“Not give. Loan. I don’t want you to give me anything. I’m not another of your loose women. I was raised to have some self-respect.”
“Ah yes, your blessed virtue. What bothers you more, Mouse? The money I spend, or the women I spend it on? Perhaps your real disdain is for them.” Her lashes were very full and lush, he noted for the first time as they blinked impatiently. There! He caught her looking at his grass-stained knees again and, if he was not mistaken, something above them. Interesting. “Or…perhaps you’re jealous.”
Her eyes widened, flicked back up to him and dragged him closer. Carver found himself staring down into treacherous, bottomless wells. He very nearly lost his balance, but she was the first to retreat.
“Don’t be nonsensical,” she sputtered, taking two steps back. He followed with three. In her next movement she backed against a corner china cabinet. “As if I care how you throw your attentions about so indiscriminately. Your lack of a moral compass, or theirs, is not my concern. My reputation, however, is.”
He laughed huskily, still thinking of her too-tight corset and what he might do to ease her distress. “My moral compass?”
“I don’t suppose you know what that means. I doubt they teach you that at Eton and Oxford.” Each breath shot out of her with a jagged edge, as if ripped out haphazardly. It was a rare display of temper that shredded her usually prim and cool demeanor.
“I’ll be damned if my sister’s lady’s maid, one of my household servants, is going to lecture me on my principles.”
“I am no longer a servant.” The words tumbled out in haste and filled the narrow space between them, making the air thick and hot.
“Then why take such an interest in the state of my breeches?”
She hesitated and then muttered sullenly, “Some habits are hard to break.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Better get out of that one, Miss Robbins. If gentlemen find you staring at their breeches, they might get the wrong direction from your…moral compass.”
She raised a hand between them, her palm inches from his chest. He could nibble upon her fingertips if they came several inches higher. “Kindly step back.”
“This is my drawing room,” he replied with more calmness than he felt, “and I’ll stand where I choose.”
“You will keep a discreet distance.”
“Will I? And you, the little girl from a one-horse village, will set the rules for the Earl of Everscham? The man who took her in and gave her a position in the first place. Fed her, clothed her, and gave her a bed for a dozen years. You will tell me what to do, is that it?” He smiled, trying to take the sting off his words. Not that she ever bothered with her own. Carver could no longer recall how this quarrel began or who made the first strike. But it was like a runaway cart rapidly bumping downhill, unstoppable by any but the most desperate of measures. Unless it was left to crash and splinter into a hundred pieces.
“I am no longer in your employ,” she replied, breathless. “I am a woman of business.” She stuck her small twitching nose in the air. “And we have more than one horse in Sydney Dovedale.”
He closed another step between them, and she was forced to lower her hand or else let it make contact with his lips. The more he fought the need to touch her, the more he warned himself of the danger, the more he wanted to do it. What would it feel like, he wondered, to hold this woman who was so very different than any other he knew? What would it be like to kiss her?
“If I desire to take more than passing interest in a business in which I have invested, then I shall,” he snapped. “I am entitled. Margaret.”
Finally, taking matters into his own hands and employing one of those desperate measures required to end the argument, he let his fingers find that seed lodged in her curl and brushed it free.
He expected this shocking gesture to silence her, but there was only a pause before her next words rushed out, tumbling over each other. “You mean the mere two hundred you invested? The two hundred that means nothing to a man of your wealth, as you just pointed out?” Apparently she meant to ignore the fact that he’d just touched her and called her by her first name. Ignore it, and it would go away, was that her plan? Well, he supposed there was nothing in that contract about touching—only flirting and Tomfollerie.
So his fingertips lingered to caress the high curve of her cheek, all the way down to her chin, and beneath, where the pale green ribbons of her bonnet were tied. Waiting to be untied.
Why not?
He wouldn’t be the first peer of the realm to enjoy a dalliance with a lady’s maid, would he?
But Miss Robbins was a different creature, unpredictable and prickly. She wasn’t likely to fall into his arms unless she tripped over his feet. It was doubtful she’d come there unarmed, he thought, remembering that sharp pin once stuck in his toe.
A sudden, intense need for brandy quickly made its grip felt, but there was none in the room, and he already knew what her expression would be if he rang for some at this hour of the day. The other urge he suffered at that moment would probably meet with a slapped face, so in the interest of self-preservation, he turned away from her and rubbed his cheek where she already caused his tooth to ache spitefully.
Apparently his new desire to be useful, to make change, had not gone without a hitch. He’d had no practice at it, of course.
Pacing around the couch, he eventually conceded, “It seems good deeds are not my forte, Robbins. I am duly reprimanded for my intention to help you. No need to flay me alive for it.” Carver returned to safer, familiar ground. “Good Lord, I preferred you when you were mute and invisible, as any good servant should be. I paid you less, at fifteen pounds per annum, to be silent and obedient, than I now pay you at two hundred pounds to clatter your tongue like a bitter scold.”
He heard her draw a sharp breath and, when he looked, some of the sparkle in her eyes had died away.
“I shan’t try to help you again,” he assured her firmly. “From now on, madam, your life is yours, and mine…is mine.”
“I’m glad we understand each other, your lordship.”
He gave her a stiff bow, and by the time he was upright again, she’d gone.
Striding to the window, he irritably nudged the curtain aside and watched her hurrying across the street, one hand on her bonnet. A flash of mud-spattered stocking as she scuttled away from Danforthe House drew his gaze downward, past her hem to the teasing glimpse of slender leg. He could close his fingers around that narrow ankle. Could probably lift her entire person over his head with one hand, throw her onto his bed, and do her at least one good deed she wouldn’t turn her nose up at.
But he couldn’t. It was in that damnable contract she’d tricked him into signing before he was fully awake.
Grumbling under his breath, he turned away from the window then paced to the couch, where an embroidered cushion annoyed him so much it had to be picked up from one end and thrown to the other. He tugged on his neck cloth, needing some air.
Damn servants and women getting uppity. His father would never allow it.
Carver strode to the window again, and with one hand, swiped the curtain back to see where she’d gone. The sun was bright, shining meanly in his eyes. He swung away, repeated his pacing circle, and cursed into the empty room.
Puppy-dog? Puppy-dog?
He’d certainly never help her again.
Resting his hands on the back of the couch, he took a deeper breath and heaved his shoulders until they felt less tense.
Well, he’d never help her in any way that she knew about it. Unfortunately for her, he was acquiring a penchant for being helpful. And for insolent brown eyes framed with very long, very dark lashes.
Seven
Molly was out of bed every morning as soon as the pigeons came to coo by her window. She had settled in now, getting to know her neighbors. Her landlady, Mrs. Lotterby, was an irrepressibly cheerful, robust lady trying to maintain her dignity in a ramshackle house and somehow making ends meet, des
pite the fact that her generous spirit was far greater than her means. She held weekly dinners for her tenants, taking great interest in their trials and troubles, eager to set their problems to rights before the pudding was consumed. She formed a special concern for Molly, treating her in a motherly way, making certain she ate well and advising her on the temperature and the state of the streets whenever she waylaid her on the stairs going out.
The landlady’s husband, Herbert, was a short, small-boned fellow who seldom got a word in edgeways and tended to drop or break anything he was charged with mending. Molly got the impression that Herbert was yet another of the good lady’s charitable causes, for—as his jolly wife freely admitted—he was no use for much beyond lacing her stays in the morning.
Living in the rooms below Molly were Mrs. Slater, an army captain’s widow coping with an eternally crying baby and her lazy, ill-tempered, unemployed brother, Arthur Wakely. Molly quickly befriended Mrs. Slater, who was not many years older than she, but whose circumstances were much worse since she had a child to care for and only a military pension on which to do it. Her brother was a complete and utter wastrel who drank too much and seemed to think the world owed him a living without him actually having to earn it.
When Arthur Wakely learned that Molly was a spinster with her own business, he predicted loudly and arrogantly that no good would come of it. “You should have married when you had the chance,” he dolefully assured her. In his opinion, women were good only for a life in service to a large household, or for marriage and childbirth. “An unwed, independent woman is a blight upon society.” Sprawled across the frayed, patched cushions of their landlady’s sofa, taking up all the space so no one else could sit, and periodically snorting the contents of a snuffbox, he declared, “A female that chooses not to do her duty, marry and produce children, is superfluous and should go to a nunnery, as they did in the vastly more civilized days of old.”
“Poor Arthur,” his sister meekly apologized, as she did far too often for him, “you must excuse his harsh words. He has had a very hard time…since His Foot.”
Apparently the hard times to which his sister referred amounted to no more than serving in the militia for a few months—twenty years ago—managing to get himself thrown out for being excessively in drink and in debt, then shooting himself accidentally in the foot. He now limped about, waiting for someone to compensate him for the foolishness of his own actions. His foot, which was always mentioned as if it ought to be written about in the court circular, was the most honored and pampered part about him, as well as the most interesting and least repulsive. Which was not saying much. Molly had no time for him, but was civil for Mrs. Slater’s sake. Once they got to know each other, she invited the lady up to her room in the afternoons, and even offered to take the baby for her from time to time, just to give the young mother some respite. In return, Mrs. Slater was happy to lend her services with some sewing, although her stitches usually had to be unpicked later when she was gone.
Occasionally, at night, Molly heard Arthur Wakely of The Foot arguing with his sister in the room below, their voices rising and falling until the softer of the two eventually stopped, conceding to whatever point the other made just to soothe the crying baby. Mrs. Slater never had much coin at hand. It seemed as if her brother took control of her widow’s pension, using it to keep up his own appearance and gambling in seedy establishments. If he had success with a wager, he disappeared for a few days, and his sister’s spirits would lift, but sooner or later, once his luck ran out, he returned again, and so would the poor lady’s sad, wilted demeanor.
The landlady’s sister, Mrs. Bathurst, who entertained with colorful, highly improbable tales of her lurid past, and an idealistic young artist named Frederick Dawes completed the residents of the house.
Frederick had moved into the lodgings just a week before Molly, and since they shared creative interests, as well as a need for extra candles, they formed a bond. Often, when Molly was sewing late in her room, Frederick would see the light under the gap of her door and slide a note to her.
Fancy a tipple?
It was not proper, of course, not by any means, but she would open her door to him, and they sat together with a decanter of wine and some cake too, if the generous Mrs. Lotterby had made any that day.
Molly enjoyed their conversations—the freedom to discuss design and art, being asked her opinion instead of being told what she should think. Frederick was a young man who did not care much for rules, and in that respect, he reminded her of her former fiancé, Rafe Hartley. He joked with her in the same way, warning her, whenever he caught her pulling a particularly ugly expression, that if the wind changed, she’d stay that way.
“One day, Miss Robbins, you will let me paint that unique, remarkably expressive face of yours,” he teased with one of his wide smiles.
“Why, pray tell, should you wish to paint me?”
“Because you are so much more interesting than the usual belles I’m commissioned to paint. There is character and intelligence in your features, something mysterious and melancholy.”
At least he didn’t try to tell her she was beautiful.
“You may dismiss that thought, Mr. Frederick Dawes. I have no desire to be reminded of how I look. The shock is bad enough when I catch my reflection in the washbasin every morning.”
He laughed so hard he spat cake crumbs down his shirt and waistcoat.
“You should paint Mrs. Slater,” she added, looking down at her sewing. “She has a sweetly pretty face.”
“Mrs. Slater is too pretty. There is no challenge in painting her, for I couldn’t make a bad picture if I tried. Now a face of age and experience like yours…”
“Well, thank you very much!” Molly chuckled. “It may surprise you to know, sir, Mrs. Slater is two years older than I.”
“Really? I suppose she does look rather glum sometimes.”
“I daresay if you had the burden of a baby, with no husband to help you and an indolent drunkard of a brother stealing from your purse at every turn, you too would be glum occasionally.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps I should paint her brother’s infamous foot, since we hear so much about it.”
“Hush!” The walls and floors were thin in that house.
“But you will let me paint you, Miss Molly Robbins. One day.”
“I promise you it will never happen.”
Frederick’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “Someone might commission your portrait.”
“Who on earth would do that?”
He shrugged, but the twinkle remained. After a while, they changed the subject to talk of where they grew up. Frederick listened intently to her tale of a childhood in the country and how she came to be plucked away from it by an aristocratic young lady who needed a maid and a friend. When it was his turn, Frederick spoke without emotion of a hard, unloved youth.
“I was raised in the workhouse,” he explained. “Left there as a babe to fend for myself. Later I was sold to a chimney sweep for sixpence, but when I grew too large for the flues, I ceased to be of use to him. Luckily I had this handsome face”—he gestured at it with a circling finger—“my art, and my wits. Those three things have kept me afloat in this town.”
Molly thought how fortunate she had been as a child, raised in the countryside with clean-smelling air and fresh food growing in the little patch of garden behind their cottage. She had two poor but sober and respectable parents who cared about her upbringing. Well…she’d always believed they were both sober, until Carver Danforthe recently accused her father of being a drunk. Why should she believe anything that rake told her? She was still affronted by the comment so casually thrown at her.
But little Molly’s early years were almost idyllic in comparison with those Frederick Dawes had spent in the workhouse and in the hands of villainous folk who sold children into labor. Rafe Hartley, too, had spent a period of his life in the workhouse when he was very young, but it was something he’d never liked to
talk about. Molly’s imagination had filled in the long gaps whenever her former fiancé went silent on the story of his childhood.
Frederick smiled at her. “I was very fortunate to stumble upon the good Mrs. Lotterby and win her sympathy, or I would never have moved in here and met such an interesting neighbor.”
“Interesting? Me?”
“Of course you are, with your somber little face that seldom cracks a smile and your incredibly talented fingers. Your prim manners. And your mystery gentleman.”
She stared at him. “My what?”
“The one who pays your rent here.” He calmly poured more wine for them both, as she was too slow and distracted to cover her glass with one hand. “There is a gentleman, isn’t there? You may as well confess it.”
“Certainly not.” She smoothed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. It had begun to tickle her. Just like a certain set of brazen fingertips recently. “Not in that sense.”
“Fibber! I know there is. Or else why would you not fall in love with me by now?” He grinned. “Besides, we all have secrets. How else do you suppose I can afford this wine? Not to mention paint and canvas?”
“You mean, you have a…a…”
“A great lady patroness who once saved me from the gutter. Yes.” He sighed. “Sadly, we parted company when her husband decided he did not want his funds going to my upkeep. It seems he thought my bills for the past year were simply part of the expensive maintenance of two spoiled lapdogs. When he awoke to the reality of his wife’s hobby, I was given short shrift. Now I must seek another lady of means to keep me in the manner to which I would very much like to become accustomed.” Catching Molly’s expression, which she could not control despite a worthy struggle, he sputtered into his wine. “Don’t look so appalled, Miss Robbins. We all do what we must to get by.”
“Yes, but—”
“Of course, you are an innocent country maid.” His eyes watched her above his glass.
She sat tall and straight, remembering her mother’s many warnings about the pitfalls faced by young girls who did not maintain their self-control. “I am indeed, Mr. Dawes. I’ll thank you to remember that.”
Miss Molly Robbins Designs a Seduction Page 7