And he had made sure she knew it.
“I can’t say I support murder,” she managed. She hoped God took note of this virtue, and marked it as a counterbalance to her longer list of sins.
His head tipped as he studied her. His eyes were the shade of some deep, stormy ocean, and far too intelligent for her comfort. “And if it were not murder, but justice?”
This felt like a test designed by the devil to tempt her. “Murder is the sloppiest form of justice ever devised. It punishes the doer as much as the receiver.”
“Oh, rest assured, Mrs. Johnson—I would not suffer pangs of conscience.”
She stared at him. He looked steadily back, his well-shaped lips turning into a dark, easy smile.
For a twisted moment, that smile seemed beautiful to her, and infinitely seductive. Darkness became him. He was blond and beautiful as an angel, but was not the most famous angel the one who had fallen from grace?
“Have I shocked you?” he asked. “Do forgive me, Mrs. Johnson.”
She should pretend that he had shocked her. How much more awful to admit that she envied his confidence—his refusal to be ashamed—and his indifference to God and the fate of his soul. How free it made him.
The next moment, she came to her senses. He was not free. He was the furthest thing from it. “I’m shocked by your stupidity,” she said through a tight throat. “Murder might not trouble you, but once you were caught and tried and hanged for it, you’d be uncomfortable, indeed.”
His smile faded. “No,” he said. “It would not be more uncomfortable than . . .” Something raw and vulnerable flickered across his face. “This.”
She knew that feeling. She recognized it. It was the look of a person in purgatory, unable to look with a quiet heart toward the past, and hopeless of seeing a better future.
She stepped away from it. Why should he feel so? He had no right. Even she could see his way to the future. He was a duke; what stopped him from doing whatever he liked? Only he himself did.
“There are a thousand ways to take revenge without killing someone,” she said bitterly. Give me a look at your private files and I’ll take care of one man for you. Give me a tenth of your wealth, a twentieth of your power, and I will find my way very easily. “But none of them, Your Grace, can be undertaken while cowering against a wall.”
He nodded once, contemplative. “I do wonder,” he said, “what it is you want, Mrs. Johnson.”
She hesitated. “What do you mean? I want nothing.”
“So it would seem. It seems you would have nothing to gain from bearding the lion in his den. Yet you attempt it, again and again. Ergo, you must have something to gain by it, after all.”
She did not like this line of inquiry. But at least it was the sort of idle speculation that a man bent on murder did not spare the time to make. “Have I bearded you? You still look rather hairy to me.”
His lips twitched in an aborted smile. “Let’s find out.” He took a step toward her, and she jumped backward. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. “Keep going.”
She did not want to leave without the pistol. She did not quite trust his stated intentions for it. “I don’t think—” He was still coming toward her. She danced backward. In what was becoming a familiar and tiresome routine, he matched her, step for step. “It is very beastly”—her voice emerged rather strangled—“to stalk me. I wish you—”
As she stepped over the threshold, the door slammed in her face. Then the dead bolt scraped.
She stood blinking for a stupid moment. But how anticlimactic! He’d forgotten to sack her again.
She put her eye to the keyhole, which proved more effective for spying now that the opened curtains gave the room some light. He was standing some feet away, stock-still. Goodness, had he already relapsed?
He stepped out of sight. A moment later, he came into view again, holding—a book! He’d been surveying the bookcase before. The realization made her unreasonably giddy.
As he flipped the book open, he said, without looking up, “Go away, Mrs. Johnson.”
How had he guessed she was spying? She felt a moment’s unwilling fascination. He was not only erudite, he was sharp. Shrewd. Despite his derangement.
Through the keyhole, she spoke. “Those books are not properly ordered. I will come back to alphabetize them, shall I?” And to make certain he had not lapsed back into a black mood. Not when he had that pistol nearby.
He did not acknowledge her remark. Turning, he passed out of view.
“You are very welcome for the offer,” she said pointedly.
His reply came in a bored drawl: “You are paid for your work here, ma’am.”
For some bizarre reason, that made her smile.
CHAPTER SIX
Of course, the duke did not open his door when Olivia appeared an hour later, prepared to organize the books. But a peep through the keyhole showed him to be among the living—and reading in a wing chair, like a civilized man, pistol nowhere in sight.
Satisfied, she returned downstairs, intent on tackling the mystery of the truffles. It stood to reason that if none of the kitchen staff had taken them, somebody else must have. After asking Jones to speak with the footmen, she took upon herself the task of interrogating the maids.
The first summoned to her office was Doris, who seemed least likely to ruffle at being suspected of theft—or so Olivia had anticipated.
In fact, Doris did not seem unruffled as much as placidly baffled. “But why should I take the truffles, ma’am? What are truffles? Are they the ones what look like mud?”
Olivia hesitated. In truth, she had never encountered any. Her last employer had not inclined to French cuisine, though Elizabeth had certainly favored French wines. “What matter how they look, Doris? More to the point, they’re very expensive.”
“That figures, for I’ve certainly never tried one. So why should I want five pounds of them, when I don’t even know if I like the taste?”
This naïveté seemed a bit much. “You might want them to sell.”
“Oh!” Doris gave a hesitant nod. “Yes, that makes sense. But . . . I don’t know anyone who eats truffles. Do you? Why would anybody dare it?” She looked very doubtful of their safety. “It would take a very bold person, to be sure, to eat something what looks like dirt, ma’am.”
“His Grace eats them,” Olivia said dryly. “They were in his kitchens, were they not?”
Doris clapped a hand over her giggle. “Oh, well, naturally, ma’am. But I certainly couldn’t sell them to him; he’d find it a sight odd, I expect, his maid trying to sell him his own goods! And if nobody else has tried them, then who should I sell them to?”
The girl must be shamming her. “You’d sell them at the market, of course.”
“Would I?” Doris looked impressed. “That’s a proper good plan, ma’am! I’d never have thought of that.”
It dawned on Olivia that she might not be interrogating the girl so much as providing her with an introductory guide to petty crime. “Never mind that,” she said hastily. “Have any of the others acquired new items of late? Or shown themselves to be in possession of unexpected funds?”
“Why . . .” Doris looked wide-eyed. “Come to think of it, Polly dropped a penny the other day, and didn’t bother to pick it up. She said it was bad luck if it landed heads down, but I never heard such a thing.”
Olivia exhaled. Patience. “Truffles,” she said, “would fetch far more than a penny, Doris. These were more than the value of all the month’s meals, combined.”
Doris sat back, visibly amazed. “And to think they look like mud! Is that a disguise, then, ma’am? That one puts on them, to keep them safe?”
Muriel came into her office next, and immediately proved herself to be more world wise. Too world wise, perhaps. “I’ve heard that they’re an . . .” She lowered her voice and leaned in across the desk. “Afro-what’s-it, ma’am. Do you follow?”
After a moment, Olivia feared she did. “An aphrodisia
c, you mean?”
“Exactly. So p’raps instead of looking to us, you’d best look to Old Willy, if you know what I mean.”
Olivia did not. “Old Willy? Who is that?” She felt certain she knew the entire staff by now. “I haven’t met anyone by that name.”
Muriel rolled her eyes. “Old Willy. You know who.”
“No,” Olivia said, bewildered. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
Muriel slammed her palms onto the desk and leaned forward. “Who’s got the oldest willy?” she hissed.
Suddenly comprehending, Olivia shot back in her seat. “Muriel! Decency, please!”
Muriel gave a one-shouldered, thoroughly unrepentant shrug. “Aphrodisiac, ma’am. You look for the willy least likely to work.” She crooked a pinky, nodding sadly at it. “That’s where you’ll find your truffles.”
What a ribald and preposterous theory. Yet despite herself, Olivia began to mentally survey the staff. “But that would be . . .” She trailed off, appalled.
“Exactly.” Crossing her arms, Muriel gave a solemn nod. “Old Jones has done it.”
Polly alone took exception to the questioning. “I thought Mrs. Wright was bad enough, with all those coins tucked under the rug. You didn’t pick ’em up, you hadn’t swept thoroughly. You did pick ’em up, you’re a thief. But truffles! God have mercy, I’d rather be accused of stealing coin. I’m an honest, good girl. What business have I to do with the French?”
“But . . .” Olivia pressed a palm to her forehead; she was developing a headache. “What have the French to do with it?”
Polly huffed. “Truffles are French, ain’t they? Yes, they are. I know what’s what. And I have no truck with Frenchies, thank you muchly. I’ll not hear a word to the contrary!”
Later that afternoon, Olivia found herself, dazed and no better informed, in Jones’s pantry. “I don’t know who took the truffles. I have absolutely no idea.”
“Nor do I,” he said with a sigh. “Well, we must keep our ears to the ground, Mrs. Johnson.”
“Indeed.” She could barely bring herself to look at him for fear of blushing furiously. Did everybody else refer to him in private as . . . oh, she could not even bring herself to think the name.
“Rest assured,” he continued solemnly, “I have dealt with such mysteries before. Sooner or later, the truth always comes out. Oh, hello, Muriel. Did you want something?”
Olivia turned in time to see the maid shake her head. Then, with a smile for Olivia, the girl flashed a curled pinky before dashing out of sight.
“Curious,” Jones muttered. “Surely you did not ask them to pinky swear, Mrs. Johnson?”
She smothered her horrified laugh in a coughing fit, and excused herself promptly.
* * *
His Grace wanted fresh newspapers.
The gossip spread shortly after breakfast the next day, and by the rapidity with which it traveled, and the stunned amazement it left in its wake, one might have imagined that the duke had instead requested a priest for the purpose of conversion—or that he had decided to sack the entire staff.
The prevailing mood was that somber, at least, when Olivia found Vickers and two of the footmen waiting in tense silence outside Jones’s office.
“I can’t imagine what you said to him,” Vickers muttered by way of greeting. “It’s been months since he cared to read anything.” He frowned. “And why do you look so happy about it?”
Pride was a great sin of hers. Stop annoying me, her mother had used to chide her. But Olivia had never been able to bear Mama’s low moods and sulks; there was always a solution for them. Was Marwick so different? She felt certain that the duke’s request for the newspaper was a very positive sign of her ongoing strategy. Aside from this whole nonsense about killing people, he’d be out of his quarters within a week.
“Never mind that,” she said to Vickers. “Why are you still down here? Take the papers to him.”
“We stopped taking the Telegraph ages ago. I had to send Bradley to market for it. And now”—Vickers tipped his head toward Jones’s door—“they must be ironed.”
But what if the duke changed his mind during the wait? Didn’t anyone else realize how precarious and quick his moods were? “Heaven forbid the duke gets some ink on his hands.”
Bradley spoke up. “It’s not the ink, ma’am. His Grace is very particular about his papers—he can’t abide a wrinkle in ’em.”
Was that so? Would that he were so particular about the state of his rooms.
A marvelous idea struck her. “How badly does he want these papers?”
Vickers and Bradley exchanged a dark look. “Badly enough to ring incessantly from the crack of dawn. He hasn’t been up at such an hour in ages, either.” He turned his glare on the door. “I wish Jones would hurry up with it. He won’t have to face His Grace after this delay.”
As though in reply, the door opened. Olivia stepped in front of Vickers and took the newspapers straight from Jones’s hands. “I will deliver them,” she said.
If the duke wanted these papers, he would have to earn them.
* * *
She climbed the stairs very quickly, switching the stack from arm to arm, for they still bore the heat of the iron, and burned right through her sleeves. “Your Grace,” she called as she entered his sitting room. “I have the newspapers you requested.”
His voice came through the door. “Bring them.”
The immediacy of his reply encouraged her. She took a strategic position behind the bulwark of the chiffonier. It was not quite high enough to protect her from missiles or bullets, but it would certainly interrupt a forward charge. “No,” she called, “I won’t.”
It took only a moment for the door to swing open. He was improving. He was wearing a dressing robe, as a gentleman ought while reading the morning papers.
He glared at her from the doorway, shaggy and radiantly blond. “Bring. Them. Here.”
Alas, the robe, while a very fine species of embroidered maroon silk, could not outweigh the effect of his scruffiness—or the way he shifted his weight from foot to foot, as though barely channeling some violent impulse. How good to know that it was not she he wished to kill. She hoped he kept that in mind throughout the remainder of this encounter.
She laid the papers atop the table. “Some very interesting news today, Your Grace. I see the mayor has authorized a new lighting scheme for—”
“I will count to five,” he growled.
“Shall you?” She pushed aside the topmost paper to canvass the other headlines. “How impressive—for a three-year-old, that is.”
He made some strangled noise. She glanced up and found he had taken hold of the door frame. A signet ring gleamed on his pinky. Had he been wearing that ring before? She did not think so. That, too, seemed proof positive of improvement.
Less reassuring was how he choked the door frame, his grip tight enough to whiten his knuckles. She had a brief flash of her throat in such a grip; certainly the emotion on his face would very easily translate to that endeavor.
He prefers bullets, she reminded herself. “I also see”—she paused to take a deep breath, disliking the tremble in her voice—“that St. George’s is planning a commemorative service for Sir Bodley. Did you ever read his memoirs? A very bold explorer—”
“How do you dare?”
The deadness in his voice was chilling. But there was no choice for her. She had to get him out of that bedroom. She forced herself to reply brightly. “Was that a rhetorical question, Your Grace? With your tone so level, it is hard to tell—”
“If I step over this threshold, you will regret it. You do understand that, Miss Johnson?”
That was the longest threat he’d ever issued, syllabically speaking. It also, somehow, seemed the most convincing of them. Certainly it triggered an ache in her throat, an almost physical memory of Moore’s stranglehold.
She realized she was crumpling the newsprint, and forced herself to let go. So much for the ironing. Her f
ingertips were smudged.
“It is a short distance to this table,” she said encouragingly.
His reply came very softly: “That should trouble you.”
She gripped her hands very tightly at her waist. If she bent to him now, handed over the newspapers, then he would withdraw and slam the door. And she might as well book her passage to France, for she would never get a look at the papers he kept there. Not if his improvements did not lead to him leaving his bedroom.
“If you would . . . if you would only come fetch these papers, you might learn yourself of all the marvelous developments—”
“Fetch them?” He made some abortive movement and she clapped her hand over her mouth to contain her squeak. “I am not your damned dog!” he roared.
She pressed her lips until they hurt. What a mortifying sound to have made. He had reduced her to a mouse.
But what of it? He squirreled papers in his den like a dog with old bones. This was all his fault, really—wasn’t it? If he only left his rooms like any normal man, she would have no need to harass him.
Yes, there was the dudgeon she required. It straightened her spine. She nudged up her spectacles and narrowed her eyes at him.
“No, you are not a dog. I have it on very good authority that you are a man, a peer of the realm, a duke no less. But a very curious species of man, I must say—looking so shaggy at present that one could be forgiven for mistaking you for a sheepdog.” She blew out a breath. “How can you see through all that hair?”
He bared his teeth at her, then retreated out of sight. Panicked, she wracked her brain for some goad to lure him back. But none came to mind that she dared to speak. The point was to lure him out—not to lure him into murdering her.
He filled the doorway again, a book in his hand—something very old by the crumbling cover. “Do you know,” he said pleasantly, “what distinguishes man from beast?”
A very good question. “I should think . . . a haircut.”
He made a contemptuous noise. “The ability to make fire, you tart.”
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