by Connie Lane
“No,” Willie told him and it wasn’t until she said it that she realized it was true. “I think too much of you. I do not know you, sir, and last night, it was no mistake that I cuffed you on the nose. I had decided, you see, that you were little more than a drunken lout. Arrogant. Maddening. And far too sure of yourself for your own good. I have no doubt that all those things are still true. But this morning…” She turned away from him, certain she would not be able to continue if she kept looking into his eyes.
“This morning you proved yourself a true friend and the least I can be is honest in return.” She went as far as the mantelpiece, then turned again to face him. “Think of what you are asking! I am no society miss and I would never meet with the approval of your friends or your family. I don’t know how to behave at a ball because I have never attended one. I don’t know how to ride as do so many ladies, because I have never had reason to learn or the leisure to practice. I don’t know which colors are fashionable this spring or what fabrics might make the most fetching gowns. I’m abominable at making small talk and would embarrass you the first time you trotted me out to tea. As you heard my father say, I have too many convictions and too little inclination to keep them to myself. I would make you a poor wife and a poorer companion and we would be heartily miserable for the rest of our natural days. You do not deserve so severe a punishment for what was, after all, really a very poor escapade.”
“Poor? Do you think so?” It was clear she was assailing Somerton’s opinion of his cleverness and just as clear no one ever had before. He cocked his head. “I’d say the look on Ravensfield’s face when he realized he’d lost a thousand was well worth the effort.”
“And is it also well worth spending the rest of your life with me?”
She had him there, there was no denying it. Still, Somerton refused to give way.
“What of your reputation, then?” he asked. “Ravensfield said people are talking.”
“Let them!” It was as close as Willie had ever come to thumbing her nose at the conventions her father held so dear and the heady feeling of it made her laugh. “I can only think that whatever they say—true or not—will only enhance your reputation. As to mine…I brought this on myself. By staying the night. And what you don’t know…” She hesitated, wondering first how his opinion of her might change when he knew the whole of the truth and second, why she cared.
“I knew what would happen when I did. Or at least I hoped. Don’t you see? This is exactly the outcome I expected. I wanted my father to disown me. So that I might avoid a marriage in India.”
“The Reverend Mister Smithe?”
“One and the same.” A chill touched Willie’s shoulders. “He’s a repulsive fellow. Eyes like a dead cod’s. Hair that is dark and oily and nearly touches his shoulders. His parson’s clothing hangs from a body that is too thin and too tall and altogether too horrible for words.”
Somerton looked surprised that he had not put two and two together earlier and come up with the proper answer. His eyes sparked and his hands curled into fists. “Ah, the fellow who would not be averse to taking the strap to you once in a while.” He drew in a breath, mastering his anger and when he looked at Willie again, one corner of his mouth crinkled into a smile.
“I say, Willie, you are clever!” He went over to the sideboard, poured another glass of brandy and handed it to her. He bowed in her direction, then lifted his own glass in a toast. “Here’s to you, miss! You more than come up to scratch. You have the ingenuity of a Captain Sharp and the courage of a battalion!”
“And because of me, you have no staff.” When he motioned to her to drink up, Willie took a sip. Because her father never permitted them in the house, she was not used to spirits, and the brandy burned her throat and settled in her stomach like fire. It was not an unpleasant sensation. “What will you do?”
He waved away the question with one hand. “It is of little consequence. I’ll manage. The real question, of course, is what will you do? Did you have any plans? I mean, you hoped your father would toss you out. But if he did, did you think where you would go or what you would do?”
“There’s always the Earl of Malmsey,” she suggested, even though from what he’d said, she thought it would be a most undesirable position. “Or that duchess you spoke of. The one who needs a lady’s maid. Or…” Another thought occurred to her and Willie set down her glass and faced him. “You need someone.”
Was it her imagination, or did Somerton hesitate just a bit too long?
“Yes, I do,” he said, pulling his gaze from her and frowning into his glass. “I need a butler and a I need a housekeeper. I need maids by the score and a cook—a good cook. If you know someone—” He looked up at her and saw that she was serious. “You’re not saying—”
“And why not?” Perhaps it was the brandy. The more Willie talked about it, the more reasonable it seemed. “I owe you something, surely. If it wasn’t for me, your servants would not have exited en masse.”
“But…” Somerton held out his arms and looked from one end of the expansive room to the other. “Somerton House is large and though you pack the punch of a regiment of seasoned troopers, there is only one of you.”
“There is only one of you as well,” Willie countered. “How much work can it be? I can cook. I’ve done it for years for my father and brothers. I can clean. I’ve done that, as well. I can read better than most, write a cleaner hand, keep more careful books.”
“And it is quite simply out of the question.”
That’s all there was to it. Somerton’s tone of voice as much as told her so. It was just as well. It was surely a cockle-brained idea from the start. Which did not explain why for one short-lived moment, it had sounded so good to Willie. Almost as good as it would have been to see Somerton each day.
It was that realization more than anything else that helped Willie make up her mind. She had never been a flighty girl, nor was she a woman inclined to romantic notions. She had never had the time or the inclination nor had she ever met a man who inspired such castles in the sky.
And now that she had, she recognized how impossible the whole thing was.
With a fleeting smile, she retrieved her bonnet and headed for the door. “You are right, of course,” she told him. “It would never work.”
“Not in a million years.”
“Of course.” She glanced over her shoulder to where he was standing. It must have been a trick of the light that filtered through the windows at his back. She thought when she did, he pulled himself to a stop, as if he’d been about to come after her.
She scolded herself for being far too fanciful. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me. More than I can say. I’ll just let myself out, why don’t I.” She reached for the doorknob and only stopped when she heard his voice.
“I say, Willie…”
She turned to find that he’d come a few steps closer.
“Are you any good at toast and jam?”
Willie was, in fact, quite good at toast and jam. She was also good at preparing a more substantial breakfast on those days—few and far between as they were—when Somerton wasn’t feeling the nasty aftereffects of the night before. She was good at hauling water, good at beating carpets, good at scrubbing floors and pots and the stone stoop out front. She was a dab hand at dealing with the flurry of invitations that came down upon Somerton each day like snowflakes out of a January sky. She was good at keeping his schedule running as smoothly as possible considering how often he was inclined to sidestep his social commitments in favor of an evening of revelry with the Dashers.
She was not, however, good at all of them. And not all at once. And certainly not all by herself.
Her face covered with grime, her clothes spotted with fireplace ash and her hair hanging loose and in her eyes, Willie groaned.
Somerton House was as big as a highflyer’s dreams and as hard to manage as any six churches.
Even after a week, there were entire rooms she’d never
entered, passageways she’d never had a chance to walk down, windows she’d never had the opportunity to look out of because she was always so busy taking care of the necessities.
She was deathly tired and more and more lately, she rued the day she had rejected Somerton’s marriage bargain and vowed that she could handle things on her own until a new staff was hired. Especially when it looked as if that might not happen anytime soon.
Though in fashionable circles her kidnapping had done nothing but put a shine on Somerton’s standing as a rakehell of the first order and thus, a man to be admired for his daring and his brass, news of the escapade was not so well received with the working classes. The scandal was still too new and while it was, it qualified Somerton as far too wicked a master. Willie had dutifully advertised for staff. To date, she had no candidates.
She turned the problem over in her head at the same time she reached for a stiff-bristled brush and tried her best to get rid of the ashes that had somehow managed to powder the carpet from one end to the next.
In the last week, she had seen little of Somerton. He slept late and came in at the hour when most decent people were nearly ready to wake. He said little and ate much. He came and went as carefree as a summer’s day and while he did, Willie cleaned and cooked and waited up late until her eyes were heavy and her head bobbed, just to hear the sound of his carriage and know that he had returned home safely.
She may as well have accepted his proposal of marriage.
As disgusted with the thought as she was with herself for having it, Willie tossed down the brush. It landed with a dull thud in the pile of ashes she had already gathered and they rose like smoke into the air, scattering to the four corners of the room.
“Damn!” She mumbled the word and when the clouds did not part, thunder did not rumble and lightning did not strike, she repeated it, louder and with far more feeling. But while the outburst might have made her feel better, it did little to help with the mess.
What she needed, Willie decided, was a miracle.
That, and a bucket of water.
Because she didn’t expect the one at all and because she knew the other would never arrive on its own, she headed to the kitchen. She’d just gotten there and filled a bucket when there was a knock on the door.
She wiped her hands against her apron and scooped a curl of hair out of her eyes. She opened the door and sucked in a breath of surprise.
Something told Willie that her miracle had just arrived.
It was habit alone that made Nick pause at his front door. Habit, and a lifetime of being waited on hand and foot by an army of discreet, perfectly mannered and impeccably trained servants that made him step back, as if he needed no other gesture than that to make a liveried footman materialize from the nighttime mist to open the door.
“Ridiculous,” he mumbled.
“What’s that you say?” The fog that filled the midnight air was thick enough to hide even a man as substantial as Arthur Hexam. Little by little, he came into view as he climbed the stairs to the door of Somerton House. His pudgy cheeks were the color of summer cherries, his breaths strained from the effort of mounting the twelve steps up from the pavement.
“You’re not talking to yourself again, are you, Nick?” Smiling, Hexam retrieved a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it across his forehead. “You’ve been doing that a good deal lately, you know. Talking to yourself. Ever since—”
“Ever since my household has been in an uproar and my life has been in chaos.” Nick didn’t need Hexam to remind him that he’d been mumbling like a bedlamite this past week. He didn’t need Hexam to point out that it was this past week that Willie had been in the house.
“She’s trying her best,” Nick said below his breath, and even he wasn’t sure if he was trying to assure Hexam. Or reassure himself.
“You mean Willie?” Roger Palliston joined them at the front door. “Latimer is instructing his grooms to wait upon our return,” he said, glancing back through the mist to where they’d left the duke’s crack new drag. “You are talking about Willie, aren’t you?”
Nick sighed. He’d hoped the mention of Latimer’s well-appointed carriage would be enough to change the subject. He should have known his friends would not let it go so easily. They were never ones to drop what could be an interesting topic. Most especially when the topic was a woman.
“Yes, we’re talking about Willie,” Nick said, unaccountably annoyed by the realization. “Though for the life of me, I don’t know why. She’s made a shambles of my home.”
“Perhaps.” If Nick didn’t know better, he’d say that Hexam’s expression was dreamy. “But she’s got eyes that can light a fire in a man’s soul.”
“Do you think so?” Nick asked. Now that he thought about it, he realized Hexam was right: Willie’s eyes were particularly attractive, and looking into them did cause a little flame of awareness to lick at Nick’s imagination.
He shook away the preposterous thought. “She’s made a muddle of my wardrobe.”
“Come man, what’s a wardrobe?” Palliston laughed and clapped Nick on the back. “A wardrobe is nothing. Not when you’re talking about a woman with hair as pretty as a Scottish sunset.”
Pretty?
Now that Palliston mentioned it, Nick realized Willie’s hair was remarkably pretty.
He cast that thought to perdition along with Hexam’s observation. “She’s nearly made me feel guilty enough about the mountain of invitations that arrive here daily that I’ve actually been tempted to accept a few of them.”
“That’s bad.” One corner of his mouth pulled into what was nearly enough of a smile to make Nick even more irritated, Palliston shook his head sadly. “That’s very bad.”
“And that’s not the worst of it,” Nick conceded. “She sings. In the morning. Great, thunderous hymns filled with the promise of fire and brimstone.”
“That’s terrible.” Hexam hung his head.
“She doesn’t know the importance of keeping absolute quiet in the house before half-three in the afternoon. She doesn’t understand the value of knowing how to turn callers away at the door. And at table, she doesn’t even know the difference between claret and port.”
“Now that is a problem.” As gracefully as a dancer, Latimer ascended from the fog and landed lightly on his feet. Considering the amount of both port and claret they all had consumed that evening, it was a wonder he—or any of them—could walk at all.
“So…” As if preparing to encounter one of the more enchanting women of their acquaintance, Latimer straightened his neckcloth and smoothed his bottle-green waistcoat. He strode toward the door. “What are you going to do about her?” he asked Nick.
“Do? About Willie?” It was the same question Nick had asked himself a dozen times over the past week. What he needed to do about Willie had been foremost on his mind. Right after the fact that when he thought about what he needed to do about Willie, he also thought about how guilty he’d feel when he dismissed her.
“What I’m going to do,” he told his friends, “is get inside and make myself comfortable. I’m going to open a bottle of brandy and with your help, I’m going to drink the entire thing.”
“Now there’s a man with a plan!” Hexam laughed and stepped aside so Nick could get to the door.
Before he had the chance to open it, they heard the noise of a great hubbub from within.
Someone grumbled a curse. It was not Willie’s voice.
Someone else mumbled a word of warning. The warning did not come from Willie.
There was a shuffling of feet as if a great many people were being assembled at great speed.
Nick looked at his friends in wonder. “It isn’t my birthday.”
“We wouldn’t have remembered if it was,” Palliston assured him, and he knew it was true.
“And there can’t be any relatives visiting.”
“If there were any great-aunties on the other side of that door…” Latimer eyed the house with t
repidation, “…we would be on our way as fast as hell could scorch a feather.”
The mystery of the thing was solved when the front door of Somerton House flew open.
A vaguely familiar looking lad of no more than ten stepped forward, tilting the door closed behind him. He was dressed in the most astonishing livery: golden satin knee breeches, linen shirt, a brocade vest in a deep, rich shade of blue. He even wore a powdered wig.
The boy was as thin as a rasher of wind and though the two circles of scrubbed pink skin on his cheeks showed that some effort had gone into the washing of his face, the cleanliness of the rest of him was questionable. His fingernails were caked with grime, his shirt was just this side of filthy. His nose wasn’t much cleaner.
He looked up uncertainly at the four gentlemen staring at him in astonishment. Then, as if he’d finally remembered what he was supposed to be doing there, he made a quick, jerking bow.
“There you ’ave it,” the boy said, so proud of himself that he grinned and revealed several missing teeth and several more that were just a shade brighter than his breeches. “Welcome to Somerton ’ouse, sirs. We be most pleased to ’ave you ’ere.”
Had it been earlier and had he not spent the evening at a gaming hell in Jermyn Street where he’d passed the time losing heartily and drinking even more vigorously, Nick may have been tempted to toss the young pup out on the street where he belonged. As it was, he barely contained a smile.
He backed away a step or two and might have gone bumping down the stairs if not for Hexam, who put a hand on his shoulder to warn him. Steadied and on sure footing, at least as far as his balance was concerned, Nick looked the boy up and down. “Pleased? Are you, sirrah?” He pulled himself up to his full height and glared down at the child. “Then perhaps you might explain who the devil you are. And what the devil you are doing in my home.”
The boy’s jaw dropped. His scrawny shoulders trembled. “I didn’t know, sir…I mean, I am…What I mean is ’ow to say, sir, is I’m—”