“Oh dear,” Georgie said, biting his lip. “If only you had a secretary who had organized all that information for you.”
“Out with it, you swiving bastard.”
Georgie tilted his chair back towards the shelves that lined the wall, effortlessly retrieving the volume he sought. “My lord,” he said, presenting it with a flourish.
“You’re showing off,” Radnor said, flipping through the pages.
“I’m afraid so.” Georgie felt that he was quite justified in his smugness. He had not only organized the study, but he had become sufficiently familiar with the earl’s work to offer assistance. This was no mean feat for a man whose only formal education had been sporadic at best, and he found that he wanted to be acknowledged for his work. That was new. Usually Georgie’s efforts were, of necessity, invisible. Now he wanted Radnor to know just how good Georgie was. He wanted Radnor to admire him.
To admire him? That was absurd. Total nonsense. He wanted Radnor to do a good number of things to him, none of which involved admiration, unless it was Georgie admiring the earl’s bare torso.
But try as he might to feel otherwise, Georgie was proud of his work for Radnor. He felt as if he were a vital part of something important, something almost magical.
Something he was going to steal in order to wheedle his way back into a life of crime.
No. Something he needed to steal in order to keep a dangerous man away from the people he loved. Yesterday he received a letter from Jack, informing him that Sarah was safely at Oliver’s sister’s house and that Jack was looking into ways of bringing Brewster around. This was not terribly reassuring, because it meant that Brewster’s manhunt was in full effect.
It also meant that Georgie was still without a way to return to his life, to his brother and sister, unless he double-crossed the man who currently stood before him, brows furrowed, furiously paging through a scientific journal.
Georgie’s pigeonholes were in chaos.
Radnor flung the journal onto Georgie’s desk, opened to the page that showed the diagram he needed. “He put it sideways, blast the man.”
They spent the rest of the morning producing what Radnor called a trough battery. The problem with the vertical pile, Georgie gathered, was that the weight of the disks caused liquid to be squeezed out of the quilt pieces and to leak down the sides, causing a short circuit. By laying the pile on its side, they could add more disks but take the pressure off the electrolyte.
Late in the afternoon, Georgie heard the painstakingly soft footsteps outside the door, signaling a delivery of the inevitable ham, apples, and bread. His stomach turned. Even if he had to forage in the woods he would have a decent meal tonight.
“Do you know,” he said thoughtfully, “I don’t think I can see myself through another supper of ham and bread.”
Radnor bent over his battery, not paying attention.
Georgie rose to his feet. “Two weeks of ham is quite enough. I’ll have a proper dinner or I’ll know the reason why.” He headed for the door.
“No, damn it, we’re working.”
“You can carry on without me. You got along perfectly well before I came, I’m sure,” he said, knowing it was a lie and hoping Radnor did as well. “I’ll be back in a tick.”
“You’re my secretary, damn you.” Oh, Georgie had his attention now. “You can’t mean to saunter off like this.”
“I assure you, that’s precisely what I mean to do. Although I’m gratified to know that my presence means so much to you.”
Radnor looked like he wanted to smash something. But he didn’t, and Georgie thought that restraint might amount to something close to a compliment.
“Sod off, then,” the earl said, returning to the box he was insulating.
“No.” Georgie put extra acid into his voice. “ ‘Sod off’ is not the correct response when somebody has gone to a great deal of trouble and spared you a headache. While I’m gone, reflect on what you actually meant to say.” He took his topcoat and hat off the hook and swept out of the room.
Radnor didn’t even look up, damn the man.
Georgie hadn’t meant to lose his patience. But Radnor could guess again if he thought he was going to keep Georgie on prison rations and not even properly thank him.
Stepping out onto the crumbling ruin of a terrace, he pulled his topcoat more tightly around him, guarding against the wind that blew in from the sea. He headed towards a lane that he hoped led to the village and threw a glance over his shoulder at the looming bulk of Penkellis. There was something altogether unsettling about a house that was unlocked, unguarded, and unrobbed. The locks—when there even were locks—were the sort that any enterprising child could pick. Even now, Radnor’s dog, who Georgie had put outside earlier that afternoon, was attempting to push his way back in through one of the flimsy garden doors. Georgie gave him even odds to force the rusted hinges, even without the use of any hands.
He must have watched the house a second too long, because the dog stopped his housebreaking efforts and came bounding towards him, evidently mistaking eye contact for an invitation. The mongrel—he was so shaggy and so extremely large that Georgie refused to believe he could be a proper breed of dog—proceeded merrily along the lane like they were old friends, keeping an appointment.
“Bugger off back to the house,” Georgie tried. The dog regarded him with a lolling tongue that Georgie supposed was a counterargument.
And really, the dog had the whip hand in this situation, because there wasn’t a damned thing Georgie could do, unless he wanted to go back to the house and get the earl to fetch his monster of a dog. If Georgie returned now, he’d quite ruin all the work he had put into making a dramatic exit. It was one thing to work for a temperamental bastard, quite another to work for an ungrateful one.
Georgie needed to step away before he found himself trying to seduce his employer. He had noticed Radnor’s flushed cheeks, his darkened eyes, the way his entire body seemed to prickle with awareness every time their hands accidentally brushed. Getting hanged for sodomy was not going to improve his current situation, Georgie reflected grimly.
In the village, he posted a letter to Jack, saying that Lord Radnor was rude and awkward but hardly seemed mad, and reassuring his brother that he had no intention of returning to London quite yet. He had meant to get supper at the inn, but when he approached that establishment, he looked back to see Barnabus gazing at him wistfully. Oh, sod it all. He shouldn’t care about whether the dog would have to wait outside in the cold.
All the same, he walked back towards Penkellis. There was more than one way to get a hot meal. He approached a cluster of cottages, probably the homes of farm laborers. At the nearest cottage, a woman stood in the doorway, scattering feed for the chickens that clucked around her. Georgie fished a shilling out of his pocket.
“Good evening,” he called, doffing his hat and fixing an innocuous smile on his face. Not wanting to alarm her, he stayed a good two yards outside the weather-beaten wooden fence that enclosed the garden. Barnabus eyed the chickens with a hungry gleam but didn’t move any closer.
The woman looked up from the chickens and eyed him warily. Then she saw Barnabus and her expression darkened. She looked to be about forty, maybe a few years older. Even in the fading sunlight, Georgie could see how worn her dress was, how dingy her apron. It had been a hard year across the country, and he guessed these people hadn’t had it any better than most.
“And what do you want?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest.
“May I trouble you for some eggs or cheese?” He played with the coin in his hand so she’d be sure to see it, a gesture that suddenly made him homesick for the streets of London.
The woman’s gaze traveled from Georgie to the dog. “You come from the castle?” Her Cornish accent was so thick, Georgie had to strain to understand.
“From Penkellis? Yes. I’m his lordship’s new secretary.”
With one hand she shielded her eyes from the sun th
at hung low in the sky behind Georgie’s head. “Have they no eggs at Penkellis?”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
A man stepped out of the cottage and looked back and forth between the woman and Georgie. “Any trouble, Maggie?” The words were addressed to his wife but the message was for Georgie: this woman was under his protection, and anyone who insulted her or caused her grief would pay the price.
“He says he comes from Penkellis and wants to buy eggs,” Maggie said. “Says he’s the earl’s secretary.”
The man looked directly at Georgie with open skepticism. “And would these eggs be for the earl?”
Barnabus began to make a low growling sound. Georgie, without taking his eyes off the couple, started to pet the dog’s scruffy head in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. “No,” he said. “They’d be for my supper.”
“Radnor has his servants fend for themselves, does he?”
“I fancied something different from his usual fare.”
“And you want Maggie’s eggs.” More skepticism.
“I’d settle for anything that wasn’t bread, ham, or apples. That’s the only food I’ve seen since I came here.”
The couple exchanged a glance. “Sixpence for half a dozen eggs,” the man said, a barely suppressed smirk on this face.
That was an outrageous price, but Georgie would let himself get fleeced for a good cause. “I’ll make it a shilling if you’ll also let me have some cheese, butter, and maybe a couple of mushrooms.” Georgie had seen a basket of mushrooms hanging on a peg near the door.
A minute later a girl of ten or twelve came out of the cottage with a parcel wrapped in cloth. “Mama put an onion in too,” she said, fingering the shilling as if she had never seen one. And maybe she hadn’t. “Do vittles cost so much where you come from?”
They certainly did not, but he was paying for something other than food. He was hoping to purchase goodwill, and maybe information. Because even though he had assured Jack that the earl was in his right mind, there was something else going on at Penkellis, and he didn’t want to leave until he knew what. “They look to be very fine eggs,” he said.
The girl shrugged and made as if to go back inside, but then turned a questioning face up at Georgie. “Is he a real devil?” she whispered.
“The dog?” Barnabus was enthusiastically rolling around in chicken shite. “He’s much the same as any other dog, only larger.”
“No, him.” She tilted her chin in the direction of Penkellis.
“The earl? No, he’s only different. He’s also very large.”
The girl tugged at one of her braids. “He stole Betsy’s caul.”
“Her what?” Was this a bit of colorful rustic vocabulary?
“Her caul,” she said, exaggerating the pronunciation, as if that would help the matter. “From when she was born,” she clarified. “He stole it.”
Oh, a caul. Good God. Georgie had never thought of a caul as something that anyone would want to steal. “How . . . unexpected.”
“It went missing before Mama had even finished drying it.” The girl’s tone suggested that this added to the infamy of the crime. It certainly added to its unsavoriness.
“Did he steal it away with his own hands? How”—he searched for a word suitable for a child’s ears—“dastardly.”
She seemed to need a moment to think about this. “I don’t reckon so. I never heard that he came here, only that the caul went missing. Mrs. Ferris said the earl took it. Who else would do such a thing? And a caul is a handy sort of thing to have if you’re doing witchcraft, Mama says.”
So, Radnor’s servants were spreading tales, were they? “Well, I can tell you that I’ve never seen a caul in the earl’s study.” If he had, he wouldn’t have recognized it. And if he had recognized it, he would have thrown it in the fire.
The cottage door creaked open and a very small child stuck her head out. “Mama says you’re to come in or you’ll catch it.”
Both children went inside, and Georgie whistled for Barnabus, eager to reach the kitchens before the sun was completely gone from the sky.
When Turner flounced out of the room, Lawrence was relieved. He was quite determined on that score: he was relieved to finally have some peace and quiet, and in no way did he miss his meddlesome secretary. Turner could be an exhausting fellow, forever tidying and rearranging, asking too many questions and taking endless notes, to say nothing of how his very existence was a distraction. He served as a fine reminder of why Lawrence preferred solitude in the first place.
Worse, he served as an incitement to the very sort of madness Lawrence found most tempting. Every time Turner came close, Lawrence was assailed by images of that lean body underneath his own bulky form or over him, alternately compliant and masterful. His imagination was evidently capable of infinite variety where Turner was concerned.
But was that desire truly part of his madness? He was aware that his conviction on this point was sadly unscientific. He was relying on an unreliable source—the rantings of his deranged father and a couple of passages in a holy book he had never paid much attention to anyway. He had only a paucity of data, his own experiences in pleasures of the flesh being sadly limited. Perhaps this desire was a commonplace thing. Perhaps it had nothing to do with madness.
This left Lawrence as unsettled as if somebody had demonstrated that electricity was caused by fire sprites. Because if his desire for fellow men wasn’t madness, then perhaps none of his other oddities were madness either. As that seemed grossly unlikely, he hardly knew what to think about anything at all.
He stood and paced across the study, trying to sweep his mind clear of its tangle of lust and confusion, but all he could think of was Turner and the disappointed look on his face when he had left. It seemed that after two weeks of working together all hours of the day and night, Turner’s absence was even more distracting than his presence. He kept looking over at Turner’s desk, expecting to see a dark head bent over tidy stacks of papers, expecting to hear the methodical scratch of Turner’s pen.
As pacing was doing precisely nothing for his state of mind, Lawrence attempted to work instead. He sat at his desk and absently reached for the latest letter from Standish. Somehow, the paper was where Lawrence meant for it to be, exactly where he put his hand, even though Lawrence was quite certain he hadn’t put the letter there himself. Usually, finding Standish’s latest letter involved a great deal of tedious weeding through unrelated correspondence, if he even found it at all. It was Turner’s doing. Turner always knew what Lawrence required and saw that it was done.
And wasn’t that just the worst of it, how the man had made himself indispensable. Turner really was a very good secretary, even though Lawrence was doubtless unpleasant to work for. All his fussing and interference resulted in Lawrence being less frustrated. Calmer, even. Certainly more productive. Which was somehow even worse than if Turner were simply a shiftless nuisance.
He found himself dreading the day when Turner finally realized what a bad idea it was to live in close quarters with such a man as Lawrence. Because the fellow eventually would realize it, and then Lawrence would be less productive, less calm. Alone.
It was a mystery how a man like Turner had found his way to Penkellis in the first place. Surely he belonged in London, among men who were fashionable and powerful, among ladies who would properly appreciate his good looks and fine manners. Then again, perhaps fashionable, powerful men didn’t care to employ secretaries with dubious backgrounds. Likely Lawrence ought to object as well, but he found he didn’t care in the least where Turner came from.
The fact that Lawrence was now willing to do what it took—including grovel, apologize, or throw himself at Turner’s feet—to keep him at Penkellis meant Lawrence was no better than his father or brother. They had always put their whims ahead of all else, including the safety of innocent people. Lawrence was determined not to be mad in that particular way. He would make it easy for Turner to leave Penkellis, and he wo
uld delay the onset of madness for just a bit longer.
“Never in all my years.” Mrs. Ferris shook her head. “I never thought I’d see the day when a gentleman interfered with my kitchen.”
“I’m not really a gentleman, if that makes a difference.” Georgie unloaded the contents of his basket onto the broad, scarred table. “I fancy an omelet and figured I’d make it myself rather than put you to any trouble.”
Mrs. Ferris clucked disapprovingly. “If you’ll put those eggs down, Janet will see to them.”
Janet made a sound of protest.
“Tsk,” Mrs. Ferris scolded. “When was the last time you lifted a finger?”
Georgie took a knife out of the block and tested its sharpness on his finger. It was sharper than he would have expected in a kitchen that saw hardly any cooking. Someone had taken this blade to the whetstone. Likely the same someone who kept this kitchen in an immaculate state of cleanliness.
“I know it’s most irregular, but it’ll take a quarter of an hour, and I’ll scour the pans myself,” Georgie said, arranging the mushrooms before him in a straight row. “I just can’t face another ham sandwich.”
Janet snorted, and Mrs. Ferris glared in her direction. “I can’t blame you,” the cook said. “It’s no way for a man to live. Never a hot meal, always the same thing day after day.”
It occurred to Georgie that the earl’s insistence on an endless succession of ham sandwiches meant these women might not get much else to eat either.
He felt the older woman’s gaze on him as he placed the onion on the chopping block and started to peel off its papery skin. On a hunch, he cut the onion into several oddly sized chunks. Before its pungent aroma had even reached his nostrils she was by his side.
“No, no. What are you about? Chop the onion fine, like this.” She took the knife from his hand and held up a paper thin slice of onion for his edification. “Each piece the same as all the others. Janet, melt the butter in that saucepan. Mr. Turner, you slice the mushrooms.”
Mrs. Ferris took charge of the operation as if she had been longing to oversee the preparation of a meal. If she had gone into service intending to be a proper cook, she might be bored off her chair in a house where there was nothing to do but bake bread and slice ham. No wonder the kitchen was spotless.
The Lawrence Browne Affair Page 6