby laughed. “Charlotte is not afraid of rodents. She’s a countrywoman. She will enjoy the challenge, I don’t doubt. Is that not so, my dear?”

  “What challenge, Stepmama?” said Lady Charlotte.

  “We are going to put Beechwood House to rights.”

  Lady Charlotte gave her stepmother one short, shocked look. It was so brief that Darius would have missed it had he blinked. A fraction of a second later, her placid cow mask was back in place.

  “Are we, indeed?” she said coolly. “I should have supposed that the last thing in the world Mr. Carsington would want is a pair of women he hardly knows fussing about his house. He has so much work to do, and a great deal on his mind. I should think he would want a refuge. Instead of allowing him an island of calm, we shall turn his house upside down. We shall have bricklayers and carpenters and plasterers and paperhangers and such banging about. And scaffolding everywhere. Not to mention we must pester him about this, that, and the other thing—for after all, it is his house, and ought to be the way he likes it.”

  She met his gaze then.

  For an instant he was lost in a vision of a beautiful someone making a refuge for him, a place of warmth and order, a place of his own where things were as he liked them to be.

  Then his mind cleared, and in the cool blue eyes he saw the death threat once more.

  The message was plain enough: Agree to this, and I will kill you with my bare hands.

  That was amusing.

  Logic told him he couldn’t afford to be amused. He must decline the offer, and to hell with Mrs. Badgely. Lady Lithby’s involvement would cost him thousands. He was supposed to turn a profit.

  The trouble was, Lady Charlotte clearly wanted nothing to do with his house.

  The trouble was, she had left him to Mrs. Steepleton’s ear-numbing chatter, then Mrs. Badgely’s scolding.

  “When you put it that way, Lady Charlotte,” he said, “how can I possibly say no?”

  Charlotte really was going to have to kill him.

  She smiled sweetly, and said, “If Mr. Carsington does not mind our destroying his peace, I shall be happy to help. It should be a most interesting undertaking. I do not believe Lady Margaret made any improvements to the house in all the time she lived there.”

  “A fossil of a house,” said Mrs. Badgely. “The same as it was in your great-grandfather’s time. Lithby Hall was a fossil, too, but not so ramshackle.”

  “A little old-fashioned,” said Lady Lithby.

  “Inconvenient,” said Mrs. Badgely. “The rectory was more modern when I came, and that isn’t saying much.”

  “It was a good while before I did anything of importance here,” Lady Lithby said.

  This was because she’d spent most of the first three years of her marriage saving Charlotte from herself, and several years after that giving Papa four healthy little boys.

  “You are too modest,” Charlotte said. “From the first day you came, you made us more orderly and comfortable.”

  All the same, it was naughty of Lizzie to give Charlotte no warning at all before dragging her into her Beechwood House scheme.

  “Comfortable is all very well, but the recent work is splendid,” said Mrs. Badgely. “I only wish you could have seen Lithby Hall three years ago, Mr. Carsington, to compare. You would hardly recognize it.”

  Being a man, he was unlikely to notice what was wrong and inconvenient, Charlotte thought. Certainly he could have no idea what he was in for once Lizzie took charge. Papa certainly hadn’t realized.

  Oh, but it had been great fun.

  Perhaps, after all, Lizzie had done her a favor. A large project like this would offer Charlotte a happy distraction, if only temporarily, from the nightmare of the coming house party.

  The project would certainly offer Mr. Carsington an unhappy distraction, and that would be fun, too. Meanwhile, she’d love to see his face when he began to understand what would happen when Lizzie took control.

  Charlotte donned her most innocent expression. “I made some paintings and drawings before, during, and after the alterations,” she told him. “We have architects’ renderings and artists’ paintings of the old house and property from various times, too. Papa keeps a portfolio containing estate plans and such. He has made a great many changes to the property, as he may have told you. Perhaps you would like to see these documents?”

  Mr. Carsington arched an eyebrow.

  “They’re in the library,” she said. “I’ll be happy to show them to you, if you are interested.”

  He glanced at Mrs. Badgely and quickly away. “I should like nothing better,” he said.

  Chapter 4

  Yes, Darius would do better to spend his time with the gentlemen.

  Yes, he was asking for trouble, following Lady Charlotte out of the drawing room.

  But he had to know: What was she up to now?

  She led him across the great hall to the library.

  The large and comfortably arranged room was obviously in frequent use. Books, covering every subject under the sun, filled the oak shelve
s lining the walls. In the room’s center stood an orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system. Elsewhere Darius saw a pair of globes and a telescope, several more tables of various kinds, and a ladder. All the usual accoutrements, in other words, of the well equipped library.

  The rector sat snoring, his head resting upon the back of a sofa near the fireplace. A book lay open on the table in front of him.

  “It seems I’m not the only one eager to get away from Mrs. Badger-Me,” Darius whispered.

  He received one sidelong glance from the cool blue eyes, too quick for him to read.

  “Papa has always encouraged his guests to wander the public rooms as they please,” she said. “He wants them to feel at home.”

  She continued across the room to a large table near the south-facing windows. Beyond the windows, the long summer day had ended early under a thickening blanket of clouds. Darius heard rain pattering on the terrace outside.

  Inside, pier glasses hung between the darkened windows. In their mirrors danced the flames of the recently lit candelabra standing on the matching pier tables. In the nearest glass he saw, too, the open doorway behind them and servants passing in the hall outside.

  Lady Charlotte opened the large portfolio that lay on the table.

  Darius did not immediately join her at the table. He bent and looked under it. He walked around and looked behind it. He looked up at the ceiling, then at the windows.

  “The plans are here, Mr. Carsington,” she said, tapping a slim finger on the portfolio.

  “I’m looking for the trap,” he said, keeping his voice low. “First Mrs. S, then Mrs. B, then Lady L. What next, I wonder? A hinged door that opens up beneath my feet and drops me into a vipers’ pit?”

  “I’ve never seen a viper at Lithby Hall,” she said.

  “Vipera talka-lot-icus, Vipera henpeck-us-to-death-icus, Vipera-bankrupt-me-remodeling-my-house-icus.”

  Her lips quivered. To his disappointment, though, the placid cow expression swiftly settled back into place.

  “Here is a drawing of Lithby Hall at the end of the seventeenth century,” she said in the dispassionate tone of a lecturer. “Here it is a century and a half later. This is more or less how my stepmother found it when she first came.”

  Darius drew nearer. “Is that a moat?” he said, sliding one of the larger drawings toward him.

  She nodded. “It’s less obvious now. Grandfather turned a section into an ornamental lake. An orangery once stood where the kitchens and servants’ hall are. In this one you can see how they closed in the kitchen court. Stepmama added the vestibule, there.” She pointed. “But the greatest changes were inside. This house used to be gloomy and oppressive and cold—or so it seemed to me, as a child. She brought light and warmth.”

  He gazed at her, surprised, as he had been earlier, at the way her voice softened when she spoke of how her stepmother had transformed Lithby Hall.

  “You are fond of your stepmother,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know it is abnormal. I am supposed to hate her.”

  “It’s certainly unusual,” he said. “Females can be more viciously territorial than males.”

  “Can we, indeed?” She looked at him, and he had the distinct sensation of being assessed or tested in some way. “Have you made a study of women, then, too, Mr. Carsington? I’m surprised I haven’t heard of it. Papa quotes you all the time. I envisioned you as a sage.” She looked away, her brow knit. “I saw you with sparse, white hair and a stoop. And spectacles. People must be shocked the first time they come to hear you lecture.”

  Oh, she was good. She’d turned the conversation smoothly from herself to him.

  She ought to know how to do it, at her great age!

  And he ought to know how to press on, at his age. “I have not yet lectured on familial relationships,” he said. “I have studied them, however.” In self-defense, he could have added. “Your case is most intriguing. You had already emerged from childhood when your father remarried. You had to give way to a woman merely nine years older than yourself. This same woman has borne your father four sons so far, the eldest of whom will inherit the title and property. Yet you seem neither jealous nor resentful.”

  “It is like having an older sister,” Lady Charlotte said.

  “One might resent or be jealous of a sibling,” he said.

  “One might,” she said. “You speak from experience, I daresay, having four older brothers.”

  Damnation. She was too good.

  “I don’t have to live with them,” he said. “Boys are usually sent away to school. We don’t have to live under the same roof for years on end. Women do. They are usually eager to have homes of their own.”

  “This is my home,” she said.

  She took some sketches out of a portfolio, clearly wishing to put an end to the subject.

  Perhaps he had become too personal. He was not used to conversing with Society maidens—but it was maddening not to know why she was a maiden still.

  Though Mrs. Steepleton had talked endlessly, she’d added only one more rumor to those surrounding Lady Charlotte.

  This one concerned a mysterious illness in her youth: For a time it was believed that Lady Charlotte would soon follow her mother to the grave. However, after her stepmother took her for an extended stay in the north, then another in the Swiss Alps, she’d recovered from the ailment and made her debut belatedly, at the age of twenty.

  The illness, Mrs. Steepleton whispered, was the reason Lord Lithby allowed her more freedom than some people thought proper.

  Not much of an explanation. A debut at age twenty still left Lady Charlotte eight Seasons to get a husband.

  Darius would find out the answer, eventually. He always found out the answer.

  “Not all of the changes Stepmama made are merely aesthetic,” she said. “It was more than decorating. She made important repairs and improvements.”

  He drew closer to her and tried to fix his full attention on the sketches.

  “New floorboards for certain rooms,” she said. “New airholes cut for ventilation…”

  She went on about chimney pots, windows, and tiled floors, about water closets and washstands and calling bells, about painting and plastering and carpentry.

  He was soon left in no doubt that bringing Beechwood House into order would cost a king’s ransom. Simply maintaining it at a minimum level would be costly. He couldn’t afford it.

  He didn’t want to think about money.

  He didn’t want to think about pipes and drawer pulls and stove bottoms.

  He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. He’d come too close, and he’d caught her scent. She spoke of ventilation, and he was aware mainly of the light scent of flowers or herbs wafting about her—the soap she used or the herbs stored with her clothes. He bent his head and drank it in.

  The soft skin of her neck was inches away from his mouth.

  You are three and a half inches from serious trouble, said Logic.

  Darius made himself straighten.

  What he couldn’t do was keep his mind on house maintenance.

  When she talked of stoved feathers—cooked first, she explained, to kill vermin—to fill mattresses, he saw himself lifting her off her feet and tossing her onto a bed.

  He saw her grinning wickedly up at him, the same wicked grin she’d worn when she delivered him to Mrs. Steepleton.

  She’s playing with you, said Logic. Maiden she may be. Naïve she isn’t.

  He firmly banished the pictures from his mind. “It seems a great deal of work,” he said. “I wonder at Lady Lithby’s undertaking it. Though others will do the actual labor at Beechwood, she must supervise and keep track of everything.”

  “Not if you hire a competent house steward.” Lady Charlotte tipped her head to one side and studied the sketches with a critical eye. The movement set her eardrops swaying. One lightly touched her cheek. “Your land agent Quested will find the right man for you.”

  “He’s
finding me a land steward,” said Darius. At two hundred pounds per annum. “I understood that the steward would manage the household as well as the land.”

  “That is how Lady Margaret arranged matters,” she said. “And that is how my grandfather did it. But it is an old-fashioned system. Not at all efficient. Ask Papa.”

  “Beechwood is not like Lithby Hall,” Darius said. “It is a more modest dwelling, and my needs are far more modest than those of a convivial peer with a large family and an extensive acquaintance.”

  She turned her head toward him. Captivated by the teasing eardrop, he’d drawn closer, so very close that he could feel the warmth radiating from her body. Her clean scent was everywhere, it seemed. His mouth was mere inches from hers.

  Her gaze lowered to his mouth.

  Her breath came a little faster.

  He leaned in a little closer.

  She turned away. “Colonel Morrell,” she said. “What is your opinion regarding house stewards?”

  Darius swore silently, casually eased away from her, and looked in the same direction.

  The colonel crossed the threshold and quickly covered the length of the room.

  She must have spotted him in the pier glass. But how long had she known he was there?

  How long, before she noticed, had Morrell stood in the doorway, watching and listening?

  “I should think a butler sufficient for a smaller property, particularly a bachelor’s abode,” he said. “But we soldiers are accustomed to spartan living. I should consider a housekeeper and valet and perhaps a few day servants more than sufficient. However, I am told that this is a disgracefully nipfarthing, cheeseparing way of getting on, not at all in keeping with my consequence.”

  He did not say who had told him this, probably because the critic’s husband snored nearby.

  Morrell joined them at the table, taking a position on the other side of Lady Charlotte.

  “I was ordered to come and look at the pictures and discover ways to make my house grander,” he said. “Is this your work, Lady Charlotte? Your draftsmanship is very good.”