by Liz Carlyle
He was not going to be satisfied, she realized, with her help here in Wiltshire. And he was not going to be satisfied with the pleasures of her body.
No, Napier wanted her to cut open a vein and bleed the truth. About everything. About things she dared not even face herself.
Well, she could not do it. She had stayed the course in the face of far more brutal storms than Napier was capable of stirring.
She only hoped she could stay the course in the face of her own passion.
She wanted to kick herself for her own stupidity. Like the stray cat she was, Lisette lived on her instincts. As Jack Coldwater, the androgynous, red-haired reporter, she had consorted with criminals and thugs—and more dangerous still, politicians—all in order to muckrake for the Chronicle. She had followed Lazonby into hells and dark alleys and once even the rookeries of Whitechapel in pursuit of something that might put him back on the gallows.
Her instincts had carried her safely through it all.
But now, because of a desirable man, they might fail her?
Oh, surely she was smarter than that. Tougher than that.
Or at least, she had been.
Before Royden Napier and his all-seeing eyes.
Lisette had no idea how long she sat alone in the gardens contemplating her own mortal weaknesses, but when at last she rose, it was to find that though the urge to cry had left her and a little of her resolve had returned, her teeth had begun to chatter.
After hastening up the rear steps, she followed Napier’s path through the house. By the flickering sconces in the grand entrance hall, she could see the gilt tallcase clock showed a few minutes past midnight. She passed through the colonnade and started up the east pavilion’s winding staircase.
Just then, her ears caught a sound high above her head, and the mere impression of motion. She froze like a rabbit, gingerly looking upward.
A dark shadow pulled away from the balustrade, and she heard Napier’s familiar footsteps heading down the passageway in the direction of his bedchamber. He had been waiting for her, she realized.
But when she rushed up the stairs to . . . well, to do something both rash and unwise, Lisette was saved from her folly by an empty corridor. Napier’s door was shut tight and only the faint scent of his shaving soap remained.
Like the gentleman he was, Napier had merely waited to be sure she returned safely from the gardens. It was a comforting if disappointing realization. For a long moment, she simply stood there, hand lifted as if to knock on his door.
But to say . . . what?
On a sigh, Lisette passed the door by, and went down to her room to find Fanny stitching up a torn hem by the light of her bed lamp.
Her gaze flicked up from her work, swift and knowing. “Evening, Miss Lisette,” she said, tucking the fabric away. “You look a tad disheveled.”
“Fanny, why aren’t you abed?” Lisette sagged into a chair before the dressing table and began to tug out her hairpins. “But since you’re not, will you help me get these ribbons out of my hair? Blast, will the stuff ever grow out?”
Fanny sighed, rose, and set to work on her hair. “It is growing,” she said. “Besides, some ladies do still wear their hair short.”
“Oh, yes.” Lisette scowled at the mirror. “Consumption victims.”
“Some ladies, somewhere, do, I’m sure,” Fanny chided. “French ones, probably. No, put down your hands. You’re just getting in my way.”
Suitably chastised, Lisette put her hands in her lap. “What was the gossip today, Fanny?” she asked lightly. “I heard Miss Tarleton’s sister is to arrive tomorrow.”
“Oh, yes, and a proper favorite she is belowstairs.” Fanny was tugging at a tangle with the comb. “Mrs. Marsh had a letter from her. Seems Miss Anne—or Lady Keaton, she is now—met this Miss Felicity Willet at church and struck up a friendship.”
“So that’s how Hepplewood met Miss Willet,” Lisette mused.
“Aye, and Lady Keaton is over the moon about the betrothal,” said Fanny, “or so she wrote.”
So perhaps Gwyneth was wrong. Perhaps Hepplewood had not compromised Miss Willet at all. They did not love each other, no, for he’d admitted as much to Lisette in the garden. But perhaps they were genuinely fond of each other?
The hope lightened Lisette’s heart a little. Dear heaven, was she becoming as romantic and as dreamy-eyed as poor Diana Jeffers?
“What do the servants say about Sir Philip Keaton?” she pressed, turning the topic.
“Oh, they like him very well indeed.” Fanny put down the comb. “A proper gentleman, Marsh called him.”
“Gwyneth called him a milquetoast.”
Fanny snorted. “Aye, well, anyone would be, compared to her,” she said. “Oh, and I gave your last piece of paper to that Mr. Jolley—and ain’t he a downy one, by the way?”
“What, that cloud of white hair?” Lisette laughed.
“No, downy as in . . . quick-witted.” Fanny was tossing pins into a porcelain dish on the dressing table. “Resourceful, you’d call it.”
“Oh, I fear we don’t know the half,” said Lisette.
“Aye, and don’t want to know, like as not.”
Lisette lifted her gaze to the mirror and watched the maid’s clever fingers work. “You’re always so shrewd, Fanny,” she said after a moment had passed.
Fanny looked over Lisette’s head, and caught her eyes in the mirror. “Hmm,” she said. “What’s the trouble, miss?”
Lisette looked down at her lap. She’d begun to pick at one of her cuticles, always a bad sign—a sign that she was about to do something foolhardy. But she could no more stay away from Royden Napier’s bed, she feared, than fly to the moon.
“Fanny, I was wondering,” she said, “how hard—or, rather, how easy is it to . . . to not get . . .”
“To not get what?” Fanny’s voice had an uneasy edge.
“—with child,” Lisette managed.
“Oh, Lord.” Fanny dropped a fistful of hairpins in the dish. “Come to that, has it?”
“Well, I’m not perfectly sure,” Lisette fibbed, “yet.”
Fanny’s lips thinned disapprovingly. “Aye, well, that Mr. Napier’s a big, strapping buck of a man, to be sure,” she said, “but awfully grim if you ask me—and vicious, too, that Mr. Jolley says, when he’s crossed.”
Lisette shot her a dark look in the mirror. “How to you know it is Napier?”
Fanny snorted. “Who, then?” she said. “That handsome Lord Hepplewood with all his silky words and fine ways? No, miss, you’re too downy yourself to fall for that. But Napier”—here, she gave a little shudder—“that one’s a tad too far the other direction. I’d think twice, miss, about warming that black-eyed devil’s bed.”
“Actually,” said Lisette, “his eyes are blue. When you get very close.”
Fanny sighed. “Well, then, if you’re getting that close,” she said, dropping the lid on the dish with a clatter, “then I may as well quit flapping. And you’d best get your calendar and come over here by the lamp.”
CHAPTER 12
In Which Jolley Plays the Screwsman
“Looks like rain to me, sir,” Jolley grumbled the next morning, holding open his master’s riding coat. “Pity I fagged me elbow glossing up them tall boots.”
Jolley helped Napier slide the garment up his arms, careful not to bunch his shirtsleeves. Then, taking up a little brush, he carefully swept the shoulders and lapels, tidying the fabric’s nap.
It was something Napier had never quite grown used to, this custom of being helped with one’s dressing. In the past, he had believed it an affectation of the rich, who hadn’t nearly enough to do. But Duncaster had sharply corrected him.
A wealthy man’s estate, his grandfather explained, provided employment for a vast array of people—from the lowliest stable hand to the talented Craddock himself—and allowed them in turn to feed their families. There was great pride, the old man said, in serving a noble house like Burlingame.
Napier had never looked at it quite that way.
Nor had Jolley, apparently. He let his hands fall, giving the brush a cavalier toss. “Right, then,” he said, patting his pocket. “If that’s enough of a morning mollycoddle for you, yer lordship, I’d best be off with Betty here, hadn’t I?”
Napier cut him a warning glance. “Just be sure you and Betty don’t get caught,” he said. “And that you keep Miss Colburne out of trouble.”
One hand already on the doorknob, Jolley grimaced. “I might be a first-class screever, sir, and a dab hand with me pick, but there’s not a fellow born can manage a redhead—and that one doubly so, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t.” Napier cut him a dark look. “Just tell me where the damned boots are.”
“Dressing room, sir, just to the left,” said Jolley evenly, “and so shiny you’ll be able to see that great nose of yours in the polish.”
With that, the door slammed, leaving Napier, sullen and sleepless, to tug on the tall boots himself. He did not blame Jolley nearly as much as he wished to. The poor devil certainly hadn’t volunteered for this duty, and it wasn’t his fault Napier’s eyes had scarcely closed last night. Nor was it Lisette’s.
No, as usual, he’d brought the trouble on himself.
The tall boots wrestled on, Napier went to the window by his bed and simply stood looking down at the lake, wondering if Jolley were right in his assessment of redheads.
There was a mist on this morning, a gray and feeble thing that crept over the water and clung to the glass like the uncertainty that had crept into his soul. On impulse, he threw up the window and leaned out into the damp, drawing it deep into his lungs. Embracing, perhaps, the ambiguity.
But he had reached a decision in the wee, restless hours of the morning, he realized.
He was going to take Lisette back to Hackney.
And he would do it by week’s end, at the latest. What she did after that—even if she absconded to Scotland, Boston, or the Italian coast—he told himself it would have to be her choice. He couldn’t make her love him. He certainly couldn’t make himself bring her to justice, whatever that was. And bringing her to Burlingame had been folly of the worst sort. The self-deceptive sort.
He had known, since that first moment in Whitehall, that the woman fascinated him beyond all logic. And last night had brought home to him the realization that he could trust neither his heart nor his actions—not where she was concerned. His longing for her unleashed in him a sort of madness that defied his own will. And he knew that if she were guilty of a crime—even a crime of the worst sort—he could not have prosecuted her.
In fact, he would have rationalized it away. His logical self knew this.
His illogical self simply knew she was innocent.
He had become one of those people to whom, under certain circumstances, the truth simply did not matter. He would believe what he chose to believe.
For a man who’d so long lived by black and white, this blurring felt—on some strange level—a little liberating. For if truth did not matter, perhaps what his father had done was not so egregious? Perhaps walking away from a life of service, a career that both frustrated and fulfilled him, was not a selfish choice?
But neither of those things had anything to do with Lisette, whose happy life had been so unfairly stripped from her by Sir Wilfred Leeton and a warped, imperfect justice system. She had been hurt to the point that she’d claimed she was no longer sure she could even feel pain.
Well, by God, he felt it.
He felt it enough for the both of them.
And the only way through it was forward. He needed to get Lisette away from here, settle what little he could of this business at Burlingame, then return to London and hand his resignation to Sir George. Because it wasn’t just his heart he couldn’t trust. He could no longer trust himself to do his job. He had crossed that line between black and white, and he did not mean to return.
With Sir Philip and Lady Keaton soon to arrive, along with their child, there would surely be enough goings-on to keep his Aunt Hepplewood occupied, even with Lisette away. Moreover, his theory about his anonymous letter had not been borne out, and he was fast coming to believe that the mysterious author was more of a troublemaker than a concerned citizen.
But thinking of the letter reminded him of a pressing missive from Sir George, and after glancing at the clock, Napier decided he had just enough time to answer it. He drew up a chair to his writing table, realizing that while he missed his duties at Number Four, he did not miss them nearly as much as he’d feared he might.
He could be content here at Burlingame, he realized. Or as content as he ever was anywhere—particularly so once the house had been emptied of meddling relations.
But he was not at all sure he would ever be happy.
He felt the awful sadness grip his heart again, and cursed his own weakness. It was in moments like this that he longed for the days of black and white. The days when he had been confident in the righteousness of his every decision. When he’d been relentless in his pursuits—be it the pursuit of justice, or the pursuit of a woman.
The days before he’d fallen in love with Elizabeth Colburne, and begun to worry about estates and corn and his orphaned cousins. Next it would be puppies. Or a damned rose garden, perhaps. He had lost his hard edge. Gone soft. Begun to give a damn.
Christ, he hardly recognized himself.
He was a better human being, perhaps. Of course he was. But at what cost? The cost of his heart?
But if he could not have Lisette, weren’t there a thousand other things both great and small to which he might turn his energies, if not his heart?
God forbid Duncaster should die anytime soon, but when he did, Napier had resolved to give Gwyneth the dower house and pack his great-aunt back to Northumberland on the first train, sending Miss Jeffers along with her. The young lady could fend for herself, or decorate a damned house for her widowed father. Heaven knew it was what she seemed good at, with her scraps and her sketchbooks always to hand.
In the end, only Beatrice would remain at Burlingame, and only then if neither of her sisters better suited her. Napier had meant what he’d promised the child about this being her home as long as she wished, though he had no idea how he would go on with an eleven-year-old girl in his care.
It felt more daunting, in some respects, than the actual running of the estate. And it was just as important—if not more so. Moreover, a child needed a woman’s touch. Someone wise and protective. Someone both fierce and gentle.
Sensing the direction his thoughts were taking, Napier cursed beneath his breath, and dipped his pen into the ink. Ruthlessly shoving Lisette to the back of his mind, he hastened through his letter to Sir George, then went down to breakfast.
The room was empty. Lisette had gone, of course, along with everyone else. He dined alone, then set off in the direction of the estate offices.
His trip was in vain. Craddock sat by the hearth, a fire built up against the damp, a lap desk propped awkwardly on one knee, and his left foot up on a pile of cushions, bare of shoe or stocking.
“I do beg your pardon, sir,” he said, trying to set the desk away.
Napier threw up his hand. “Don’t get up, Craddock,” he ordered. “What’s the matter?”
A faint blush rose on the man’s cheeks. “I fear, sir, that I’m in the gout,” he said. “It’s . . . mortifying, really. It is an old man’s disease, or so I imagined it.”
“It is a bloody painful disease, at any age,” said Napier, crossing the room to peer at the swollen red toe. “My good fellow, you cannot possibly put a boot on that foot.”
“Nor even a stocking,” Craddock admitted. “Riding is out of the question.”
“It’s just as well,” Napier assured him, straightening. “My man Jolley predicts rain, and he’s nigh infallible. If you don’t believe me, just ask him.”
Craddock managed a smile. “Would you like to go over the breeding records
for the home farm instead?” he offered.
Napier set a hand on the man’s shoulder. “What I’d like is for you to go back to bed with a stout tincture of opium and a peck of sour cherries,” he said. “And go at once.”
“Mrs. Buttons is fetching them now,” Craddock admitted.
“Excellent, then. May I help you back upstairs?”
Craddock looked further embarrassed. “No, thank you, sir,” he said. “I trust you can otherwise employ yourself?”
“Oh, yes,” said Napier. “I shall doubtless think of something.”
Mr. Jolley, Lisette discovered, was nothing if not dependable. After another miserable, sleepless night, she was perusing Volume IV of the Encyclopedia Britannica at precisely half past eight, one eye upon the door, when the elderly, white-haired man walked past, his gait purposeful and his shoulders stooped.
Lisette shoved the encyclopedia back into its slot, snatched up a volume of fairy tales she’d laid aside, and then counted off ten seconds before breezing out the door and down the hall.
It was no trouble to hang back and out of his sight since she knew where Jolley was headed. But as Lisette passed through the grand entrance hall, she was surprised to see Lord Hepplewood and Diana standing in the depths of the west colonnade in what appeared to be an intense, whispered discussion.
With his tousled curls, dark blue coat and matching striped waistcoat, Lord Hepplewood looked, as always, dangerously handsome. Diana, however, looked distraught. Hepplewood gripped her arm just above her wrist, as if holding her back from something.
Suddenly, on a sharp word, Diana shook her head, yanked from his grasp, then swept past him and into the hall, brushing by Lisette with a curtest of greetings, her heels rapidly clicking across the wide, vaulted chamber. It looked as if she were blinking back tears.
For an instant, Lisette hesitated, feeling she ought to go after her, but Jolley had vanished around the turn of the stairs.
Lord Hepplewood saved her the decision, striding across the hall with a grim look in his eyes. “Let Diana go,” he said gently. “It’s just Mamma again.”