Violet sent a silent plea Arthur’s way, widening her eyes and shaking her head in the negative. Mrs. Sweet had a preternatural talent for diagnosis, but her cures often tasted of disappointment and unwashed stockings.
“I shall see to it Lady Greycliff eats plenty of that broth, Mrs. Sweet. However, she is overset now.” Arthur gave Violet a nudge. She nodded slyly, then fanned her face, trying to appear distressed.
It didn’t take too much effort. How mortifying to be seen swooning. Arthur must think her a proper ninny.
“I’ll have her rest in my office.” He led Violet to a narrow corridor at the opposite end of the kitchen from Mrs. Sweet’s rooms.
The butler’s office was a large, well-appointed space. The walls were the color of weak tea, and someone had hung a cheap print of Glencoe above the fireplace. A sturdy desk sat pushed against one wall, and two overstuffed armchairs sagged in a corner.
Violet refused Arthur’s offer of a seat, and he knelt to pile coals in the fireplace.
“Grey didn’t tell me you were thinking of marrying. My felicitations,” he said without inflection.
“I am not getting married,” Violet insisted. “Grantham did not come home to court me.”
“No?” he asked, sounding indifferent. “He spoke as though marriage had been discussed.”
Her toe made a tiny arc across the uneven wooden floorboards. “I’ve known him since childhood. It would be . . . easy,” she confessed. “I can help him adjust to the responsibilities of the earldom. He’s popular and could build the reputation of Athena’s Retreat.” She paused. “I should like to have a family.”
Arthur said nothing while she tasted the flinty truth of that sentence. It sounded normal. Not at all pathetic that a thirty-year-old woman with a title and all her teeth hadn’t already accomplished such a thing.
As though he was holding the conversation with them, Arthur addressed the pile of coals. “Makes sense. No bothering with courtship or romance or any such nonsense.”
“Exactly,” she said. “From a scientific view, there’s no evidence that an emotional state defined as ‘love’ contributes to healthy children or a successful marriage.”
Strange how something so rational could sound unappealing. Grantham wouldn’t care what she wore or if she managed to put on a dinner party. He wouldn’t care much about anything she did so long as she managed the estate and looked after his mother.
A terrifying idea occurred to her.
“Are you . . .” Violet had to force the question from her lips. “Are you married?”
He stared as though she’d asked, “Are you American?” A combination of shock and disdain.
“I am not. Although . . .” His thick black brows drew together. “I am planning to buy a farm once I am finished here. I suppose I’ll need a wife. Or a housekeeper. Since I’m in London, I could put an advert in the papers,” he said, speaking about the prospect of finding a helpmate in the same manner one considered finding livestock or furniture.
“Of course you’ll need a wife,” she said. “How else are you to have children?”
“Children?” he said. “Never.”
Was that fear in his voice?
“Do you not enjoy children?” she asked.
He stabbed at the coals with his poker. “Don’t come across enough to like or not like them. Moving to the countryside. Remote. Not many doctors outside of cities and towns. Anything could happen.”
His words were weighted like stones. Gathering clouds suffocated the faint light in the rooms, and Violet had difficulty reading the lines of his face. She debated whether to ask who he’d lost. Upon reflection, she kept the question to herself. Walls were designed to hold things up as well as to keep things from spilling out. Like her own, his barriers were well constructed.
When a footman rapped at Arthur’s door, Violet almost jumped out of her shoes, and the moment was lost. Goodness, she’d done more than her share of jumping today.
“We talked to the staff next door,” the footman said. “No one saw a thing.”
“Thank you.” Arthur waited until the door shut to return to his fire-making duties.
Violet sighed. “I owe you an apology.”
His head jerked up, and he stared at her. Although practiced at masking his expressions, he couldn’t fully hide his reaction.
Was he surprised? Wary?
“Apology for what?” he asked. He fixed his attention back on the fire, his motions slow and deliberate as he waited for her explanation.
Moving closer to the fireplace, she examined a handful of small soapstone figures on the mantel. Something told her these next words would be significant.
“I told myself the explosion was an accident. After your warnings, it was ill-done of me to leave the windows open. I must also apologize for seeming to come undone. A lady never loses her composure.” After all, fear was as unattractive as anger.
“It is frightening to be the victim of theft,” he said.
“Nevertheless.” Violet rubbed her hands together, chilled at the prospect of what might have happened had she been alone in her workroom when the thief entered.
“Cold?” he asked.
When she nodded, he stood and pulled a tattered quilt from the back of the chair opposite her.
“I won’t let anything happen to you.”
An hour ago, she would have believed him. Now everything had changed, and her home was no longer safe. The deep crimson circle at his temple, where the thief had kicked him, had darkened to blue. What if something happened to him? To the ladies?
“Violet?” he asked.
The use of her given name startled her. He snapped open the quilt and held her glance.
“I will keep you safe.”
Even if she’d imagined the subtle inflection, she hadn’t missed the way he’d paced the garden earlier, like a tiger denied its prey.
“I know you will,” she assured him.
Grateful, she bent forward and let him settle the blanket across her shoulders. Leaning back again, Violet found herself encircled in his arms as he pulled the quilt around her.
A faded scar bisected the end of his left eyebrow. Her glance darted to his lips, then back to his eyes. Tiny lines of gold streaked through the irises of dark chocolate. She hadn’t noticed them the first night, when he held her in his arms and told her she would be safe.
“You have to do as I say from now on,” he said.
Hypnotized by the gilded highlights in his irises, she answered him without deliberation.
“I’ll do anything you ask.”
He didn’t smile at her impulsive declaration. Instead, he pulled her closer, tightening his grasp, so the quilt trapped her arms at her side, leaving her at his mercy.
“Anything?” he asked.
Outside the circle cast by his attention, another world existed. The kitchen boy called out to one of the footmen as they clattered up the back stairway. Cook and the maids exchanged desultory gossip as they laid the table for the servants’ supper. Outside Beacon House came the rumble of traffic, but traffic didn’t shake the floor.
His scrutiny bound her closer than the soft quilt he’d wrapped her in. Her body trembled, tiny quakes from the tips of her toes to her parted lips.
She’d wanted him to kiss her earlier. Now, she needed him to kiss her. To hold her before this need shook her apart and into pieces.
With the lightest brush of satin against her skin, he touched his lips to hers, leaving a trail of fire like the tail of a shooting star.
Too short. Not enough. Close to perfect.
She’d let her eyelids flutter shut at the sensation. Now she opened them and met his stare with her own.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that,” she said. “Could you repeat it?”
A puff of laughter answered her before hi
s lips settled back onto her own in the gentlest of touches. Once, twice, grazing her in sweet reassurance.
Before he pulled away, she stood on her toes and pressed her mouth against his, her tongue darting out to tease his intransigent lips, tasting a suggestion of apricots. Dropping back to her heels, Violet was dizzy with hope and light-headed with fear.
Had she gone too far?
Tenderness fled his face, replaced with an avid hunger. Hot and greedy, his tongue swept her mouth, tangling with hers as he held her immobile beneath his kisses. Again and again, he imprinted his taste on her, and she opened herself to him.
He kissed her with urgency, as though she might flee his touch. Instead, she burrowed even closer to him, straining against the confines of the blanket. She nipped at his bottom lip, and he made a noise, low in his throat, that reverberated through to her core. She longed to drag him to the floor with her and let him cover her body. Instead, he pulled away.
They stared at each other in silence until the sound of popping coal jerked their gazes apart. Her lips were tender and throbbing, and wonder ran through her veins.
“Remember your promise,” he rasped. “I will hold you to it.”
Sweet mother-of-pearl, the man could kiss. Violet sniffed the heady scent of soap and linen and virile male.
“Yes, of course. Hold me to it. Hold me firmly to it,” she said, her words awkward and thick. Lust had left her muddleheaded.
One corner of his mouth turned down, a wry nod to her inelegant assurance, but he gave no other sign that what had passed between them had had any effect.
How could that be? If he hadn’t kept hold of the quilt, she’d be pooled in a spineless heap at his feet.
Arthur let the quilt edges fall at her sides and nonchalantly knelt before the fireplace to add more coal. As if she needed a fire after that display. More like an ice bath! Two seconds of kissing Arthur had aroused her more than anything she’d done in her entire marriage.
At that moment, Violet vowed to seize the day. Or rather, seize the man. She would prove Daniel wrong and find a way to make herself desirable.
No more imaginary lovers to keep her company at night.
She wanted the real thing.
* * *
MRS. SWEET WAS not to be denied. She interrupted the two of them, taking Violet’s pulse and red cheeks as proof that the lady needing physicking.
Arthur stayed in the corner and watched as the staff hovered over Violet with affection and concern. A crew of outcasts and misfits. Not dissimilar from the women on the other side of the wall in Athena’s Retreat.
Violet proved to be dangerously kind. She left herself vulnerable to betrayal with no apparent fear of consequences. Stupid or saintly? Whichever she was, this made his job more difficult.
Add to that his own unfathomable behavior. What on earth was he doing, kissing her? Had a twenty-year exile not been enough to cure him of any desire to become involved in the lives of his assignments?
Her fear had unraveled him. At that moment, he couldn’t think of any other way to give her comfort.
Ignoring that he’d had the option of reassuring her with a pat on the shoulder, Arthur focused on the occupants of the kitchen. How had the thief known where she kept her papers? Experience had taught him over and over that no one could be trusted, no matter how kind or concerned they seemed.
“Will you catch them?”
Winthram leaned against the wall and echoed Arthur’s pose, arms at his side, ready to draw a knife.
“It would be a sight easier if everyone here followed my directions,” Arthur answered.
Winthram rolled his lower lip under as Cook poured Violet another cup of tea and Mrs. Sweet pressed one of her nasty biscuits on her.
“She’s too trusting, my lady,” the doorman said. “Won’t set watch at the door between the public rooms and the back part where they do their work.”
Arthur waited while the young man deliberated whether to continue. Eventually, Winthram faced him, concern tightening the corners of his eyes. “I’m not complaining. They don’t want anyone spying on their comings and goings. One lady, Mrs. White, her husband twigged to what she did here. Jealous type. Beat her something fierce, then locked her up at home ‘for her own good.’ My Lady Greycliff was sick for days over it.”
Nothing about this had appeared in Grey’s dossiers. A deep and terrible rage ignited in Arthur’s belly. By God, how he loathed men like White. Arthur had dismissed some of Violet’s concerns for the club members as silly. He should have known better.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Arthur demanded. “I’ll need his direction right away.”
Winthram held a hand up. “Wasn’t White. He died from apoplexy a few months later, and Lady Phoebe took Mrs. White away someplace north.”
The implications of the story settled into Arthur’s brain, and his estimation of Lady Phoebe rose.
Winthram nodded toward Violet with his chin. “We tried to tell him she weren’t here the night he dragged her home, but her name was printed in the book they signed into. From then on, we weren’t allowed to keep track of who goes in or out.”
Violet finished her tea, and Mrs. Sweet hurried her off to her rooms. The rest of the servants cleared away the dishes, the soft murmurs of conversation weaving a blanket of normalcy.
“Where’d you say you were from?” inquired a high voice at Arthur’s elbow.
Arthur glanced at the little maid, Alice, noting her ragged cuticles and the chewed end of one braid. The girl pushed her toe into the floor, hiding her hands behind her back when she caught the direction of his stare.
“Didn’t,” he said.
“Mrs. Sweet said you were from the Highlands. I am, too, from near Dingwall. Do you know it?” Wide grey eyes stared at him with avid curiosity.
A girl from a big family might be tempted to send more than her paltry wages home. Wouldn’t take much to bribe a maid to delay warning of a thief in her lady’s rooms. Could be nerves, or could be guilt that pinched her thin, pale face.
“No.”
The girl might well be innocent, but he wasn’t here to make idle chatter with the staff. How did one make idle chatter? He’d a fair idea it involved discussing weather. What was there to discuss about weather? Hot, cold, wet, and dry.
“We’re talking serious business here, Alice,” Winthram chided. “Go dust.”
Alice scrunched her nose in distaste. “Hate dusting. Worse than calculus.”
She didn’t argue, however, and took herself off. Winthram clucked his tongue against his teeth. “Complains about everything, that child.”
Arthur made a noncommittal noise, hiding his amusement that a man of eighteen or so would consider a girl a few years younger to be a child.
“What I said before,” Winthram said, “that none of us will help you . . .” He frowned. “I changed my mind. We have to protect her.”
“Lady Greycliff?” Arthur clarified.
“All of them. We have to protect all of them, because no one else will.”
8
YET ANOTHER MAN pretending to be someone he’s not,” Mrs. Sweet complained. “When will this end, Mr. Kneland?”
Arthur stifled a sigh as he argued with the housekeeper two days after the thwarted burglary. He’d never worked a job where folks had so many questions. In other households, he’d growled an order or two and the servants jumped to obey.
Not here.
Someone at Beacon House was keeping secrets. How else had the thief known when Violet had left her workroom and it was safe to steal the papers? If Winthram was to be believed—and Arthur still had his doubts—only club members had been in the Retreat the night of the explosion. Which of them might have set it off?
“Thomas is trained in domestic operations, Mrs. Sweet. You have a head footman and added security for Lady Greyc
liff, all in one. If you let him schedule the day staff here and at the club, it is one less chore for you. This is temporary.”
Thomas had already been an agent for five years when Arthur joined the prime minister’s covert group. The older man took young Arthur under his wing at first, imbuing his lessons with steady logic and dry humor. Thomas’s relaxed demeanor and infectious laugh had ingratiated him into households where the group needed an inside man. He and Arthur had worked together sporadically in the years since Arthur left England, Thomas preferring his overseas assignments in warmer climes. Lucky for Arthur, Grey had managed to poach Thomas from another mission and reassign him to Beacon House.
Mrs. Sweet, however, proved impervious to both Thomas’s charms and Arthur’s assurances. “I don’t need a head footman. I need two more parlor maids. I am run off my feet with work for this evening event. How are we to feed these extra mouths?”
Thomas tried to mollify her. “The boys and I are happy to eat at a chophouse, ma’am.”
“A chophouse?” Mrs. Sweet set her hands on her hips. “Those kitchens are filthy. You won’t get your proper fill of greens, either.”
Before Thomas could make the mortal mistake of suggesting they could do with fewer greens and more beefsteak, an interruption occurred in the form of a sturdily built older woman balancing a fearsome tower of hennaed hair.
Marching into the kitchen, Lady Potts called for the servants’ attention.
“The connecting doors between Beacon House and the club were left open,” the woman complained. “And in the hubbub of this Evening of Epochs and Edification business, I forgot to latch shut the doors on a few of my cages. A handful of my friends have decided to peek in on you all. But it—”
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