He could not remember why he’d ever thought her plain.
“So tell me some of your horrid ghost stories,” she urged, eyes twinkling under her lashes.
“Where should I begin? Shall I tell you about the third Earl of Everscham, who murdered his wife with a wood axe and still chases young maids around the upper floors with his bloodied weapon? Or shall I begin with the story of old shepherd Bob, killed by a savage wolf and left for all eternity to seek his lost sheep in the low meadow whenever there is mist in the valley?”
“Danny! I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Pleased that he managed to amaze her, Carver continued regaling his prisoner with bloodthirsty tales while she filled her stomach with roast beef, eating enough for a woman twice her size.
***
Mrs. Martindale returned with a large candelabrum to lead them up to bed. To Molly’s surprise and relief, she was given her own chamber, a very large one with a four-poster bed and windows that she was informed overlooked the rose garden. Dusk was loosening its grip on the sky by then, and it was too dark to confirm the view for herself, but the housekeeper assured her a very pretty garden awaited below.
“It was the Countess of Everscham’s favorite place,” Mrs. Martindale explained as she moved around the room, lighting more candles. “She spent hours tending those roses. Sadly, I don’t have the time to devote to it, but then I never had green fingers. The gardener, Jenkins—although a capable fellow—is somewhat dismissive of decorative gardening and puts more of his time into the home farm. His expertise, as he will proudly tell you, is in vegetables, for one will never starve as long as one plants vegetables. I’m afraid he sees flowers as less than useful and beneath his dignity.”
Molly answered at once that she would be happy to tend the roses while she was there. The housekeeper looked at her sharply, as if suddenly seeing her in a new light. “Well, that would be most useful, madam. If you’re sure…”
“Certainly. I am happy to help in any way I can.”
For a few moments, as she unpacked her trunk—filled with Lady Mercy’s clothes, which were all too short for her—she was aware of Mrs. Martindale’s stern regard closely observing all her movements. Then the housekeeper asked if she was in need of a maid to help her.
“My girls have not had a vast amount of experience in tending to a lady, for his lordship has never brought a guest such as yourself with him when he visited before, but I’m sure they would be adequate. I can send them up to you, if you desire it.”
“Oh no, Mrs. Martindale I can manage. Thank you.”
“Very good, madam. When would you like to be awakened in the morning?”
Molly had never needed to be awakened by another person in her life. She was usually the first one up and often the last to bed. The only morning heralds she’d known were the pigeons outside her window in London, or the cockerel in the yard outside her family’s tiny cottage in Sydney Dovedale. “I’ll wake myself, Mrs. Martindale. I’m sure I’ll be too excited to oversleep. I’m looking forward to exploring the estate.”
Again the older woman looked at her oddly, inclined her head in a half bow, and then left the room, closing the door with a gentle thud.
Molly tested the bed by bouncing lightly on the edge and found it comfortable but firm. There was a faint odor of mothballs, but she supposed that was inevitable, since she’d been told by Lady Mercy that the house was mostly shut up all year round. A dish of potpourri beside the bed helped sweeten the air, and a fire had evidently been lit earlier in the grate to chase away the damp, for there was a lingering hint of wood smoke. All these efforts made just for her. She was quite overwhelmed by it.
Mrs. Martindale had said he never brought anyone like her to the house. Whatever that meant.
She peered through the drapes at a star-filled sky. The moon seemed larger than it did in London. How quiet the land was too, she thought. Just a soft owl hoot somewhere in the distance. She supposed if she had lived all her life in London and known only the noise and smells of the town, it might have been eerie to hear her own breath and her own heart drumming. But she, of course, was raised in the country. She was not the grand lady of Town that Mrs. Martindale had expected.
A sudden click behind her brought Molly out of her reverie.
Her kidnapper, wrapped in a velvet-trimmed bed robe, carrying a candle, appeared through an opening in the wall paneling.
“I thought you were the lost valet or the third earl with his wood axe,” she quipped, her pulse skipping.
He set his candle on the dresser. “I would hope you’d make more noise and protest than that if it was someone other than me, Miss Robbins, appearing in your bedchamber in the still of night.”
“Perhaps,” she chirped. “Depends how handsome he might be.”
Slipping off his robe, he tossed it to her bed, and she watched the silver drift of moonlight caress his fine musculature. He was very confident in his nudity. Why would he not be? He’d had bouquets of beautiful women sing his praises in bed.
“Turn around,” he whispered, crossing the floor toward her. “Since you have no maid, I must undress you tonight.”
So she let him unhook her gown and untie the laces of her stays. “You are fond of your secret doors,” she muttered. “I suppose you have them all over this house.”
“They are the invention of a previous, very resourceful Danforthe.” She felt his lips on the nape of her neck.
“A house this old must hold many secrets.”
His breath tickled her shoulder. “It certainly always felt that way. As if the adults kept things from me.”
“I suppose, because you were an only child for ten years, you were left to amuse yourself.”
“Yes. There were no other playmates here, just ghosts, secrets, and mysteries. I was always fond of mysteries. That’s what first drew me to you, Margaret.”
She scoffed. “There’s no mystery about me.”
Her clothing fell away, and then his hands slid her drawers down. “On the contrary, you are all mystery, all dark hidden places and buried treasure.”
Molly laughed. “There is nothing hidden from you anymore.” He had kissed and caressed every part of her body. What could there be left for him to claim?
He led her away from the window. “Now I have you all to myself. No work. No other people to interfere—yours or mine.”
She raised a hand and ran her fingers through his midnight hair, just as she’d imagined doing for so many years. “Mrs. Martindale wonders about me. I suppose you can lift a girl out of the servant’s hall and take her upstairs with the fine folk, but she’ll always be a downstairs sort of girl.”
“Only if that’s what she prefers.” As her hand drifted down the side of his face, he turned his head and kissed her palm. “Do you?”
In all honesty, Molly wasn’t sure where she belonged anymore. Here she was, living the superior life with her aristocratic lover, wearing Lady Mercy’s clothes and being waited on. She couldn’t turn her nose up at it. What woman didn’t want to be pampered like a princess in a fairy tale at least once in her life?
“Tonight,” he whispered, “you’re my upstairs lady, and I’ll be your downstairs fellow.”
She chuckled. “Danny, I don’t want you to be my servant.”
“Why not?”
“It wouldn’t suit you.”
He made a wounded face. “I always thought I’d look rather splendid in footman’s livery.”
He would too, she thought, chagrined. “But you’d have to do what people said. All the time. And keep your opinions to yourself.”
A deep crease wrinkled his brow. “Ah.”
“Precisely. Far better you stay as you are and just be…pretty.”
“Pretty?”
Molly struggled to remain solemn. “It is what you do best, your lordship.” She turned and walked to the bed. “One of the things you do best,” she added, sliding under the coverlet and holding it for him.
After a slight delay, he followed her to the bed. “So what you’re saying, Miss Robbins, is that I’m little better than a plaything for you.”
She looked at him somberly. “Why would you want to be anything else?”
He paused, shook his head, and then slid his warm hand over her breast. Her nipple pricked instantly to attention. “Since I’m here solely for your entertainment, Miss Robbins”—he bent his head to kiss the little peak—“you’d best make the most of me in the last days we have left.”
“I intend to.” Not that she needed any encouragement, or warning about time passing them by.
His fingers tickled downward, over her stomach. “So tonight I am the servant to do your bidding. Where shall I begin?”
“That’s a good place. Down a little farther.”
“You want me downstairs, my lady?”
She sighed as his hand slid between her thighs. “Yes. Just there.”
Slowly he kissed his way down her body, following his fingers. “As you wish, my lady.”
The damp tip of his tongue trailed across her skin and then delved down to tend the heated little flame darting and pulsing at her core. Molly writhed and stretched, excitement racing through her from head to toe. “You’re a very good servant below stairs, my darling Danny. Most obliging and efficient.”
He couldn’t answer because he was busy lapping over her sensitive flesh with steady, possessive strokes of his masterful tongue.
“And your attention to detail is becoming…quite…ex…excep…exceptional.” A short while after this, she gave up speech herself. At least the sort of decent conversation that made any sense.
Twenty-two
In the morning she woke to find him sprawled out on his stomach, taking up most of the room, snoring loudly into his pillow. Molly knew she should have been tired too, but she wasn’t. Not then. As she’d said to the housekeeper, there was too much to explore.
Half an hour later she was descending the grand staircase, eager to tour the house at her own pace, without him rushing her along, letting her see only what he wanted to show. This was her chance to pry.
The sun was bright that day, a cloudless sky stretching overhead, blue never ending, but inside the house it was cool, corners swathed in shadow. She stood a while in the hall, staring up at the large portraits of the previous earl and his wife. They grimly stared back, wondering, no doubt, why a mere dressmaker thought she had any right to observe them with such a searching perusal. Molly thought that if she was the countess, she would want to be painted with her husband, not separately. It would have made for a sweeter study. But from the look on the fourth earl’s face, he didn’t care much for sweet.
Feeling the chill of his stern regard, she eventually turned and walked out into the sunny day. Barely had she taken two steps across the gravel when a young foxhound ran by with a ball in its mouth, and the small whirlwind following it almost took her off her feet.
“Sorry, missus!” the boy shouted.
Instantly she recognized that bright freckled face and stopped him. “What are you doing here?” It was the boy pickpocket who used to run around the streets with his friends in London. The same boy who once impressed Carver with his knowledge of horses.
“I live ’ere, missus.” He didn’t seem to recognize her at first. “I’ve got to catch my pup.” So she let him go and watched as he ran after the foxhound. A moment later she spied the gardener with his wheelbarrow, heading around a corner of the house. Molly quickened her pace to catch up with him and ask about the boy.
“That’s young Tom, Miss Robbins,” she was told. “He’s one of the boys his lordship took in to work with the horses. You’ll find there’s a lot of ’em about.”
She learned that Carver provided shelter on the estate for many transplanted boys from the streets of London and other towns nearby. They were all learning a trade. Not only that, but in some cases their younger siblings had also been brought to live on the estate grounds. Tom’s little sister, Susie, was in training with the housemaids. A small, wide-eyed girl, too shy to speak, she reminded Molly of herself.
The children were healthy and happy, well shod, eager, and clearly looked after by the staff under whom they worked. Over the next few days she met many of them, and talking to each one was like peeling back the magician’s curtains, behind which the true Carver Danforthe had kept his secrets. He rarely spoke to her of these tasks he’d taken on. He was a man who made light of good deeds, and praise in any form made him shrug and itch and fidget, as if he had a shirt full of stinging nettles.
But he could hide from her no longer behind his beastly guise.
“Does your sister know about all your work here with the children?” she would ask him later.
“Good Lord, no. Why would I want her sticking her oar in?” And when he smiled in that mischievous way, Molly knew he took great delight in doing all this without his sister’s knowledge. How he liked his secrets, his hidden treasures.
“I wish other people knew the truth about Carver Danforthe,” she said softly.
“Why? What do you mean? Who cares what they think?”
But she longed for others to know the real Carver and to value him as she did, not to dismiss him as just another entitled, dissolute rake. It hurt her heart to think that he was not appreciated for the good things he tried to do.
“What’s this?” he demanded sternly, standing over her and raising a finger to wipe a few droplets from her lashes. “Where is all this water coming from, young woman? It will not do. I won’t have it.”
She sniffed. “I’ll cry if I want to.”
“Indeed you will not.” He cupped her face in his hands and lifted it for a kiss. “It’s not in your contract.”
***
He strode out to the stables, ready to instruct the groom on finding a sidesaddle for Margaret. He knew there must be one that had belonged to his mother or his sister somewhere about the place. But his guest was there before him and chatting amiably in the cobbled yard with the young men who tended the stables. She must have been up with the lark. Her face was flushed with good color, and she did not appear in the least weary. Irrepressible youth, he mused.
When the grooms saw him and snapped to attention, she swiveled around excitedly. “There you are. I’ve been waiting.”
He should have reprimanded her for speaking to him that way before the grooms and stable lads, but in the next moment, he had something else to worry about. She held her skirts up with one arm and, using the aid of a mounting block, swung herself up onto one of the hunters. There she sat proudly astride the beast without a saddle but with the ease of an experienced rider.
“Have we no sidesaddle?” he muttered, quite certain he should not approve. His father certainly never would have, but then his father would have approved of absolutely nothing about Margaret Robbins, a stubborn, independent woman with rebellious ideas about life.
“I don’t need one of those,” she replied, gathering the reins in her gloved hands. “I’m a country girl, your lordship. We are made of stronger stuff. I’d much rather ride like this.”
And showing off an improper length of shapely leg above her riding boots, he thought churlishly. The grooms were doing their best not to notice, but one of the young stable lads had just dropped a hay fork on his foot, prongs first.
“Do hurry,” she exclaimed, turning her horse toward the gravel path that led from the stable yard. “You did say the estate is six hundred acres, and I’ll never see it all if we don’t start soon.”
Apparently she’d taken him literally when he said he would show her the estate, although he’d really intended to take her around only a few scenic spots. Trust Robbins to insist on seeing every detail.
A second hunter was saddled and ready for him, so he mounted with no further delay, deciding there would be time enough later to lecture her on the indecency of riding bareback and astride.
But as he caught up with her, he couldn’t resist teasing. “You were once so
prim and prudish, Miss Robbins. Yet here you are displaying your legs in a most indecorous fashion. What has become of you?”
She turned her head to look at him. “You corrupted me, Danny.”
He very much doubted that. The naughty Miss Robbins was there all along, hiding in his wainscoting. But it was likely she didn’t know herself back then and was still discovering her own capabilities just as she helped him find his.
Carver took her around the fields that day. Harvest would soon be upon them, and the swaying wheat was high and golden. He showed her the orchards, where workers picked fruit and stacked baskets and boxes as high as themselves. He also took her to visit the cottages bordering the estate and introduced her to several tenants. If it was any other woman, he’d known he would never have let her greet his tenants, and she would very probably not have wanted to. But Margaret displayed a keen interest in everything they saw that day, and Carver took quiet pleasure in watching her talk easily to the farm laborers and their families. There was no uncomfortable condescension, for she saw herself as one of them, and they, after the first surprise, were happy to invite her into their homes.
Phipps rode out to meet them at the tithe cottages to discuss repairs recently undertaken, as well as those that were still required. Although Hobbs had reported to him regularly on the state of his tenants’ cottages, Carver had been content simply to throw money at the problem. Now he opened his mind to the idea of more substantial changes and developments, rather than hasty fixes.
“Let’s get new thatch on all the cottages and renovate,” said Carver. “Not just those that are damaged. An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.”
Phipps looked pleased in a quiet, undemonstrative way. “Very good, my lord.”
The sun was high, the air warm and flowing with the fragrance of late summer, and riding with Margaret at his side, he felt a deep sense of pride in the estate. He showed her the places he’d played as a boy, including the ditch he fell in when learning to ride.
Miss Molly Robbins Designs a Seduction Page 26