by Karen Ranney
“Perhaps Mrs. Thigpen might have a recommendation,” she said when he stopped in front of Ella’s door. “Someone not like Ella in any way.”
“I don’t think that’s a difficult requirement. Ella was unique in her disagreeableness.”
After opening the door, he stepped aside for her to enter first.
Ella’s room was larger than a normal maid’s quarters, but not as spacious as his rooms or those assigned to Mrs. Thigpen. The hierarchy in the servants’ ranks at Marsley House was as pronounced as that of the army. A lady’s maid was below the rank of governess or majordomo but higher than those maids assigned to the family quarters. They, in turn, were above the public room maids, who were over the scullery maids. Stable boys figured somewhere in the mix, but Adam was damned if he knew exactly where.
He looked around him, wondering if the duchess had the same impression he was getting. Ella didn’t reveal who she was with her personal possessions. The single bed was neatly made; the pillow looked as if it had been fluffed before being placed at the head of the bed in the middle of the mattress. Her clothes were hung on the hooks arranged on the far wall in militaristic precision by color. The only item on the small bedside table was an oil lamp with a gold shade.
A vanity had been provided, topped with a mirror. Here there was only a utilitarian brush, a comb, and a small tortoiseshell-topped box of hairpins.
No perfume scented the room. Instead, there was a curious herbal odor, almost as if Ella had kept plants on the windowsill.
He began opening the drawers of the small bureau below the window. He intensely disliked going through a woman’s unmentionables, be it this assignment or another, but he couldn’t pick and choose. You couldn’t falter in your mission just because you didn’t like certain parts of it.
He found the bottle in the bottom drawer, tucked beneath Ella’s nightgowns.
Holding up the brown bottle stoppered with a cork, he asked, “Is this it?”
She nodded. “Are the contents green?”
He uncorked the bottle, upended it on the tip of his finger, and nodded. “It’s green.” He tasted it, immediately identifying the main ingredient. “It’s also opium,” he said.
“Opium?”
“Did you know?” he asked as he put the cork back in the bottle.
“Of course not,” she said.
She still stood at the door, her hands fisted at her waist. The tautness of her demeanor made him think that she could easily explode into anger. Or tears. Of the two, he preferred anger. It was certainly justified.
Why was Ella giving Suzanne opium?
“She always said my father told her to do it.”
That didn’t make any sense. “Why would your father want you drugged?”
She shrugged, which wasn’t an answer, at least one he wanted. He didn’t push her to explain, however. Sometimes, it was better to wait until someone was ready to talk.
He closed the drawer, looked around, and decided he’d found everything there was to find.
The duchess still hadn’t spoken. He abandoned patience for a more direct approach.
“Suzanne.”
She glanced at him wide eyed, but didn’t correct him. Nor did she fix an imperious stare on him and demand that he remember her rank. They’d gone beyond that, hadn’t they?
“Why would your father want you drugged?”
“Do you know anything about my father?” she asked.
“A little. He was with the East India Company.”
“A director,” she said. “He’s a man who’s never seen an obstacle. He doesn’t abide them.”
That still wasn’t an answer.
She sat on the ladder-back chair beside the bed, taking some time to arrange her skirt. She was playing for time and he knew it.
Just as he was at the point of asking again, she looked up at him.
“It’s very important for him to be able to dictate the outcome of events. At least those over which he has some control.”
He didn’t comment. Hackney was a bully, which was a less polite way of saying the same thing.
She looked at the bottle still in his hand and then away, blinking rapidly. If she cried, he’d simply gather her up in his arms and comfort her again.
“He thought he could control you,” he said.
“Evidently.” Her voice was dull.
He tossed the bottle onto the bed and went to her, drawing her up in his arms. This was getting to be a habit.
“Suzanne,” he began, looking down at her face.
He wanted to kiss her again. Yet he wasn’t the type of man to be dominated by his impulses. He was disciplined, set on his course, dedicated to his duty. She was a detriment to that, a temptation he couldn’t obey. That’s what he told himself even as he bent his head to kiss her again.
Ella’s room was a strange place for a forbidden embrace. Still, he didn’t move even after he lifted his mouth from hers. Instead, he brushed his lips against her heated cheek, then each closed eyelid, tasting her tears.
“You shouldn’t cry,” he said. “You should be enraged, not sad.”
She blinked open her eyes and looked up at him. He stepped back, dropping his arms when all he really wanted to do was keep holding her.
“I have more experience with sorrow than I do with rage, Adam.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said. “Not in this case. You deserve better than to be treated like a puppet, Suzanne. No one has that right.”
She didn’t answer, merely began moving toward the door. Glancing over her shoulder at him, she said, “At least I don’t have to deal with Ella anymore.”
He didn’t respond. Sooner or later he was going to finish his assignment, and there would be no further reason to remain at Marsley House. No reason whatsoever to try to protect the Duchess of Marsley.
The thought was accompanied by an unsurprising amount of regret.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Suzanne couldn’t sleep. Now that she knew what the tonic contained, there wasn’t any doubt in her mind why she hadn’t had a problem with insomnia since Ella had started in her employ. Opium.
She’d read newspaper accounts of opium dens in the East End. More than once she’d been solicited by various individuals and asked to contribute to campaigns against the opium trade. The most influential group had been represented at one of her father’s dinners and it was a cause he purported to espouse.
She had never understood her father and time had not imbued her with any more insight. For some reason he’d thought it necessary for her to take Ella’s tonic. Did he mean for it to soften her grief? Or was it just a way to control her? When it came to her father’s motives, either was possible.
Adam hadn’t told her if she should worry about any ill effects from discontinuing the tonic. Other than being unable to sleep, were there any other symptoms? Or had Ella lied about that? She didn’t doubt that Ella used truth like a weapon.
A little after midnight Suzanne gave up the pretense of sleeping, got up, and slipped on her dressing gown. Of thick, gold-colored quilted flannel, it had a corded belt with a large tassel at each end. A similar cord, without tassels, tied the neck closed. Most of her garments were black, but not her nightgowns and dressing gowns. The dye the laundress used had not only made her skin itch but the color had bled onto the sheets, ruining them. When that had happened, she’d decided not to wear mourning to bed.
Her new maid was a young girl Mrs. Thigpen had recommended. Emily was a sweet person, if a bit cloying. She’d been promoted from her position as one of the upstairs maids and was eager to perform her new duties. Suzanne didn’t think that her wardrobe had ever been so assiduously cared for or her hair done as well.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Your Grace?” If Emily had asked her once, she’d done so five hundred times in the past two days. Suzanne had assured the girl that she needed nothing further, that Emily was performing every task perfectly, and that she was certain the two of them would deal very well
together. Above all, Emily did not try to make her take opium every morning and every evening. That alone would make her well disposed toward the girl.
Suzanne glanced at herself in the pier glass. She’d plaited her hair for night and now wrapped the plait around the top of her head, securing it with pins and a short length of black ribbon. Picking up the atomizer, she sprayed a little of her favorite perfume on her neck, then ridiculed herself for doing so. The scent lingered in the air, reminiscent of early blooming roses.
Ella had always spritzed her with the perfume George had bought her, something spicy that smelled of India, he’d said. After dismissing Ella, she’d taken the bottle and put it in the rubbish, uncaring that only half of it was gone. She’d always disliked it but her wishes had never been consulted.
The fact that her father also liked the perfume brought another issue to the forefront of her mind. She was going to have to handle the matter of Ella but she didn’t know quite how right now. She wasn’t sure what explanation for Ella’s actions her father would give her, if he gave one at all. When she’d confronted him in the past, he’d sometimes answered her questions and just as often blustered that he knew what he was doing and she shouldn’t question him. All she had now were questions. She wasn’t certain she would be able to believe him regardless of what he said.
She closed the door of the sitting room quietly so as not to alert the footman stationed at the end of the corridor. He sat on a chair she insisted he use. Standing at attention—something George had demanded—seemed ludicrous, especially in the middle of the night. She didn’t mind if the footmen dozed. Their presence was to alert the family in case of fire or the unlikely event of a stranger entering Marsley House. Of the two, fire was much more likely.
October was still comfortable during the day although the nights were chilly, making her grateful for the flannel gown. This month the skies would start to become overcast and it seemed to her that they would stay that way throughout the winter, only brightening when spring arrived.
The flame on the enormous gasolier over the grand staircase was lowered at night, creating pools of shadows that were illuminated only by the newel posts with their gas lamps. She was more familiar with going up the stairs to the third floor and the nursery than going down to the library.
She didn’t want to go to Georgie’s room right now. She didn’t need to sit and look at the array of his toys in order to recall her son. She could feel his body snuggled up against her, his head on her chest. She could still feel her fingers smoothing back his silky blond hair. She could hear his voice, and there were still moments when she swore she heard his laughter. He’d been a happy child, a healthy little boy. She’d been so thankful for that. She’d never anticipated something might happen to him.
She didn’t need to be in the nursery in order to remember him. He would live in her heart forever.
What was it Drummond had said? Something about clinging to her grief in order to keep Georgie close. She’d been irritated at his comment, but over the past several days she’d been wondering if he wasn’t correct. Perhaps grief could be as addictive as opium.
She got to the bottom of the staircase, then turned and walked down the long corridor to the library. The room had always been George’s domain, and she’d avoided it for the most part in the past two years. Adam, however, seemed to gravitate toward it. He’d mentioned that he often found it difficult to sleep and chose a book to read. Would he consider her outrageous for hoping that was the case tonight?
She’d never been around anyone like him. Adam didn’t seem to wish anything from her—not influence, or money. In every situation in which they’d been together, he’d acted protectively. She couldn’t remember the last time—if ever—that a man had been so solicitous of her or cared about her welfare.
She might have considered him her contemporary but for his faint Scottish accent and his tendency to speak in Gaelic from time to time. He made her think improbable thoughts, such as what her life would have been like if she hadn’t married George. Their relationship had been strained from the beginning. After all, he was almost thirty years her senior, a duke her father insisted that she marry simply because he was titled.
She’d always been a docile, obedient daughter, but she didn’t feel a bit docile or obedient at the moment.
The sameness of her life and the emptiness of it had stretched out before her, punctuated only by her father’s demands. The day she’d banished him from Marsley House had been a turning point. At first she’d thought she was acting unlike herself. In the past few days she realized that she was behaving like the person she’d once been, the courageous young girl who hadn’t been beaten down by circumstance and tragedy.
She liked that Suzanne. Once reborn, she hoped that woman wouldn’t disappear. She didn’t want to be subservient to anyone, a leaf to someone else’s wind.
The library doors stood like a barrier before her. She hadn’t seen Adam for two days. She’d asked about him a few times, and on each occasion he’d either been with one of the other staff members or in a meeting with the stable master or occupied with some task. It was as if he was avoiding her.
Perhaps he regretted kissing her.
She didn’t regret kissing him.
If he admitted that it was unwise for him to do so, she’d tell him how she felt. If he cautioned her to remember her title, she’d tell him that her title had never brought her happiness, but that the kiss they’d shared had. She would be blunt and daring and truthful.
Perhaps she’d tell him how sorry she was about his wife and how much she wished he hadn’t had to go through that type of grief. When you lost someone you loved, it changed you. It made you more conscious that nothing was really permanent. Life was more than sometimes unfair. It could be cruel.
She hoped he had someone to comfort him in that time, but she doubted it. It was sometimes easier to withdraw from the world—like she had—than to confess that she felt like she had to rebuild herself from the inside out. She suspected that Adam had been like her in that respect, both of them isolated in their grief.
She didn’t feel so alone now and it was because of him. She wanted to tell him that. They’d talked about everything in the past week. She’d shared stories of her childhood while he talked of Scotland. For the first time in a long time she greeted each day with eagerness. For that she needed to thank him. If that was foolish, it didn’t matter. The Suzanne she had once been and wanted to be again was brave enough to say such a thing.
There was a possibility that she was courting scandal. If anyone saw them here together it would mean gossip throughout Marsley House. Did you hear that the duchess was found in a compromising situation with Drummond? She has no shame. Or she simply doesn’t care.
The latter would be closer to the truth. All her life she’d been the epitome of everything right and proper and all it had earned her was the privilege of being a hermit in a cold behemoth of a house.
Perhaps she had no shame. Perhaps she should be chastised. How odd that she didn’t care.
If she opened the doors and saw that the paraffin lamps were lit, that would mean he was in the library. If the room was dark, he wouldn’t be there. All she had to do was to grab the handle of the door and open it. Nothing more than that.
Tonight she didn’t want to be the Duchess of Marsley. Tonight she simply wanted to be Suzanne.
She grabbed the handle, then released it and took a few steps back, staring at the door as if it were the yawning maw of a monster from her opium-induced nightmares.
He’d held her. He had kissed her. When he’d drawn back the other day, his hands had trembled the faintest bit as if he were as moved as she. Surely he wouldn’t make fun of her for seeking him out. Even if it was after midnight. Even if she did have a title and he was a servant.
She stepped toward the door again, grabbed the handle, and without giving herself time to think, opened one of the doors.
The room was dark. The gas sconc
e in the corridor allowed her to see well enough to step inside. At first, she thought that the entire library was dark, but then she caught a shadow flickering on the third floor.
The silence constrained her from announcing her presence. How would she explain herself? That she was lonely and of all the people sleeping beneath the roof of Marsley House, he was the only one she sought? Could she possibly be that honest?
Grabbing the skirt of her dressing gown with one hand and the banister with the other, she began to climb the curved iron stairs. Perhaps by the time she got to the third floor, the proper words, the right words would occur to her. Her dressing gown was as thick as a coat and would have been proper to wear to entertain had she been ill. Perhaps, however, she should have changed into a day dress.
At the second floor landing, she looked up. The shadows were no longer flickering. Instead, there was only darkness above her. The faint light from the hallway sconce was not enough to illuminate the steps. Had she been mistaken after all? Had she only seen what she wanted to see?
She was taking a hesitant step upward when she heard a sound. She looked up as a black shape suddenly descended, pushing and shoving against her. She lost her grip on the banister as she tumbled backward. She had the curious thought that the world had been upended. When she landed her head struck something sharp. Her mind registered the pain for one instant and then thought was lost in the nothingness.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Adam had learned a valuable lesson about sleep in the army—take advantage of every opportunity. It might be a while until he got another. That he couldn’t sleep tonight annoyed him, but he knew exactly why he couldn’t and that irritated him even more.
He sat up, swung his legs over the bed, and lit the lamp on his bedside table. When he reached out for the brooch, he remembered that he’d returned it to Suzanne. When had the damn thing become a talisman? It hadn’t looked like something she would choose to wear. She needed a curved bit of gold with one single diamond instead of that gaudy hairpin.