by Anne Mallory
She traced the gilded lettering and turned the page.
Chapter 4
Secret #3: Pull forth or use the unexpected. Create havoc and relish in the chaos. Put her off guard even if she is on guard at the same time.
The Seven Secrets of Seduction
Her cheeks were still blazing hours later, the book tucked under first one dress, then two, then hidden as deep within the bowels of her cracked armoire as it was possible to go.
And still she could hear it softly crooning. Inviting her to uncover it once more and discover what else lay within.
No monk had created that illumination. Not something that contained such vivid descriptions and pictures. She hadn’t even realized some of those things were possible.
Come. Open me.
Perhaps if she were to stand the armoire on top of it, it would muffle the call.
Did a woman really…really do that type of thing to a man? And he in return? Was that what The Seven Secrets of Seduction had truly meant by kneeling to pay one’s tribute? She’d always thought it was a veiled reference to worshipping beauty or nature or some such thing.
Not an allusion to how one might physically pay tribute. The image of it rose in her mind, the viscount’s dark eyes looking down at her in concupiscence. She hadn’t even known what the word “concupiscence” meant, had never even seen the word, until the illumination had shown her.
To imagine the ardent desire searing from his eyes. At her.
She shot off her bed, tripping on her flimsy rug and catching the edge of her dented oak dressing table just in time to save herself from a face-first landing on the frigid boards.
She laughed nervously. She’d almost ended up on her knees anyway. But without the flesh-and-blood devil looming above her.
Her bare feet shuffled on the rug bunched beneath and finally found purchase on the cold-split boards, tucking her toes under to grip better. For once the cold did nothing to sap the heat from her skin.
She quickly tucked her feet into her sturdy work slippers and threw on the heavy, unattractive night robe she’d long ago borrowed from her father. She’d never cared before that it was so bulky and, well, ugly. It functioned well, it was warm, and in the dead of a cold London night, that was all that mattered.
Until one saw women in diaphanous gowns, split down the middle, enticing their prey on the other side of the page.
She tied the strap of her robe with suddenly clumsy fingers. The ink-stained, chapped edges of them gripped the heavy layered cotton and pulled. What was wrong with her?
She quickly walked down to the kitchen to pour herself some milk and tea. A nighttime indulgence she was feeling in need of at the moment. A light sifted from underneath the door of the attached work office down the narrow hall. Her uncle was still awake then.
She’d seen payment for “library restructuring” on the ledgers, so the viscount had been serious when he’d said that her uncle had already approved her help, or, well, someone’s help at least, but she hadn’t been able to speak to her uncle yet as he’d been out late at a tradesman’s meeting.
His office door was closed. Should she seek him out? There was something about asking him that would make it all the more real instead of a continued illusion. Perhaps he would even stop her from going the next day, having not agreed to the plan after all—a scheme devised by the viscount instead.
Why she was questioning whether she should ask her uncle was the real question.
She wandered over slowly and paused outside the door. She could hear the scritch of her uncle’s pen. It would take but a knock on the door and a quick word to take care of the entire question. He might say that he planned to send Peter. He might stop her from going. Forbid her from it.
And if he didn’t, if he was just the absentminded man she had grown quite fond of in the past two years, then she could tell him that it was highly improper for her to go. Convince him to send one of the others instead.
Her feet didn’t move. Her hands stayed at her sides. The light filtered through the bottom of the door, undimmed.
Somewhere inside her she knew that it would have to be her choice. Her uncle had already sent her to return the books without a thought to any proprieties being violated. What difference would her going to work on the viscount’s library make in his mind? She would simply be another servant for a time.
She looked at her chapped hands. And why would she think otherwise, anyway? What sort of perverse spell had the viscount cast? Or cruel joke did he play? To make her Malvolio? To seduce her into wearing yellow stockings and cross garters?
But to feel his hands upon her, caressing her stockings, those fleeting touches turned into more…
She shivered, the chill of the night finally catching up and sifting under the hem of the robe, under her equally unattractive, worn nightgown. Icy tendrils clawing her calves.
She took a step back, then another. She would go. The viscount’s words had held the ring of truth. She would worry about any decision she needed to make another day. There was always tomorrow to decide.
She was still chewing her lip the next morning as she approached the kitchen door to the grand house once more.
One of the maids from the day before, the one with the poor balance, was digging in a vegetable garden to the side with another servant. She looked up as Miranda drew closer.
“Cor, you are the girl from the bookshop.”
Miranda switched her weight to her other foot as the second servant, a middle-aged woman also looked up. “I am from a bookshop, yes.”
“What you doing back here?”
Miranda shifted her weight again, uncomfortable at the echo of the question in her own mind. “I am helping to organize the library.”
“Cor, girl, I know why you are here. What you doing back here instead of up front?” The maid motioned down the drive.
“This is the entrance,” Miranda said, her discomfort rising.
“For us, not you. No need for traipsing the sweaty kitchens.”
“I was hired—”
“Girl, don’t care what you think your purpose is, your entrance is up front. Cook’ll have my tail.”
“Again,” she thought she heard the other maid mutter.
“I don’t think you understand—”
The maid shrugged. “I know you are supposed to go to the front.” She pointed. The other woman nodded sharply.
Miranda considered her options but bowed to the command and turned around. She’d likely be sternly put in her place up front, but there was something more unsettling about barreling past the two servants, who were eyeing her so curiously.
She trod back down the long drive and turned the corner to see Jeffries in the doorway, imperiously beckoning her inside as if she were an expected guest instead of a laborer.
She tripped over a stone but righted herself. She turned behind her, sure that there must be someone there to whom he was motioning; but only two gardeners strode the path, neither of whom were looking at the butler. She turned back to the entrance, and once again the butler beckoned her forth.
It was as if the news of her arrival had reached the front of the house before she had.
“Good afternoon, Miss Chase. May I take your coat?” She was a little stunned as she shed the garment, barely remembering her manners.
“Yes, please. Thank you, Mr. Jeffries.”
“Shall I show you to the library?”
She stared at him. A head butler didn’t “show” servants. At most an underbutler might direct a new hire on where to go, but Miranda had expected to be assigned a random housemaid, or the housekeeper, if the latter felt her authority needed to be established over the new girl.
Then again, a viscount wouldn’t pick up a package of books from a store. Who knew what sort of crazed household they ran.
“I—That would be nice, thank you.” She remembered the way but knew better than to say so. Her mother had drilled protocol into her, hoping that she might follow in her fo
otsteps one day. The ladies who ran the academy had been disappointed when she had not.
“This way.” He bowed, but it was obvious from his tight manner that he did not approve of her. She opened her mouth to say, “I’m only here to organize the library,” but that would sound silly beyond measure.
Two maids they passed in the hall stopped what they were doing to watch her—one surreptitiously and the other quite openly. The glances were repeated throughout the house.
If there were ever a day when she felt quite as on display and out of belonging as today, she wasn’t sure she had lived it yet. She hadn’t realized what a relief it was sometimes to blend into the woodwork.
They reached the library, finally, and she nearly gave in to the urge to run inside and firmly close the door behind her.
“A lunch tray will be brought for you.”
“Oh, no, I can walk to the—”
Jeffries held up his hand. “No need to trouble yourself, Miss Chase. We will be happy to bring a tray to you. Is there anything else you require?”
She shook her head, nothing springing to mind. She couldn’t think when she was this on edge.
“Then good day, Miss Chase.” He bowed, another tight movement. “Please ring should you require anything.”
The movement and the way he said it stated that he very likely expected her to do so. Repeatedly.
It spoke to the types of guests they had entertained in the past. What that said for her she didn’t know.
Clipped footfalls faded into the silence of the hallway. Servants were so skilled at moderating their movements to being as quiet as possible in the common areas and halls. Not disturbing their masters. Only the back rooms and kitchens would have a jubilant air. Something that proclaimed them as individual spirits.
Sometimes she wished she could return to the country but not be remembered as the daughter of a strict, well-respected academic, expected to be proper at all times. To go somewhere where all she had to do was enjoy the pleasant diversions of village life. Live in her books and find solace in the forests.
But some forests weren’t made of trees. She looked around the large, airy room choked by the stacks of towering books. The room would look beyond marvelous when reassembled. She walked through the plugged space, around the stacks, touching a binding here, picking up a copy there. She couldn’t believe that the entire shelf space was bare. Whatever had occurred in the viscount’s mind to cause him to remove every copy, then shuffle them all together?
Such random thinking, the Quality possessed. Do what is on the forefront of the mind and leave someone else to clean it up. She supposed that was what came of having manors full of money. Things like time and effort didn’t even enter into the equation.
She cursed the crazy temptation that had lodged within her, enticing her here once more.
She stroked a copy of the Aeneid. The treat of discovering all of the treasures within was enticing by itself, though the actual task of organizing them might as well have been given to Psyche by Aphrodite herself.
But the other reason for coming…a purely flesh-and-blood reason…she shook her head and deliberately focused on the Herculean task before her. She lifted the book, sighed, and dropped into a chair located in the middle of the hurricane.
It would take a week just to partially sort through them and discern which categories to use and where, depending on the breadth of the subjects. Of course, she could easily organize the books into alphabetical categories as they did in the store. Though some of the grand houses preferred a straight alphabetical listing. And some went by merit. Or by the sizes of the volumes, as someone had done in the viscount’s study below—maybe by the viscount himself.
She snorted at the last.
“If it is too big a task…”
She jerked to see the viscount silhouetted in the doorway, hands in his dark pockets, brow raised. An invitation or challenge in the way he stood.
She straightened in her chair, her heart suddenly lodged and thumping in her throat. “I was just pondering how to begin.” She gripped the book in her hand, trying to calm her nerves. She had half expected, anticipated, him to appear based on the previous days’ conversations, but it was still a shock.
Like something exquisitely formed from the inky letters and drawings of the books and papers she read, the stark black-and-white character stepping forth from the page and onto the Aubusson rug hugging the floor at the room’s entrance.
“Did you want them organized in a certain sequence?” she blurted in a rush of words trying to corral her thoughts. “Is there a way you’d prefer?”
He sauntered into the room, one hand caressing the crown of a stack as he read the words written on a spine. “What care have I? Other than for them to be in good order.”
She tried to keep the jumpiness in her fingers from showing. “For someone with so many books and such desire to obtain new copies, you seem awfully ambivalent about them.”
“I know their power and impact. It is all about perception, is it not, Miss Chase?”
She studied him. “I like to think it is about content, Lord Downing. But perception does lay a gloss on the surface. A finger must but swirl beneath.”
He breached the chasm between them and sank onto the arm of the chair next to hers. Far too close. Looming next to her, over her. The only saving grace was that he was perched on the arm farthest from her.
“Then what do you do with it?” His lips moved in a beautiful fashion. Such a contrast to the starkness he at times projected.
She somehow managed to answer him, the automatic response forming. “I organize it, of course.”
A faint smile curled his mouth, and a vague buzzing tickled her senses as she watched his beautiful lips part, then come together. “So literal, yet again.”
To adventure into the figurative meanings of his words was where the inherent danger resided. The insidious echo of a soon sounded in her mind. To feel those assuredly warm and capable lips upon her.
No. Best to start out as she wished, needed, to continue when it came to the viscount.
“I find plain speaking less confusing,” she said.
“And yet are you not the one who likes to think that there is underlying meaning to seductive words and silly guides? That is nothing, if not figurative.”
She tried to shake off the heavy feeling that had descended. She focused on his eyes instead. Stygian portals and mercurial darkness. “Books allow readers to determine what they wish. People often aren’t quite as forgiving if you don’t read or see exactly what they wish you to.”
He shifted on the chair arm, looking up at the bare shelves. Something shifted in his eyes as they caught the stacks. “So where will we begin?”
“‘We’? Begin what?”
“With the books.” His dark eyes connected back with hers. “What else could I mean?”
With the way he said it and the look in his eyes, it was obvious that he meant something quite different.
“I am fine on my own.”
His eyes traveled her face, studying her, leaning just an extra inch toward her, urging her to pull forward too. “No one is fine on his own. People just say they are.”
“I assure you that I am quite content.”
He touched the edge of the chair. A studied gesture. “Contentedness is not happiness.”
“I like to think that contentedness is synonymous.”
The intensity of his gaze increased. “Which is why you beg to be transformed.”
Miranda tried to stay her breathing and think of Georgette instead, who thought the same. “Perhaps you would care to meet a friend of mine? She would be quite willing to be transformed.”
“No. I am quite satisfied with my choice of you.”
She swallowed, searching for anything that might allow her to escape from the intensity of his gaze. “Your lordship, forgive my bluntness, but don’t you have other activities requiring your time?”
And where were his servants? Sil
ent or not, servants were always about in grand houses. Even in the presence of their masters, they melted into the shadows, ever ready. But she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of one—even in the hall door—since he’d entered.
“I veritably survive on your bluntness, my dear. And I can hardly leave you in here on your own.”
She stared at him, uncomprehending. She was quite used to blending into the shadows herself and not being noticed. She was akin to his staff after all, on par with their status. When she was on deliveries—or even when she had helped at the academy—she had learned how to be neither seen nor heard.
“You need my help,” he said.
“I do not.” She didn’t know that she would survive any kind of help he might give.
“I know just the trick too.” He slid from the arm into the belly of the chair. Like a country boy on a haystack rather than a lord in his manor. He reached out a hand and pulled hers to him.
She stared at him, caught. Long fingers, ungloved, stroked down her sleeve, to the frill at the edges, then over her lilac glove. Her breath caught as one finger dipped into the bowl of her palm and pulled.
His lips curved as his eyes held hers. He was so close. Uncomfortably close, leaning across the chair next to her, chairs she would have pulled apart if she’d had any thought that someone else might sit there.
He pulled and she leaned forward just a bit, following the pull, unable to stop herself from it as his dark gaze bewitched her. Using some masculine magic—a sailor’s call to a siren, instead of the other way around.
He smiled and held the spell a second longer before leaning back just the slightest bit, lifting weight from her palm. Her lips parted on their own. This is what it was like to fall under a spell then, she realized. To even feel the imagining beneath one’s skin.
His eyes dropped. “The Aeneid. Alphabetizing by title?”
It took her a second to realize that he had just removed a book from her hand. A book she’d forgotten she was holding.
“I—No. Yes. That is—”