Dangerous 01 - Dangerous Works

by Caroline Warfield

  Harley grunted and put the kettle on to boil.

  “Sorry, Dunning. It must be urgent to drive you out on an afternoon like this.” Andrew’s eyes continued to scan Georgiana’s letter.

  “I am expected to stay until Michaelmas, if not longer,” she wrote. Michaelmas had come and gone without word.

  “Not urgent. Going to Gran’s for early supper.”

  Andrew forced his attention to Dunning. “Your Grandmother’s? Good of you to stop by.”

  “Thought you should know soonest.” Dunning’s neck shown red in spite of the cold rain.

  The misery of his expression made Andrew go as cold as the rain. “Know what?” he asked cautiously.

  “There won’t be work. Sorry to be blunt.” Dunning looked away, embarrassed.

  “Mallet? Do you hear? Can’t dress it up for you. No more work.” Dunning’s distress increased.

  “No work?” Andrew repeated. He looked for misunderstanding. Dunning looked steadily back. There was no misunderstanding, and there would be no work.

  “You had better tell me all of it,” Andrew said.

  Dunning did. He left nothing out, not even the color of Selby’s face when indignant—puce. “Murchison wasn’t indignant. Fairly gloated. He …”

  “Murchison? What did that slimy specimen have to do with it?”

  “Didn’t I say? That was the worst of it.” Dunning reached up gratefully and took a mug of tea from Harley. “He’s taken on an assistant. ‘An assistant,’ Selby called him!” Now Dunning looked indigent.

  “Murchison? He took on Murchison?”

  “Man’s a fool, Mallet. Can’t see a grasping mushroom when one ripens in front of him.”

  Bile curdled in Andrew’s belly. Murchison. He wanted to cast up his accounts on the tabletop. “Tell me again exactly what he said. Selby I mean, not that snake Murchison.”

  Dunning breathed deeply, “I don’t see how it would help.”

  “Tell me again. Exactly.”

  “‘Can’t have my reputation sullied. I worked long and hard for it. If the man can’t keep his mind above trivia, he shall not be part of my great work.’” Dunning mimicked Selby. He repeated, “‘My great work.’ Prancing pony thinks he’s Plato himself.”

  “Trivia?”

  “Praxilla. Can’t say how he found out. Old Featheringham perhaps.”

  “Murchison.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Murchison,” Andrew repeated with greater confidence. “I saw him at the library that day. He must have bribed Featheringham.”

  “Just the sort to do it. Lots of the lazy ones think they can get librarians to do their work for them.” Dunning’s brow furrowed. “Sorry, Mallet. Selby’s a prig.”

  “Tell me again what he said.”

  “Which thing? Took an assistant?”

  “The rest. Did he really call Praxilla trivial?”

  “Puce. Turned puce at the thought.”

  Murderous rage froze Andrew with ice-cold intensity. Selby dismissed four months of Andrew’s work and ten years of Georgiana’s life as trivia. Hands clenched as if to squeeze the puce neck of the arrogant old windbag.

  Three hours later Andrew remembered Georgiana’s letter, carried it to the study, and lay it next to the completed manuscript. Rereading it didn’t improve the words.

  “It will be more difficult to correspond from Mountview.”

  She should have said “impossible.” The duchess, that scorpion, has had her in her poisonous clutches for weeks.

  “These are the last of the translations,” she wrote. Georgiana thought the translations were finished. Andrew thought of the commentaries. His parts were complete, but they needed her approval.

  He read the next line. “The work approaches an end, and that saddens me.” Saddens her? He almost choked on his anger. The end of their partnership loomed in front of him, and all she had to say was that it saddened her?

  She told him they would talk when the work was done. It was done, and yet she stayed at Mountview.

  Damn it woman, what do you want from me?

  He could do nothing without further word from Georgiana. Now he had no work from Selby either, nothing to banish Georgiana’s ghost, the ghost that paced his book-lined study, gesticulating and peppering him with questions.

  Andrew poured brandy in a glass and drank it down to banish the image, and another image replaced it—Georgiana looking sidelong at his bedroom with another question in her eyes.

  Andrew commanded men. He bent unruly partisans to do England’s bidding. He outwitted two French colonels and survived the hell of interrogation with honor intact, but he couldn’t bend Georgiana. He couldn’t even write to her. She was at Mountview, and he sat like a pensioner waiting some scrap of attention from Lady Bountiful.

  I’ll be damned if I sit here any longer and wait while her miserable family finds excuses to isolate her again. Only one choice remained.

  “Harley! You rogue, get up here. We need to pack.”

  “On the contrary. She is lovely, and quite articulate.”

  Georgiana’s words echoed through the Hayden family’s massive dining room. Utter silence greeted it. She regretted the urge to defend Chadbourn’s bride from the vicious description her sister had just spewed. Chadbourn’s countess didn’t need her defense, and it had no impact in any case.

  Her Grace the Duchess of Sudbury paid Georgiana no heed. A faint pursing of lips was the only indication that she had heard. She nodded to a footman to serve the evening’s pudding, a fine cake with a hot caramel sauce, appropriate now that summer waned. She turned to Eloise, as though Georgiana hadn’t spoken.

  “You couldn’t be more correct. The woman is utterly common, not one trace of grace. The entire wedding was an ordeal.” Her fat little hand, heavy with rings, lifted an excessively ornate silver spoon, signaling to the others that they might commence as well. His Grace, regal in habitual silence, sat in the great carved chair at the head of the table. He ignored the women’s conversation. Glenaire, the heir, on His Grace’s left, took his cues from his father.

  Georgiana sat adrift in the middle and wondered what Glenaire found to occupy his mind during these interminable dinners. She thought she ought to ask him, as she could use help learning the skill.

  Her mind drifted back to Chadbourn’s lovely wedding, and she felt sympathy for the new countess. No, not sympathy. Envy. The bride and groom had glowed with love for one another, and the woman didn’t need Georgiana or anyone’s support.

  “One needed to attend, of course.” Georgiana’s mother droned on. “Her Grace of Murnane would invite the world to her brother’s wedding, and one could not refuse. How she could lend countenance to the bride I do not know?”

  “His sister genuinely likes his bride, Mother. Imagine it.” Georgiana pointed out. She moved her spoon through the caramel with aimless motions. No one took note of her comment. I am invisible again, she thought.

  “Perhaps you needed to attend, but really, Your Grace, was it necessary to involve Ardmore and me?” At twenty-nine, Eloise already wore her mother’s habitual sour expression. “Attending simply lowered oneself.” Eloise’s petulant voice clashed with her fine lace dinner dress. She looked as if she had encountered an insect in her soup.

  It might have done Eloise good to have actually talked to the woman, Georgiana thought. She put her spoon down, appetite fled.

  “Chadbourn always tended to be a bit déclassé—as was his father before him. The man practically doted on his children.” The Duchess sniffed as she spoke.

  Georgiana’s stomach clenched. Loving one’s children just was not done. Chadbourn and his lady were utterly besotted and made no effort to hide it, much to her mother’s disgust. Longing overwhelmed Georgiana when Will turned to face his bride in the church, love glowing from every inch of him. Once she wouldn’t have understood what she saw. Once she, too, might have mocked them. Now, she envied them. She knew “what flowers these roses are.” A very private
smile crept, unbidden, to her face.

  “Really, Georgiana, if you are going to fidget with your food and smile like a buffoon, you may as well leave the table. I command it.” The Duchess sneered down her nose in distaste.

  Georgiana began to rise but froze like a frightened rabbit in the face of her mother’s disapproval. She despised herself for it.

  Glenaire ignored his mother’s disapproving glare and rose smoothly to assist his sister. “Are you well?” He pitched his voice for her ear alone. Some of the old affection filled her.

  “I am well. I prefer my room. Let it go, Richard.” The preference was real; humiliation stung.

  Glenaire lifted her hand and kissed the top. “Perhaps tomorrow we can walk.”

  “I would like that.”

  “Do get on, Georgiana. Glenaire, you disrupt dinner. A gentleman does not disrupt conversation.” Voices faded behind her as Georgiana left the room. She used all her strength to avoid running.

  Mountview’s air of menace, the constant threat of maternal abuse, followed her up the stairs. She vowed that when she broke free again she would never let them drag her back. She wasn’t sure what she would do, but she knew she would do nothing that threatened her fragile independence. Nothing. Ever.

  Finely waxed floors and priceless carpeting led the way to an over-stuffed room at the back of the house. She knew it was slightly less fine than the better guest rooms, infinitely more luxurious than the upper servants, and a great deal shabbier than the quarters assigned to Eloise and Ardmore. She hated it.

  Nothing there raised her spirits. Her notes, scattered on the table, were days old. The steady stream of correspondence with Andrew that flowed rapidly while she had been a guest of the Duchess of Murnane stopped when she came to Mountview.

  Here in her father’s house, she feared discovery. Anything sent from this house was vulnerable to prying eyes. She feared that her letters reflected her love for Andrew. Even if they didn’t, fear of censorship made her reluctant to send her questions and ideas. At best, her work would be mocked. At worst, they might trap her here and attempt to prevent the work from going forward.

  Georgiana lifted a fine gold chain from around her neck and pulled a tiny key from her bodice. She leaned under her bed and pulled out a strongbox, glad no servant would bother to interrupt the objectionable daughter while the family was still at dinner.

  The box opened quietly. Andrew’s messages lay like treasured love letters wrapped in tissue. Fool! Each was signed simply, “Yours, A. Mallet.” Anyone reading them would know them for the business correspondence that they were. No one would mistake them for love letters. Yet, they lay wrapped in tissue and locked in a small strongbox as if she feared discovery.

  Andrew had sent no letters in more than a week. She assumed that he was being cautious also or that he was waiting for her to write. Either way, it was safer, she knew, but she missed his letters terribly. She missed him.

  She replaced the box in its hiding place and went to the window, as she did every night, and began to count the miles to Little Saint Mary’s Lane. She pictured the roads. She could be back in Cambridge in two days. Perhaps Glenaire would arrange it sooner. She would ask him again tomorrow.

  She didn’t know if the man who wrote those careful, businesslike letters would welcome her. She wondered if he looked out his window and thought of her or if he was he absorbed in work. She had hurt him. He might not wish to continue the connection. She did, even if she still had no idea what sort of connection she wanted.

  Two days. If she had a carriage. If her father would permit it. If she had the courage to leave. Two days.

  Mountview’s grizzled gatekeeper informed Andrew with exaggerated generosity that, while his chaise wasn’t permitted inside the gate, Andrew might walk to the manor if he chose to try his luck at the servants’ door.

  Andrew looked at the man’s hulking bulk, barrel-shaped legs, and massive arms. He reined in the urge to drive on, dismounted, and began to walk. The manuscript, secure in its leather folio, lay under his arm while wind whipped his coat about. Pain in his back and hip, aggravated by the long ride and the cold, reminded him of how he had felt months ago. The vigor of recent months deserted him, but he soldiered on.

  Michaelmas was long gone, and the year had passed into November. The wind already attacked with a bite, and dusk came early. Wind threatened the portfolio with its precious manuscript. He pulled it more tightly to himself with one arm and grasped the silver lion’s head on his ebony cane with the other. He leaned his head into the wind that roiled his hair and brought tears to his eyes.

  Mountview’s massive shape blotted out the sky. Light glowed in every window as if to call out to him, while at the same time the gray stone walls, dark in the moonlight, stood ready to keep him out. It had always been so.

  As a boy, he had come here with the heir, permitted in but not welcomed. This time he came as an outright intruder. The impulse to seek the tradesman’s entrance flooded him for a fierce moment, but he shook it off. He would enter by the formal entrance.

  Night brought no poetic softening to life inside the Hayden household. Georgiana sat stiff-backed in the corner of the family stateroom. Her impeccably correct gown, high-necked and edged in lace, fell in straight lines of navy blue silk, heavy and rich, to the floor. She felt as if her hair, drawn back in a tight knot and covered with an exquisite lace cap, must emphasize the misery lodged deep in the bones of her face. She faded more every week that passed without meaningful work, Peabody’s health regime, or word from Andrew. Her will to defy the family weakened daily, and she knew it.

  The Duchess of Sudbury held court on a gold brocade sofa before the fire. The Countess of Ardmore, draped her gown artfully around her, tilted her head to catch chandelier light, and gracefully occupied a matching chair. Her husband faded into the shadows of the room, a pale wraith outshone by Hayden splendor. The Duke himself stood in silent dignity to the right of the fireplace. Lady Marianna Hayden sat straight-backed on a small chair just below her mother’s.

  The room’s final occupant, her brother Richard, every inch the Marquess of Glenaire, stood removed from the rest. His posture, while no less dignified, didn’t condescend to being part of the carefully arranged tableau before the fire. He sat at a splendid mahogany secretaire and observed his eldest sister.

  Georgiana returned Glenaire’s gaze without blinking and with little warmth. Neither Glenaire nor His Grace found it convenient to arrange her return to Cambridge after Michaelmas or on any day since. She knew Richard couldn’t or wouldn’t understand her need to return.

  They waited in silence for the summons to dinner. The finely carved double doors between the atrium and the family sitting room swung open with a well-oiled swoosh just as the clock in the entrance chimed the hour. All eyes turned in anticipation. The Duchess raised a languid hand for assistance and made an impatient sound. “The announcement, Peters!” she demanded.

  The butler’s tones were funereal. “Your Grace, I must beg your pardon. A caller has arrived who will not be repelled. He asks for the Lady Georgiana.”

  Georgiana felt as if air had rushed from the room. Her heart lurched in her breast, beating so strongly she believed the others must see it pounding in her chest. She forced her features to show indifference and her eyes to focus on her father.

  “Show the impertinent intruder to the tradesman’s parlor.” The Duke spoke in bored tones.

  The butler looked pained, as if he couldn’t bring himself to admit he had tried and failed. The Duke of Sudbury made a gesture of impatience. “Very well. Don’t delay dinner. I won’t be long.”

  “Yes, Your Grace. Dinner is served.”

  Hope warred with confusion. She knew it had to be Andrew, but she wondered what would cause him to come. He hated Mountview.

  “Glenaire, escort your eldest sister to the dining room.” The Duke skewered Georgiana with a look of command and left the room.

  The Duchess chose to overlook the brea
ch of protocol. She sailed through the door alone, with the Earl and Countess of Ardmore following in strict precedence. She assumed her son and his sister would follow in her wake.

  The hand Georgiana placed on her brother’s arm shook. If he noticed, he didn’t comment. He covered her hand with a warm and reassuring one of his own.

  Numb feet carried her into the massive atrium. She stopped abruptly. Andrew stood starkly black and vividly alive against the massive white wood and glass entrance. It towered over him, and yet he presented a picture of raw Gothic power. His strong body covered in rich black fabric, his arm extended, one hand on the ever-present ebony and silver walking stick, and his scarred face set in lines of steel radiated strength and will. Only his tousled hair gave any hint of the humanity beneath the surface.

  When he saw her, a look of longing broke free from his iron self-control. It transformed his features, only to be masked with equal determination at the sight of the Duke who walked toward him.

  Georgiana lurched forward, but her brother’s arm drew her to the dining room. She could follow Richard or make a scene that might make things worse. She chose to follow, at least for a moment. Her heart sang. He was there.

  “We’re not accustomed to uninvited guests at the dinner hour. I’ll allow you two minutes. You will explain yourself, Mallet, and then you will be on your way.”

  It wasn’t a promising beginning for a marriage proposal, but it was no less than Andrew expected.

  “My business, Your Grace, is with your daughter.”

  “The Lady Georgiana is at dinner. You may convey your business through me.”

  The Duke, ramrod straight at 70, had the Hayden height and long years of skill in using it to intimidate. Andrew looked up at the Duke and remembered a time when that ploy had succeeded with him. “I’ll see your daughter, Sir.”