Steeling herself for what was to come, she lifted her chin and squared her shoulders.“Whittaker.”
He frowned at her. “Why are you opening the door?”
“Because I was here. Of course, if I’d known it was you, I wouldn’t have bothered.”
She wanted to be angry. She was angry, but over and beyond that she was terribly, terribly afraid. Because nothing covers fear quite so well as anger, she focused on that.
She held the door open and stepped aside. “Are you coming in or not?”
He stayed where he was, his blue eyes searching. “Is that the way it’s to be, then?”
“If you insist of going through with your ridiculous mission.”
Say no. Please, please, please say you’ve changed your mind.
“Very well.” He stepped around her. “Then play the proper hostess, won’t you, darling, and have someone see to my bags?”
She closed the door behind him. “It’d be my pleasure. I know just the hole—very deep, very muddy.”
“Who is it, girl?” The baron’s booming voice echoed down the hall from his study.
She couldn’t help but wince at his appalling manners, but she absolutely refused to acknowledge Whit’s questioning expression. Denial was one of the last tactics available to her, and she’d every intention of putting it to good use.
“It’s Lord Thurston, Uncle!”
“You bring a fart catcher, Thurston?”
Whit’s only reaction was a raised eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
“He means a valet,” she muttered and felt the heat of embarrassment flood her cheeks. It might be mortifying, she reminded herself, but it wasn’t catastrophic. Yet.
“Yes, I know what he means.” Whit turned toward Eppersly’s voice. “As it happens, I come unattended!”
“Good! No room!”
“I’m sure what ever arrangements can be made will be more than adequate.”
“Good!” There was a brief flash of thinning brown hair in the doorway. “Show him up, girl! What’s the matter with you?”
“Is he always so charming?” Whit inquired when her uncle’s head had once again disappeared into the study.
“You can hardly blame him, sneaking your way in as you have.” It needled, tremendously, to speak in defense of her uncle, but it was easier than apologizing for him.
“He could have said no,” Whit pointed out. “I sent an acceptance last night, and the estates aren’t more than five minutes’ ride from each other.”
She didn’t have a single believable rebuttal to that statement, so she ignored it instead and headed up the stairs. “You can carry your own luggage or you can wait for it. The staff is busy with other things at the moment.”
He hefted his bag and caught up with her in the middle of the staircase. “Is the house short of staff, then?”
“Ask my uncle,” she suggested, knowing full well he couldn’t do so without insulting the baron.
She led him to a room at the very back of the hall. It was separated from the other guests by a storage room and two linen closets, but it was the best the house had to offer, its amenities disdained by the other guests only because they found the extra walk disagreeable. She opened the door and stepped inside, pleased to find the worst of the mildew smell had aired out.
“The doors there lead to a private balcony.” One that she was relatively certain wouldn’t collapse under his weight. “There’s a bureau there for your things.” She’d made certain all the drawers opened first. “We’re having some difficulties with the bell pulls, I’m afraid. If you need something”—Get it yourself, she thought—“you’ll have to hunt up a maid or footman.”
“Mirabelle—” He reached for her, but she sidestepped his grasp and opened the door.
“Dinner is served at half past eight,” she informed him, and left with the fondest wish that he’d remain in his room for the remainder of the party. Or at least until dinner.
Eighteen
Mirabelle spent the remainder of the day alternating between putting fires out in the kitchen—mostly figuratively speaking, but with one small literal exception—and answering an endless line of summons from her uncle.
“Fetch me the case of port from the cellar. I don’t want those thieving excuses for footmen going anywhere near it alone.”
“Mr. Hartsinger likes fresh linen in his room. See it’s done before he arrives.”
“Change your gown. You’re a disgrace.”
“Why aren’t you welcoming my guests, girl? Think I brought you home to sit on your fat arse all day?”
The fact that the baron felt qualified to be the judge of anyone else’s physical appearance had never failed to astonish her. He was the single most corpulent individual of her acquaintance. The man was, in a word, round—not oblong, not a bit thicker ’round the middle and tapered at the ends. No, when his arms were at his sides, he made a nearly perfect circle, with only the slight protrusions that were his head and feet to throw off the illusion.
The head itself—and that was how she thought of it, as “the head”—was large and rapidly becoming hairless, and his nose was smashed flat against his face so that he looked like a ball with beady blue eyes and very fat lips. His feet were short and so small that she always had the impression—and the hope—they might give out under his weight and send him toppling over at any moment.
Sadly, that much desired event had yet to occur, and Mirabelle could only console herself with the knowledge that her obnoxious and inconveniently well-coordinated uncle kept her busy enough to leave little time for worrying over the additional guest in the house.
Mostly.
It helped that all the guests appeared to be occupied in their rooms at present—unpacking, she supposed, or writing missives to wives and sweethearts, informing them of their safe arrival. Mirabelle suspected there’d be a wife or two disappointed with the news.
But there would be no separating Whit from the others at dinner—not that she couldn’t try. She sent a maid with an offer to have his meal brought to his room and when that failed, she sent maids with the offer to bring meals to every other member of the house. Only Mr. Cunningham agreed to the arrangement.
So in a matter of hours, Mirabelle found herself sitting at the dinner table with some of the most disgusting human beings in En gland…and Whit.
Dinners at Baron Eppersly’s house were casual affairs. Very, very casual affairs.
So casual, in fact, that one might even go so far as to call them slovenly. Mirabelle personally felt they resembled nothing quite so much as a voracious pack of slobbering hyenas scrambling over dead prey. She’d never actually seen a hyena, mind you, but she’d read of them in books, and she rather thought the group fit the description.
Beyond the revolting sight of grown men eating without the slightest regard to etiquette—for heaven’s sake, why did her uncle insist on the good silver if he was determined to use his fingers as fork, spoon, and knife?—Mirabelle also dreaded the start of dinner because it appeared to be a silent signal for the men to begin drinking in earnest.
The wine flowed in, and manners flowed out with equal measure. Guests who hadn’t paid her the slightest bit of attention earlier suddenly found her to be a fascinating topic of conversation. Or so it had always been in the past.
They left her alone for the first hour that night. The addition of Lord Thurston to their ranks seemed to be enough to keep them occupied. Initially, they plied him with questions full of suspicion.
“What brings you to our humble gathering?” Mr. Hartsinger asked.
“Surprised you found the time—between your mama’s fine house parties and your seat in the House of Lords,” Mr. Waterson commented.
“Didn’t I hear you once mention to Lady Killory that indulgence in spirits is the sign of a weak mind?” Mr. Harris inquired.
But Whit answered them all with wit and humor. “I’m here for the very reasons you mentioned, Mr. Waterson. I required an excuse to
get away from the simpering women at staid house parties, not to mention the simpering women in the House of Lords. And you’d have made the comment too, Mr. Harris, if it’d been you the lady was breathing sherry on. Best way to get rid of her.”
And soon enough, the conversation had gone from an interrogation, to a rollicking round of reminiscing about the late Lord Thurston and how his son might live up to the old man yet.
Mirabelle tried to make herself smaller in her chair. If she could only get through the meal without being noticed, without being called on to speak, she’d still have to suffer the shame of having Whit see her uncle and his friends in their limited dining glory, but she wouldn’t have to actually—
“Quit slouching girl!” her uncle snapped.
Blast.
“Ugly enough as it is,” he added. “No need to bring bad posture into the bargain.”
Damn.
“Leave off the girl, Eppersly,” someone said, she wasn’t about to look up to discover who. “Not so bad looking I wouldn’t have a go at her!”
Oh. Bloody. Hell.
She couldn’t look at Whit. She couldn’t have faced him now if her life depended on it. Was he laughing? She couldn’t hear him laughing, but she could hardly make anything out over the cacophony of snorting her uncle called a laugh. Was Whit angry? Offended? Shocked? She wished she had the nerve to find out.
“What say you, Thurston?” one of the guests called. “You ever had a piece of—”
She threw herself into a vicious fit of coughing. The force of it scratched her throat and made her eyes water, but she didn’t care. If the man finished that question, she wouldn’t die of humiliation on the spot, but she’d want to.
The baron grunted and snapped greasy fingers at a footman. “You. You there.”
“Simmons, sir.”
“Did I ask for your name?” he demanded, before jabbing a finger at Mirabelle. “Idiot. Just pound the chit’s back for Christ’s sake.”
“Pound the…?”
“Go on, man!”
Mirabelle took a gulping breath and held the footman off with a hand and a wan smile. “That won’t be necessary, Simmons, thank you.”
Simmons looked to the baron for confirmation. The baron gave one disinterested shrug and went back to his meal.
“Excuse me,” she mumbled, and fled. It was possible she’d be berated for the early departure tomorrow, but it was equally possible her uncle had already imbibed enough to not care, or forget entirely. And she was certain she couldn’t spend another second in that room. She raced to her own room, slammed the door shut, and locked it.
She had no idea how long she simply stood where she was, shaking and panting raggedly. Was that it, then? Would she be ruined because of one careless comment? When she felt her knees begin to buckle, she snapped herself back, forcing aside panic for reason. The guest had indicated that, given the chance, he would have a go at her, not that he ever had. It was a small but significant difference. One comment was cruel and mortifying, the other could irrevocably ruin her name. As it was, her reputation was merely scratched a bit. As was her pride. And her heart—Whit might not have laughed at the jest, but he hadn’t defended her either.
“Well bugger him,” she snapped to no one and refused to feel the least guilty for using such a vulgar invective. She’d heard her uncle use it a hundred times. “Bugger all of them.”
As soon as was humanly possible, she’d begin searching for the proof of her uncle’s innocence as a counterfeiter. As soon as she had it, Whit could leave. If she was still welcome at Haldon after that, she’d simply tuck this party away as a tremendously embarrassing memory. If not…well…
“Bugger it,” was the best she could come up with.
It was another two hours before she gained the courage to again leave her bedroom. The others wouldn’t be in bed yet, but there was always the question of whether they had managed to move themselves into her uncle’s study or if they had drunk so much so quickly that they found it inconvenient to leave the dining room. She hoped for the latter. Her uncle sometimes fell asleep in whichever chair he was currently occupying and if the chair happened to be in the study, it would mean putting off the snooping she had planned in that room for a later night. As she was immensely anxious about snooping in her uncle’s sanctuary, she found the idea of delaying it distinctly unappealing. Better to get it over and done with than to worry about it for another day.
She followed the sound of braying laughter to the dining room door. That was it then, she decided. Her uncle would either sleep there or have a pair of unfortunate footmen haul him to his room. But he wouldn’t be back in his study this night.
She turned to leave, then stopped and turned back again, curiosity getting the better of her.
Was Whit still in there?
She peaked through the crack of the door, and discovered that yes, he was—the blighter.
For a man who wasn’t there to enjoy himself, he was doing a suspiciously realistic impression of a dedicated reveler. He was drunk, she noted with disgust, and while that may have been unavoidable if he wanted to gain the group’s trust and approval, she was certain he needn’t look so bloody happy about it.
He was slouched, grinning rather stupidly, in an ancient highback chair with his cravat gone and his coat unbuttoned. He held both a wine bottle and the rapt attention of several men as he slurred out the tale of the man-eating boar he’d hunted in France. Nearly lost his life to the beast, she heard him say, and she wondered idly if she’d lose her dinner. If there was an ounce of truth in that story, she’d eat her blue chemise.
It was better that he have a fine time of it, she reminded herself. She could have found him sitting apart, watching the baron with disgust and contempt…and wondering how he might go about removing the Cole family from everything, and everyone, associated with Baron Eppersly.
Swallowing an irritated grunt, she turned back to her room. It wouldn’t be more than another hour before they began to pass out, but she’d wait two just to be safe.
She waited three hours with the idea that, in this house, it was better to be very safe than very wrong.
She left her room with a plan of sorts in mind. She’d try the door to the study first, and if it proved locked, she’d make a trip around the side of the house to see if she couldn’t shimmy up to the window. If she couldn’t—and having no shimmying experience to speak off, there was a very good chance that would be the case—or the window was locked as well, she’d simply have to find a way into the study during the day. The very idea of such an attempt had her stomach twisting into knots. It’d be so much easier to be caught during the day, and if her uncle found out she’d been snooping about his study, he’d…
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it right now.
She crept down the steps, taking care to skip the boards that creaked. In all probability, she could stomp down the narrow passage with no more stealth than a herd of elephants and no one would be the wiser. The guests had fallen asleep too drunk, and the servants too exhausted to notice, let alone care that someone was moving about in the house. Still, it never paid to take chances in her uncle’s home.
To her immense relief, she found the door to the study unlocked. Whether he’d been too drunk to remember to lock it himself, or was simply in the habit of assuming no one would dare enter without invitation, she didn’t know. Having made a point over the years of avoiding her uncle’s favorite haunt, she’d never before had reason to test the door handle.
Twisting it now, she pushed open the door just enough to allow her to slip inside. She closed the door behind her, then leaned back against it with an enormous sigh.
She’d done it. She was in her uncle’s study. She’d actually found the courage.
Remembering that her uncle’s study was not a place she generally cared to be, she pushed off from the wall and set her mind to the task at hand.
Like most studies, the room was decorated and furnished for the com
fort of a man seeing to his business: dark masculine colors, large oak desk, plush leather chairs. But since her uncle rarely bothered himself with anything as mundane as seeing to business, where there would have been bookcases in other studies, there were hunting trophies in this one.
Bucks, does, foxes, and birds of every variety were stuffed and mounted along the walls like a macabre parade of disembodied heads. Mirabelle tried to ignore them as she lit a pair of candles on the desk, but there were so many. She felt a lick of nerves and had the irrational image of accusing glass eyes glaring at her back.
She flipped through a pile of papers and tried to not let the fact that Whit had been right—she hadn’t the least idea of what she was looking for—discourage her. She was so caught up in not paying attention to her nagging doubts, and not paying attention to the gruesome room around her, that she failed to notice the footsteps in the hall until they were nearly at the door.
She whirled, stunned as the footsteps came to a stop.
Dear Lord, she hadn’t a key to lock the door.
Near to panicking, she grabbed a hideous brown vase off the mantel and positioned herself behind the door just in time. It opened slowly and quietly.
She lifted the vase. She’d knock whoever it was over the head and hope it rendered them unconscious, or at least stunned enough for her to make her escape without being seen.
A foot appeared. With a prayer that she had the timing right, she stepped forward to bring the vase down.
She caught a brief glimpse of light brown hair and blue eyes before Whit’s hand lashed out to grasp the vase a moment before it connected with his head.
“I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“Whit.” She spoke in what she thought might have been a whisper, but it was a bit difficult to say, really, with her blood rushing in her ears.
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