Starling

by Virginia Taylor

  Starling cleared her throat. “It’s strange, isn’t it? I have to try hard to guide this pencil properly without using my first two fingers. I watched Ellen today and she can maneuver the tiniest things without even thinking. I have eight buttons on this gown and she buttoned them all in half the time I can.”

  Lavender yawned delicately and put down her pencil. “I think I’ve made enough words.”

  Alasdair glanced at the timer. She still had another few seconds. Although he’d never played any game with her outside of a bedroom, he didn’t doubt her intelligence for one moment. However, he nodded and answered his ‘wife.’ “It’s wonderful what a person can do with a little motivation. I think Ellen’s motivation was Freda. She didn’t want to hold her sister back. Time’s up. How many words do you have, Starling?”

  “Four.”

  “I have twelve,” Lavender said, modestly casting down her eyes.

  “I win then. I have twenty.” He grinned.

  “Let me see,” Lavender said, snatching the paper from beneath his elbow. “We can’t have any cheating.” As she leaned forward, she brushed his knee with her hand.

  He involuntarily tensed.

  Lavender teased her fingernail along his inner thigh under the cover of the table. “You wouldn’t cheat, would you?”

  “No.”

  With a slow smile, she put both hands on the table and took her gaze to her page.

  “And my hair. I can’t believe how clever she is with my hair,” Starling continued. “I’ve never looked this good in my life.”

  “That can’t be so.” Lavender pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “After all, Dare did marry you.”

  Starling gave a strange little laugh. “For my lack of looks.”

  He glanced at her. “Not so. Your other attributes were more important at the time.”

  Lavender’s face froze, but he didn’t regret his misleading comment. She had, after all, been ungracious to his wife.

  Starling turned her attention back to her paper. “How do you spell ‘rear’? Does it have two ‘e’s?”

  “It doesn’t matter. There’s only one ‘r’ in the word ‘engraving,’” he answered, puzzled.

  “So there is.” Starling concentrated on adding words to her list again. “You’ve done well by employing Ellen and Freda, Alasdair. Between them, there’s nothing they can’t do. They work in the kitchen, they wait on the tables, and they work as upstairs maids. I believe few servants are as flexible. The Burdons wish they had servants—”

  “Really, Starling.” Lavender frowned. “Are we to spend all night discussing servants? I’m sure the females about whom you are speaking would do very well for some households, but I wouldn’t employ such creatures. I’d only have well-trained servants who don’t speak unless asked and don’t enter rooms until they’ve been invited.”

  “Was it you who told Ellen she couldn’t enter a room until she was told?”

  “I did,” Alasdair said. “Drop the subject, please. Time’s up. How many, Lavender?”

  “Three. Starling was talking the whole time and I couldn’t concentrate. How many do you have, Starling?”

  “One.”

  “I have ten.” He moved his chair back a little and picked up Starling’s discarded paper, glancing over her list. “You have twelve words here, each with one alien letter.” He examined her face, pursed his lips, and put the paper down. “The last word before I stretch my legs is ‘distilled.’”

  “No talking. I want to get at least ten this time.” Lavender sounded pettish.

  When he noticed the timer had run out, Lavender’s total was nine. “Twenty-four altogether with my other words,” she said with a satisfied little wriggle of her shoulders.

  “I have ten. Twenty-eight altogether,” he said, glancing at Starling.

  “Twenty-nine,” Starling said brightly.

  “Is that what you came up with, after adding four and one?” Lavender’s lips pursed with disapproval.

  “When I added twenty-five and four. That’s right, isn’t it?” Starling asked him.

  “If you just made twenty-five words, it’s right.”

  “Let me see.” Lavender snatched Starling’s paper. “Teller? You can’t have that. There’s only one e. And what’s sild? Do you mean sold? You can’t have more than seven or eight right.”

  Alasdair scanned the paper. “No, she’s spelt at least twenty right. I see what you’ve been doing, you wretch,” he said to his wife. “You’ve substituted unlikely letters.” He shook his head and laughed. “You deserve a good beating.”

  “What sort of beating is good?” Starling folded her paper.

  “Perhaps the sort you do. The subtle kind.” He stretched his arms behind his head, noticing that Lavender’s gaze fixed on his chest. She pouted her lips, so he quickly turned his face to Starling.

  “No one could possibly make twenty-five words out of the word ‘distilled.’ Lavender muttered. “She cheated.”

  “No,” he said. “She doesn’t.”

  Chapter 8

  Alasdair sat in the bedroom chair and removed his shoes. “Why did you pretend to be hopeless at anagrams?” He watched while Starling took her nightgown from beneath her pillow.

  She met his gaze. “I don’t like competing. In anagrams, we only prove that one or the other of us is quicker at finding words.” She disappeared behind the screen to undress. “Does someone always have to be the best? I think it’s more interesting to find a word and substitute a letter, any letter,” she said, her voice muffled for a moment. “Which changes it into another word. Then I don’t have to compete with anyone but myself.”

  “You won easily. You didn’t have to compete.”

  “Lavender wanted to. She thinks it’s important to win. I would have made more words wrong the last time, but I started thinking of Ellen and Freda and forgot what I was doing.” She lifted a pair of thin-soled, shiny boots from behind the screen. “But it doesn’t matter. She thought most of my words were wrong anyway.”

  “Sild.” Lavender did have a need to win but he wouldn’t let her with him, not this time. “A young herring, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “I think so.” One slender arm appeared above the screen.

  “You know so, you wretch. Do you need any help?” When she didn’t answer, he repeated, a little more loudly, “Do you want me to help with those eight buttons Ellen manages easily?” He saw no need for her to hide away to disrobe, not now that he appreciated her perception and enjoyed her candid observations. Taking no notice of her startled expression, he entered into her space behind the screen, turned her around, and began unbuttoning the back of her gown.

  She stood motionless. “You do know how good Ellen and Freda are, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” Curling spirals of hair escaped the netted mass and trickled gently around her delicate nape. Viewed like this, she seemed sweet and innocent despite her wealth of experience.

  “But you were cross with Ellen this afternoon.”

  His sigh stirred the finer tendrils of her hair. “A guilty reaction. She caught me doing something I’m not too proud of.”

  “With Lavender.”

  Her statement needed no reply. Having unbuttoned her high bodice, he skimmed the fabric down her arms. Thus far, he’d seen little of her flesh. He liked her shoulders, straight and slender, and he watched them wriggle as she dropped her gown to a pooled heap on the floor. She stepped out and began to work at the hooks on her stays.

  “Eat too much, did you?” he asked, amused by her efforts. Properly laced, stays were difficult to undo until the laces had been eased.

  “I’m sure it wasn’t this tight when I put it on.”

  “Which was before dinner and a good two pounds ago.”

  “Am I growing fat?” She sounded hopeful.

  “It’ll take more than a few meals before that happens.”

  “Do you think I’m too thin?”
>
  “Not at the moment.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “At this present moment I find parts of you very appealing. These in particular.” He ran his thumbs across her shoulders, deliberately touching the smooth, creamy skin. Perhaps thoughts of Lavender had given him the slow heating in his groin, or perhaps the fact that he had been aroused and denied for two days had heightened his senses. He didn’t know, and he didn’t particularly care, because he had no intention of coupling with anyone. Not with Lavender and not with Starling. He began to unloosen her stays.

  Her posture stiffened. Keeping her back to him, she unhooked the front and caught the whole thing at her bosom.

  “Relax. I’m not going to make an advance.” He scooped off her stays and, with determined hands, he covered the compressed creases of her chemise where the boning had pressed into her body. He massaged firmly. She stood as if poised for flight.

  Pretending he didn’t know, he worked his fingers around to the front of her rib cage, making sure he didn’t let his hands touch her breasts. She stretched her neck to one side and the other and let her head droop. For the briefest moment, very fleeting, she leaned back against him. He flexed his hands, hoping he’d shown her that all men weren’t the same. Most of them had the same physical reactions when they touched a woman’s soft skin, but one of them didn’t have to go further...unless a woman wanted him to, of course. Clearly she didn’t which, being in love with another woman, he could accept.

  Keeping his demeanor casual and hoping she didn’t realize his body had grown more interested than he’d expected, he finished with a gentle tap of her bottom. “That’s enough. Time we went to bed, I think.” He cleared his throat.

  “Thank you. That was very nice,” she said in a husky voice.

  He lay covered to the neck with the sheet by the time she had dressed in her nightgown. As she pattered over to the bed, he couldn’t work out why he’d initially thought her plain. His first impression of her had been colored by the tight screw of hair on her head and her unflattering gray cotton uniform. He hadn’t seen past her outward appearance.

  Now that he did, he could see she had fine pearly skin, softly curling hair, arched eyebrows, and long eyelashes, fairer at the tips. Her big brown eyes lacked the hardness most ladies of easy virtue developed. “How long had you worked at the inn?” he asked, watching her slide into bed beside him.

  “Six weeks.”

  Perhaps she wasn’t as experienced as he’d assumed. Frowning, he turned down the oil lamp, leaving the room in total darkness. “These sheets are prickly.”

  “It’s you. The sheets are made from the finest linen. If you wore a nightshirt, you wouldn’t feel so irritable.”

  “I don’t like being confined and strangled while I sleep,” he said, hearing his own petulance. “Nor would you if you’d spent more than three months down...”

  “You deserve to be uncomfortable when you won’t be practical.”

  He muffled his request with the sheet. “Make me comfortable.”

  She heaved a noisy sigh. Nevertheless, she rolled him away from her and put her palms on his back the same way as she had the night before. He felt the same way he had about it the night before: hot and aching with guilty arousal.

  * * * *

  Starling awoke with her nose snuffled against hard warm flesh. She’d dribbled, too, she realized as she sleepily put her hand to her mouth. Alasdair’s shoulder. Gracious!

  “Do you know what time it is?” he said in an indignant voice. “Seven-thirty.”

  She stared at him. Lying on his back, with one arm beneath his head and the other around her shoulders, he was easily the nicest thing she’d seen in the morning—big, good-looking, and indulgent. “Seven-thirty?”

  “The water hasn’t been brought in.”

  She smiled at him, an action she realized had been entirely spontaneous and probably pathetic. She liked him, truly liked him, and not only because of the way his eyes crinkled when he was amused or the way he gave without expecting a thing back. She liked him because he liked her. He stimulated her, mentally and physically.

  Last night, while they’d been playing anagrams, he’d instantly understood what she’d done. He’d laughed, not at her but with her. She’d not had that sort of silent communication with anyone before. And the massage. Somehow he’d guessed the stays were uncomfortable and without making a fuss, he’d helped. From the day she’d arrived, no matter what he thought of her, he’d treated her with respect.

  He hadn’t been born a gentleman any more than she’d been born a lady. He could only have made himself the way he was by sheer hard work. Again, she wondered how he’d really made his fifty thousand pounds. No idling onlooker, picking up random nuggets, would have broad muscled shoulders, a hard back, and that tight bottom she had seen on their first night. She swallowed. His skin was also smooth and touchable.

  Waking up to herself, she lifted her hand and rolled out of bed, clutching her nightgown at the neck. “It’s your own fault the water hasn’t been brought in. You shouldn’t have told Ellen she needed permission to enter rooms, and then she would have been here half an hour ago.”

  “Is she punishing me?”

  “None of us likes to be reprimanded.”

  “If she’d come any farther into Lavender’s room yesterday she wouldn’t have liked what she saw.”

  “If you’d been rutting, she would have noticed that when she opened the door.”

  “We weren’t rutting. Ellen wouldn’t have seen anything more than a kiss, I expect.”

  “Do you usually kiss ladies with your trousers unbuttoned?”

  He gave a dangerously long, slow smile. “Do you want to find out?”

  “I don’t expect I’ll have a chance. Most of the time we spend alone together, you don’t wear trousers at all.” She bent to open her drawer, a little afraid that she’d sounded jealous and quite certain she’d sounded snippy.

  “Come back to bed.”

  She stared at him, surprised. He closed his eyes briefly and said, as if he’d been forced into an explanation, “What do you expect when you wander around the room half-na...discussing...what happened between Lavender and me. Oh, for Hades’ sake, cover yourself with my dressing robe.”

  “I don’t see what you’ve got to be cross about.” She marched to his wardrobe, opened the door, and pulled out a green silk robe.

  “If you came back to bed, I’d show you.”

  She plunged her arms into the sleeves. “You’d show me why you are cross? Why would I want to know?”

  “I don’t care whether you want to know or not. I want—” A rapping at the door interrupted his rush of words.

  “Come in,” she called loudly. The door opened and Ellen stood outside, hot water jug in hand. “Oh, good. You’re just in time.” Starling flashed a quelling glance at Alasdair.

  He shot her a smoldering glare.

  “Ellen, Mr. Seymour wants everything back to normal tomorrow. Come at the usual time in the morning and do as you usually do. While there are guests in the house, it might be a good idea to knock at their doors and wait for their acknowledgment before you enter. Oh, and Mr. Seymour definitely doesn’t want you and Freda to change jobs. Do you?” She fixed him straight in the eye.

  For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer.

  He jutted his jaw. “If Mr. Seymour had the faintest idea what was going on around here, he might give his own orders.”

  Ellen glanced from one to the other. “Mrs. Frost said—”

  “And while we’re on the subject of Mrs. Frost,” Starling said before Ellen had a chance to expose a not particularly admirable character trait of Lavender’s. “She and Mr. Seymour are very old friends. I don’t think any of us need to be too upset about a kiss between friends, do we? Mr. Seymour was very embarrassed. He thought you’d think the worst of him. He’s sorry for shouting at you.”

  “Ha!” Ellen left
the room.

  “Thank you. Now I know she saw everything,” Alasdair said tightly.

  “Now she knows you told your wife and your wife forgives you.”

  Alasdair took a deep breath, brushing his fingers over his chin again and again. “You did well, Starling,” he finally said. “I know I shouldn’t have done what I did.”

  She turned around, unable to suppress her relief. “You’re a man,” she answered. “You behaved like a man.”

  “Touché,” he muttered.

  * * * *

  In the afternoon, Alasdair took Starling and his visitors for a tour of the Emporium. The sun peered over the clouds. The warmth of the day caused shoppers to slow their stride to a saunter along the footpaths. Parasols were out in force, most wielded by experts. Carriages trundled by, the sound of the creaky wheels almost drowning out the flower seller extolling her wares.

  Once inside the heavy main doors, Starling followed Alasdair through the vast homewares area, past the familiar leathery smell of the trunks and suitcases, and up the wide central staircase as he discussed the most recent additions and alterations with Paul. In this enormous store, the full staff numbered more than three hundred, including cleaners, packers, and loaders. Instantly recognized by the assistants, Alasdair was acknowledged with smiles, nods, and formal bows. Although properly reserved, he meticulously called, by name, each member of staff he passed. Impressed, Starling noted that success depended on more than money and looks.

  Although he didn’t introduce any of his employees to his party, Starling stood beside Mary, making certain her brown bonnet hid her face. In the five days she’d worked at Seymour’s, she’d associated mainly with Mr. Porter during the day and the nine other girls in the boardinghouse at night. They knew her by sight but wouldn’t expect to see her with Mr. Seymour’s family or dressed in anything but anonymous gray. Her yellow and brown gown made her almost invisible, let alone the presence of lovely Lavender in a pinkish-purple gown and a smart scarlet pillbox hat that turned all heads.

  Alasdair led the group to the back of the second floor where he sold fabric, gowns, hats, unmentionables, silk flowers, ribbons, and lace. “I took your advice,” he said, smiling at Mary. “As you can see, I have a purely women’s area. I have one in each of my emporiums.”