Gray let go of her and backed away, the air climbing up between them and chilling his body. “That was before.”
She blinked. “Before what?”
But Gray couldn’t answer. How could he possibly explain? Yes, he had been all those things and more. Yes, he’d been a libertine, enjoying the life and pleasures that being one of London’s most eligible, titled bachelors afforded him. Women had flocked to him, and he had welcomed their flirtations and charms with open arms. Many, he knew, had wanted marriage, and he had stooped so low as to allow them to believe it possible. He’d offered them whispered nothings and empty promises, and this vexing maid was right—he had left a trail of tears behind him.
And now what he had just done with her was unforgivable. She was a servant…his sister’s maid, and he had mauled her like some odious, overbearing, depraved lord of the manor.
Gray took a step back, a wave of renewed self-disgust overcoming him. He stared at the girl standing so quietly regal before him. Most maids would have been cowering. Instead, she had faced his anger, taken both his insults and his advances, and still stood there as if she were the mistress and he the servant. Shame filled him.
He made a short bow, bending to retrieve the fallen garments. “My deepest apologies for putting you in such a position. You have my promise that this will not happen again.” Gray placed the gowns carefully on the alcove bench. His eyes met hers—their cool, green depths flickering with surprise—for an instant as he took his leave. “Forgive me, Miss Volchek.”
A ride, he thought as he took the stairs two at a time. A ride would clear his head and calm his blood. For as much as he had promised to keep his distance from Lana, his body longed for something more. Her soft fragrance haunted him. Her expressive eyes taunted him. And her sweet mouth…
Blazes take him, he wanted her still.
…
Stunned speechless, Lana retrieved the discarded dresses from the bench and clutched them to her chest as she watched Lord Northridge’s broad frame disappear around the corner at the end of the hall. Bracing against the paneled wall, Lana let out a pent-up breath, her lips throbbing.
He’d kissed her.
That arrogant rogue of a man had kissed her—and dear lord, she’d wanted to slap him and kiss him back in equal measure. Instead, she’d been frozen with indecision and her entire body had gone into some sort of numb paralysis. It had been her saving grace. A few moments more and she would have launched herself at the man like a common lightskirt. Gathering a breath, Lana turned toward the servant staircase, only to see the person she dreaded most hurrying toward her.
The dour housekeeper had not liked Lana from the start. Lady Dinsmore had hired Lana directly, neglecting Mrs. Frommer’s official duty as housekeeper to interview all potential household staff. As a result, Mrs. Frommer simply ignored her existence and, it seemed, had instructed most of the staff to do the same. They mostly did, out of fear of incurring the harridan’s wrath. Except for a few, the staff treated Lana like a pariah.
Lana knew that in some households, many of the lower servants resented the freedoms of the upper servants, especially the lady’s maids. In St. Petersburg, her own maids had enjoyed countless privileges and leisure time, but she’d never stopped to consider the jealousies that would run rampant belowstairs. With the exception of Mary and Mrs. Braxton, most of the other maids gave her a wide berth and whispered behind her back. Lana did not mind, as she could not afford to let her guard down and befriend anyone. Though it was lonely, she often reminded herself that it was only temporary.
As for Mrs. Frommer, Lana had held the onerous housekeeper at arm’s length, employing a distant reserve she’d often used when dealing with difficult young ladies in her previous life. It had been the only way she could endure the woman’s constant aggression, and thus far, it had been effective. But everything Lana did was held to an exacting standard. Not that she expected to be treated differently, but Mrs. Frommer was bent on enumerating her many faults and mistakes. The housekeeper seemed to take an unholy delight in all of Lana’s failures, though in the last week, she had been busy with the family move to London for the forthcoming season.
Not so any longer, Lana deduced from Mrs. Frommer’s ugly expression. Her frown appeared to have been etched with a hatchet as she bore down on Lana, her mouth a disapproving white gash. Lana quickly ticked off her duties in her head. Brynn’s chamber had been tidied and aired, her mistress’s clothing put away, and her toilette prepared for when she arose from her rest. The pile of mending had been reduced to a few pairs of stockings, and the gowns she held were meant for the laundress.
Notwithstanding the expensive pearl-encrusted evening gown Lana had accidentally ruined two weeks before by placing it in the wrong laundering pile, she hadn’t done anything glaring of late, which would give Mrs. Frommer no reason to be displeased.
Unless…
Lana’s heart sank. It was her biggest fear come to life, just as she’d expressed to Lord Northridge. If the housekeeper had seen or heard what had happened with his lordship, there would be hell to pay and more.
Lana tensed, her jaw tilting in readiness for the confrontation as the housekeeper approached. She had done nothing wrong. Without a word, Mrs. Frommer grabbed her by the elbow in a pincer-like grip and steered her toward the servants’ stairwell.
“With me. Now,” she barked, and down the stairwell she went. Lana had no choice but to follow or be dragged the two floors below, into a sewing room.
“Out,” she snapped to the two girls working there. Dropping their mending, they scurried past Lana with wide-eyed stares. Once the door shut behind them, the housekeeper rounded on her.
“Just what do you think you are doing?” she hissed.
“I’m not certain what you mean, Mrs. Frommer.”
The woman’s eyes flashed with rancor as she eyed Lana up and down. “Don’t play the innocent miss with me. Don’t think I haven’t seen what you’re about, pretending to be the coy lady’s maid while setting your cap at the master. I saw you in the hallway upstairs, his lordship bowing to you as if you were some highborn lady. You, cozying up to him…seducing him with your high and mighty airs. I won’t stand for it, not in my household.”
Lana blinked. “I assure you, Mrs. Frommer, I have done nothing of the sort. His lordship has no interest—”
Her smile was one of contempt. “Of course his lordship has more good sense than to dally with an uppity tart like you throwing herself at him.”
Lana bristled with righteous indignation. Some part of her rebelled at the accusation that she had been the one to instigate anything. She had resisted Lord Northridge’s unwelcome advances. If anyone was the tart, it was him, not her. Some measure of her pride demanded exculpation for an offense she did not commit, but she remained silent, her body shaking with suppressed anger.
But Mrs. Frommer wasn’t finished. She leaned forward and, in a sickly-sweet voice, said, “I must warn you, Miss Volchek, that if Lady Dinsmore were to hear of your lustful designs on her son, you would not be long for this position.”
Lana gasped. “Are you threatening me?”
The housekeeper spread her palms wide. “Merely stating the obvious.”
Helpless rage and bruised pride warred within her, and Lana hiked her chin, the words rushing out before she could think twice. “Then if I may also be so kind, Mrs. Frommer, as to state that if his lordship does happen to hold me in any regard, it might be in your best interest to keep your opinions to yourself.”
The housekeeper spluttered. “Why, you impertinent wretch—”
“I’m merely stating the obvious,” Lana echoed as she drew herself to her full height, letting a secret smile play over her lips. She was gratified to see Mrs. Frommer’s confidence falter. “After all, if I do find myself under Lord Northridge’s protection, as you have despicably insinuated, whom do you suppose Lady Dinsmore would believe—you or her own son? I would think carefully, Mrs. Frommer, as to whether you ar
e certain of what you heard or saw. It would not pay to make such a mistake.”
The housekeeper’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, but Lana did not wait to hear what she had to say. She bobbed and swept past her, closing the door behind her with a soft click.
The satisfaction lasted all of one minute before Lana was cursing herself in multiple languages as she fled to her chamber. For one, it was beneath her to let the housekeeper believe that she and Lord Northridge had any kind of understanding when they most decidedly did not. And two, she had not needed to make a worse enemy of Mrs. Frommer, but that was exactly what she had accomplished.
Chapter Four
The dawn was brightening the sky in pale patches when Lana expertly guided the stallion over the wide gulch at the south end of the Ferndale estate, far out of view of prying eyes. She laughed as the horse thundered toward another obstacle—this one a four-foot-high hedge. Leaning her weight forward, she gripped with her thighs and felt the magnificent animal beneath her gather his strength and leap. The feeling of freedom as her mount easily cleared the jump was incomparable, and one she sorely missed.
“Come, James, do keep up,” she called breathlessly over her shoulder to the young footman hot on her heels on another horse.
“Trying!” he yelled back. “You are too fast for me. We’ve lost Percy.”
She’d struck up an unlikely rapport with James and his cousin, Percival, who was a stable boy at Ferndale, and neither of whom were under the thumb of Mrs. Frommer. James answered to the butler, Mrs. Braxton’s husband, and Percy to the stablemaster. They were both half infatuated with her, but their company and humor made the days away from Irina and the loneliness Lana endured belowstairs more bearable. And she had to admit she enjoyed learning about cards and sleight of hand, betting, lock picking, and all manner of things that gently bred ladies should never claim to know.
Her hair had long tumbled free of its cap, and even in her mistress’s borrowed breeches beneath her dress, Lana couldn’t help getting lost in the moment as she gave the stallion its head across a wide meadow. She knew riding was a risk. After all, someone could see, and she had no business being on any of the estate’s horses. But when Percival had suggested she and James accompany him while he exercised three of the more energetic stallions, she couldn’t resist. For Lana, a hard ride exorcised demons in a way that nothing else could. It was one of the things she did have in common with Lord Northridge, who, like his sister, rode religiously every day.
At the thought of Lord Northridge, her heart raced again, but this time it wasn’t fear that provoked it. Something else, hot and violent, set her pulse to a gallop. She still couldn’t believe he’d had the audacity to kiss her! Lana didn’t know what it was about the man that drove her to such insane contradictions—one minute she wanted to strangle him, and the next she wanted to melt in his arms. She’d been shocked at her body’s response to his touch, even after his insulting interrogation. She should have wanted to scratch his eyes out for first accusing her of meeting with a lover and then attempting to seduce her himself. Instead, she’d struggled against the flames he’d kindled within her, the embers of which still burned despite her valiant efforts to smother them.
Lana replayed the memory for the hundredth time, not counting the fevered dreams that had plagued her throughout the night. Though she had resisted his kiss, his earthy male scent and the velvet stroke of his tongue had come close to making her senseless. Her dreams, however, had not been so proper, torturing her with indecently erotic thoughts of what could have been, had she but submitted to his desires. Lana’s face scorched anew.
Regardless of what she’d purposefully led Mrs. Frommer to believe, engaging in any kind of salacious affair with Lord Northridge would not end well for either of them. For one, she had her reputation to consider. Once this was all behind her, she would return to her homeland and would be expected to marry. And two, knowing Lord Northridge’s debauched past, she was certain she’d be nothing but a conquest to him. Obviously, Lord Northridge had no qualms about dallying with servants. Beneath the titled, wealthy, debonair exterior, he was no gentleman.
Still, Lana kept recalling the look on his face when she had accused him of being a libertine. He’d flinched as if she had somehow hurt him with her words. That was before, he’d said. But Lord Northridge was a master seducer, and convincing herself otherwise would only be to her detriment. No, she would do well to stop thinking of him as anything but what she knew him to be—a man after his own pleasures, nothing more.
Lana frowned, refusing to allow the man to ruin her good humor. Digging her heels in, she braced low over the horse’s neck as he sped across the field, letting her burdens, including the unwelcome thoughts of Lord Northridge, fall far behind. At the end of the meadow, she pulled the stallion to a smart stop and dismounted, handing the reins to an impressed James.
“Where’d you learn to ride like that, miss?”
“My father,” she replied. “And you owe me another lesson. I won that race fair and square.” She winked jauntily at him as Percival galloped around the bend. “Dice next time, I think. See you lads up at the house. I better get moving before Mrs. Frommer sends the duns after me.”
Lana couldn’t wipe the smile from her face as she hurried the rest of the way to the manor house, watching as the two boys led the horses back to the stables. It had been far too long. But her humor evaporated at the sight of a letter awaiting her in the kitchens, upon a tray. She immediately recognized the red-wax seal stamped with a long-eared hare, shown mid-leap. It was not the Earl of Langlevit’s official seal, the one he used on regular correspondence. It was the seal he used only for her, and it meant there was a coded message inside.
Mrs. Braxton grinned as she kneaded a large mound of dough. “Well, aren’t you fancy? Who’s sending you such important letters?”
“It was delivered by messenger not two moments ago,” the undermaid, Mary, added in an excited squeak. “Is it from your beau?”
Mrs. Frommer swept into the kitchen, and Mary paled at the sight of the housekeeper’s pinched frown. Mrs. Frommer’s attention settled on Lana’s red cheeks and mussed hair before dropping to the letter already clutched in Lana’s hand. Two scullery maids hurried out of her way as the housekeeper’s draconian face pulled into an all too familiar scowl that boded ill for anyone within striking distance.
“What have we here?” she asked in a deceptively amiable voice, her question directed to a quaking Mary who stood rooted to the spot. Lana’s own temper flared. The woman was a tyrant.
“A letter came for me,” she answered, drawing Mrs. Frommer’s attention. Lana was relieved to see Mrs. Braxton dismiss the young undermaid out of the kitchen and into the adjoining pantry with a quick jerk of her chin.
Mrs. Frommer reached for the squared edge of the envelope. Her fingers closed upon it. “After your insolence earlier, I have half a mind to burn it.”
Lana clutched the letter to her breast and twisted to the side, tearing it free from the woman’s pincer-like grip. “It is mine.”
The housekeeper’s nostrils flared, but she did not attempt to take the letter again. Instead, she subjected Lana to such a venomous glare that Lana was surprised she didn’t turn to stone on the spot.
“Where have you been?” The housekeeper’s eyes clouded with suspicion at Lana’s disheveled appearance. She leaned in, her voice low and laced with hostility. “You may think you are above the rest of the staff, but mind you, I have not forgotten just how inept you were when you first arrived here. I’m onto you, Miss Volchek, remember that.” She drew back and raised her voice. “I’ll have your position terminated if you so much as put one toe out of line. Do I make myself clear?”
Lana’s skin burned with the suppressed desire to put the woman in her place in front of the other servants, but of course this was her place. As head of the household staff, Mrs. Frommer had every right to rule the maids as she saw fit. Though Lana had foolishly stood u
p to Mrs. Frommer in the sewing room, to defy her publicly would be unwise.
She clenched her jaw and assumed a suitably meek expression. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Now tend to your duties.”
In the stairwell on the way to her quarters, Lana let out a groan of frustration and tore open Lord Langlevit’s message. Even if Mrs. Frommer had managed to rip the letter from Lana’s hands, she would not have discovered what it truly said. All of her correspondence with Langlevit was written in a simple coded language, and always in the form of love sonnets. They had borrowed the clever idea from her traitorous uncle, who had used similar letters to smuggle secrets to the French.
The reason was twofold: should a message ever be intercepted by anyone—such as Mrs. Frommer, or more dangerously, anyone associated with her uncle or Baron Zakorov—the contents would appear harmless. Silly, but harmless.
Secondly, Lana could not claim family in London. Any letter from them would require a postmarking from Russia. It was more logical to allow the staff to believe Lana had a local beau.
Her eyes devoured the frilly declarations Langlevit had written:
My affection for you is Voracious,
Zinging in my veins.
They had worked it out long before that any capital V and Z near one another would refer to Zakorov. She read on, her breath hitching painfully.
The sweet Threat shall not abate,
through the Dense Fog of loneliness.
I must be Cautious,
for though I am Hunting my Heart’s desire
it remains Elusive.
Fear Not, I will be Faithfully yours.
With a pounding heart, Lana reread the nonsense words, all of which seemed to hint to a lover’s suffering and turmoil, but she knew how to read between the poetic ramblings. She isolated the capitalized words, and when she saw Langlevit’s mention of dense fog, she felt a shiver of dread.
This letter was a warning.
My Darling, My Disaster (Lords of Essex) Page 5