What was wrong with him?
Craving the gorgeous blonde Lady Ranford was not part of his mission. Saving her was. And this fixation, this enchantment she held for him had to end.
He grumbled at his own lunacy, because he was enthralled with her, too.
So how could he end his fascination with her when he was in her company so often? Tempted by her hourly? And now this accident on top of the other one? If indeed, they were accidents. Which he doubted.
And just when he had to determine quickly if she was whole and safe, what had he done?
Damn. He’d fawned over her like a suitor. A lover.
When he was her servant. Her butler, for Christ’s sakes!
Yes, he had laid her to her bed. Yes, he had tucked pillows under her poor, injured knees. Yes, he’d exposed her shapely legs well above those bruised bones and ogled her like some oaf. He’d even wrapped the shards of ice in the toweling and applied the cool compresses to her limbs. Her pale, freckled limbs that would fit nicely around his hips as he—
Alicia’s lady’s maid rounded the corner from the main salon.
“Preston, where have you been? I sent Mabel for you long ago.” He didn’t care for the persnickety maid who tended Alicia. She was on the far side of thirty, comely but with large almond-shaped brown eyes. Pinch-nosed and snide to others on the staff, Preston was not one to admire or befriend. However, Alicia liked her for her efficiency. Whereas he found her a trifle too territorial for his good nature or his need to learn about the doings in the house.
“I was polishing my lady’s shoes in the boot room, Mr. Finnley. I shall go to her straight away.”
“Do that.” He turned on the stairs as Preston passed him. “I’ll have Cook send up soup and tea. Encourage my lady to have every drop. She ate little this morning.”
The maid’s nostrils flared in affront. She didn’t like him, his authoritative manner or the fact that he cared for her mistress. Perceptive, yes, Preston was that. He’d tried to hide how attracted he was to Alicia. Tried to conceal his enjoyment of her. Her spontaneity. Her own appreciation of his looks and his demeanor.
But he was making a terrible hash of that.
Subterfuge was not his best calling in this matter. Even if his friends in Whitehall thought his efforts to ferret out spies during the wars had been productive. Even if his supervisor at the Home Office thought him the right candidate to solve their current problem posed by the deceased Lord Ranford’s previous butler.
He headed downstairs, sailing into the kitchen.
“Mrs. Sweeting,” he addressed the cook who stood rolling out pie dough at her butcher block, “I’d like you to send up a tray to our lady. Soup, tea.”
“She’s ‘ad a fall, I ‘ear,” Sweeting said, wiping her hands and turning to haul down from the shelf a tray and teapot. “Poor thing. She has too many accidents, don’t she?”
Indeed. Two too many. That’s one reason why I’m on guard. Why I’m necessary to her. Too much in this house is suspicious.
“She needs no more problems,” the cook went on as she summoned her scullery maid Dora with a crooked finger. “Is she in a bad way?”
“Could have been worse.” He picked up a slice of spiced apple from her bowl. Munching on it, he surveyed the servants’ hall beyond. It was empty.
“Mabel tells me you caught ‘er ladyship on the front stoop.”
“I did. Speaking of which, where is Grimes?”
“Out with the coachman.”
“I’ll go see him.” He started for the door but turned back. And he couldn’t help himself from saying, “I’ll return in a few minutes and take the tray up to her.”
“Oh, you needn’t, Mr. Finnley. I’ll get Mabel.”
“No, Mrs. Sweeting. I will do this.”
The plump little lady smiled slowly, then winked. “Aye, right you are.”
Finnley spun for the door. Hell. Even the cook suspected he had a tendre for the lady of the house. She was right.
This would not do.
Outside in the small square of the mews stood Connor, the Ranford coachman, with James Grimes. The two had their heads together, laughing over some fool thing and whatever the joke, Finnley didn’t like it.
“Grimes!”
“Yes, sir?”
“I’d like a word.” Jamming his hands in his coat pockets, he inclined his head toward the end of the alley, the far end of the crescent and away from earshot of Connor.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Finnley?”
Cold as Hell out here, it was. He’d have to get this over with before he became an icicle. “Tell me why you did not clear the front steps of ice?”
The young man blinked. “But, sir, I did.”
“When?”
“Right after you told me, sir.”
“This morning at ten?”
“Yes, sir. Before milady went out and after, too.”
“I told you to do it again an hour later.” Alicia had told him she would be no longer than thirty or forty minutes. “Did you?”
“I did.”
This stumped him. Why would Alicia slip on ice that was not there? “Were you thorough?”
“I was, sir.” The young man’s brows knit. Grimes was worried.
He was not the only one. “Thank you, Grimes.”
Once back inside, he stood, his hip against Sweeting’s work table. She puttered around the huge kitchen preparing Alicia’s tray.
“You’re worried,” she said, soft and low to him.
And since Sweeting’s scullery maid had disappeared and they were alone in her domain, he allowed his eyes to meet hers. She was aptly named, this roly-poly lady who made the most delicious dishes with tireless energy and an ear-to-ear cheerfulness.
“Milady has many troubles since her ‘usband passed.” Sweeting confided this with a sniff. “He was not kind to ‘er, you know.”
He did. He’d read it as part of the preliminary report given him by his supervisor.
“Lord Ranford was an old bully,” she went on, devoted to assembling the tray for her mistress. “He liked his port and his mistress, though heaven knows why because I heard she was bigger than a country cow and bellowed louder.”
He gave a laugh.
She chuckled. “Sorry, sir, but it’s true.”
He knew that too.
“He was not wise with money though we always got our pay on time. Or I should say, ‘er ladyship made that a point. Before he married her five years ago, he paid us whenever he cared to. His first wife was no better, either. So we like our young lady, we do. And for more reasons than she got us our money on the dot.”
“A good reason to like her, I’d say, Mrs. Sweeting.”
“She’d been a loyal wife to her lordship, too. Better than he was husband to her.”
Finnley had read that, too. But wondered what he’d learn here in her employ. Servants always knew the whole truth about their lords and ladies. And he had counted on befriending some one of them to discover Alicia and Robert Blindon’s nature. Here and now he could cultivate the cook for more information.
“Were there ever any arguments between them?”
“Aye. When she came here as a bride, his lordship deprived her of her dowry money. A few months went by and she wanted new clothes. She was what do you call it? The polite word?” The cook made a gesture of a swelling belly.
“Enceinte? Expecting a baby?”
“That’s it. Anyway, she told him and he was pleased because after all, his first wife couldn’t carry a baby to birth. Our new ladyship, she was proud and happy she was with child. He was, too, I daresay. In any case, she fought him for her money. ‘Spend what you like of your own, but that money is mine and I will have it,’ she told him.”
“And he gave it over?”
“Easy as pie, ‘e did. I suspect he’d never had a woman demand things of him.”
“Good for her.”
“That’s what I say.” Sweeting poured hot water into the china pot, then emptied that in the dishpan. Filling up the pot again, she dunked the tea strainer inside and topped the lid. “I’ll add a few biscuits for her, poor thing. She’ll like my pie tonight, she will.”
“She does like sugary things,” he said as he stole another bit of cinnamon fruit from her bowl.
Sweeting gave him a scold. “She won’t have any if you keep snitching apples from my filling!”
“Apologies!” He grinned at her.
“If you’re hungry, Finnley, I’ll bring out another pasty.”
“No, thank you, I’m full.”
“A big man like you?” She wrinkled her brows, hands on her hips. “Get on with you. You like to eat. At any hour. Here. Take this up to our lady and when you return, I’ll have heated up that pasty for you. Tea, too. Now go.”
Upstairs Alicia sat propped up in her massive bed, now in a dressing robe, her glorious platinum hair spilling down her shoulders.
To look at her hurt his eyes. Her room was painted in a rosy hue that touched her skin with luminous pink. The bedclothes were a mix of lace and linen, a spectrum of whites and pinks that framed her generously endowed body in complement.
He gazed upon her, struck as he always was, by her pristine features. Such a beauty, he had not expected from his report. Lord Winston had left out any description of Lady Ranford—and Finnley alternately cursed and praised his friend for his lack. If Finnley had known how gorgeous she was, he might have suspected she had killed her husband. Good-looking women often had ulterior motives like lovers or fortune to spur them on to murder. He knew. He’d caught two of them with damning evidence and helped Bow Street put them behind bars. But with one glance at the innocent countenance of this captivating widow, Finnley had immediately concluded Alicia could not kill a fly. Not even her derelict husband who had had the stupidity to dishonor her and gamble his fortunes at the tables and in the City.
“That was fast,” Alicia said, beckoning him forward with a quick hand.
“Mrs. Sweeting sends her condolences on your injury and added her biscuits to speed you to recovery.” He strode forward training his eyes from the frothy muslin of her ladyship’s gown and robe. The fabric complemented her fragility, illuminating the appeal of her lips, her throat, her heaving bosom. And was that a rosy nipple he detected beneath a fold? A hint of her navel?
God. Put the damn tray down and dismiss yourself, man.
He bent over her.
“Oh, biscuits!” Alicia enthused while her fingers brushed his. He was struck, unable to move or think. But move he must. And did. Standing tall beside his lady.
“Mabel! Preston!” Alicia told the two maids who fluttered around the suite. “You may go now.”
“But, Madam,” Preston objected.
“Now,” insisted Alicia, her attention on the items on her tray. “Go.”
The two women hurried out, shutting the door behind them.
Finnley swallowed hard. His eyes—traitors—were fixed on that one ripe nipple. Hard and glorious beneath the much too sheer muslin.
“Madam,” he murmured and turned for the door.
“Not you, Finnley. Stay. I must talk with you.”
Jesus. Why? He could not stand here feigning indifference. His body was too hard, too high. He winced. Was his interest evident in his breeches? He dare not check.
In need of escape, he fingered the chain of his pocket watch. “I must discuss the dinner menu with Cook.”
“Not yet, you don’t. Come here, Finnley.”
Dear god. Alicia patted the bed beside her.
“I—“ Flummoxed, he pointed to the wing chair at her bedside.
“Nonsense. Sit here, Finnley.” She caressed the coverlet. And smiled at him. Bright as morning sunshine.
He shoved down his need to kiss her hand or put it near the placket of his— Oh, bloody hell. “I’m afraid that’s not proper, my lady.”
“Between us, we have no great need for propriety, Finnley.”
Fingering his watch, he found no other response to deter her. “But you must.”
“If you sit over there, far from me, I won’t be able to trust what you tell me.”
That brought him up short. “Madam, I have never lied to you.” Not quite true, but still…
“Sit. Right. Here. Finnley. And do not argue.” She picked up a biscuit and munched, her tongue darting out to catch a crumb that fell to her lower lip. Dear god, he wanted to lick it from her himself.
Garrr.
“My lady, I assure you that you can count on me.”
“I know I can.”
“Well then.” He felt vindicated and stuffed his watch back in his waistcoat pocket.
“Sit here and I will tell you why I want you here, Finnley, and nowhere else.”
Foiled, he sat. This near, he inhaled her fragrance. Soap mingled with lilacs. His head reeled. He had to end this torture quickly. He was here to do a job. The first thing he’d ever been good at was ferreting out criminals, derelicts. “What is it you wish to discuss?”
“Tell me, Finnley, why you are here?”
Had she discovered his ruse? His real identity? “Ma’am?”
She tossed a sober look at him. “You heard me.”
He had no words.
“Why are you here, Finnley?” When he did not answer, she shook her head. “In this house? Working for me?”
“You need a butler. Your previous one died last month.” Brilliant, Finnley.
She examined him so closely he wondered if she could note each hair of his brows, the color of his eyes, the flinch of his mouth. “Good. Thank you for that. Now, tell me a few more things.”
“Anything.” Almost.
“What is your background, Finnley?”
He frowned. Why would she ask? His cover was superb. His acting, excellent.
“Ah, ah.” She waved a forefinger in front of him. “No prevarications, sir.”
He shot ramrod straight. “I told you of my past. You have my reference.”
She inched closer to him, so near he could see the purple rays in the glory of her velvet eyes. “I do, dear Finnley. But why do you speak with such crisp precision? Why do you command me with your very presence? Your power?”
“Ma’am?” Was that his voice that sounded like an echo of his own? She should not undo him. But she did.
“Wallace Finnley. You have education and breeding. I can tell. Do you know how?”
He shook his head, her nearness a magnet to his body, his soul. Her lips, his only lure.
“For one thing, you own that very fine, very French Ferdinand Berthoud pocket watch. My great-uncle owned one similar.” She dropped her eyes toward the point on his chest where he kept his treasure. “I can hear the delicate chimes when it rings every quarter hour.”
He should have left it in his rooms. But it was the dearest memento he owned from his grandfather. Besides, he ran his daily duties by the precision of it. “I cannot part with it. It keeps me on task.”
“It does. I see it.”
“May I go now?”
“No. Certainly not. I would learn more. You say you come from Yorkshire. But I detect no hint of it in your pronunciation. You went to school. Some fine institution that weaned you from your native speech. Where?”
Good god. She was perceptive. He set his jaw. He’d not reveal his year at Edinburgh. He never told anyone of that, he’d hated it so. “The Army was my schooling. Taught me responsibility.”
“Your rank?”
“Captain.”
She smiled at him, her face around her eyes crinkling in appreciation. “So then your family purchased a commission for you?”
My father gave me nothing of value. “I ran away. Began as a recruit.”
“Noble of you.”
“Necessary, ma’am.” He shook his head, thinking them done, moving to rise.
She caug
ht his hand. “A moment, Finnley. There is more to your story. From your time in the Army, I see then when and how you acquired your demeanor with those under your command.”
He wished to escape her touch and her sound perception. “The Army gave me a good education.”
“And war is a demanding teacher,” she concluded.
“It was. I wish to never fight again.”
“Nor do any of us. My brother died. At Waterloo.”
He schooled himself to remain placid. Her brother had been his best friend. What he did here for Alicia was as much for her as for Jerome.
“I find it intriguing, dear Finnley, that with such rank in the military, you now offer yourself in domestic service.”
Her statement, he knew, was a question and he had to avoid the whole answer of his origins. “Being a butler is an honorable occupation.”
She fell back to her cushions, her hand dropping and freeing him of her hold. Her expression told him she was dismayed with his obstinate ways.
He stepped backward and rubbed his wrist.
She stared at him, clear-eyed and assured. “Finnley, I will be forthright. I look into your endearing blue eyes and can see that when you speak truth to me, your pupils darken and enlarge.”
What?
“And when you lie to me, your pupils constrict and your body tightens like a drum.”
Well, damn. Foiled by my eyes?
Once more, she took his hand and put his open palm to her soft cheek. “Might you care for me, Finnley?”
Might? There was no might.
“I see in your eyes that you do,” she whispered. “Tell me who you really are, dear sir. And then we can begin again. Anew.”
Chapter Three
A knock came at her bedroom door.
“Yes?” Alicia glanced around his shoulder, her voice sharp, her brow furrowed.
Preston stuck her nose inside. “Milady, do pardon me, but there are two visitors at the front door.”
“Who are they?” Alicia asked her.
“I didn’t ask,” Preston said. “They presented no cards.”
Her Beguiling Butler Page 2