“Are there others whom you suspect of involvement with the deceased Lord Ranford?”
“Yes, Winston. I wish you to track the records of two others in the house.”
“Certainly.” Winston leaned forward in his chair. “Who?”
“Cybil Preston, lady’s maid to Alicia for five years now. And Paul Grimes, came to employ there in August.”
“If he came after the baron’s death, why are you interested in him?”
“He worries me. There is something he hides. I cannot yet worm it out of him. I have a few ways for you to search for them.”
“Good. What are they?” Winston asked.
“Grimes told me he was hired by the old butler Norden through the Mayfair Registry office.”
“A decent establishment. Recommends good servants. I will have my men look into this Grimes.”
“As for Cybil Preston, she came to Lady Ranford from a servants’ training school. Five years ago, soon after Lady Ranford married the baron. Look into her too, will you please?”
“Rest easy. I will have my men on to it. Meanwhile, you look to the lady of the house.”
I do. I cannot stop looking at her. And that is precisely my joy—and my curse. He rose, ready to leave.
Winston got to his feet but tipped his head. “Do you not wish to know about the case in Chancery about the Bentham inheritance?”
“Oh.” Finnley dismissed it with a hand. “Of course. What do your agents tell you?”
Winston smiled with irony. “They will have a decision soon. A week. Two, at most. If we knew more about Lady Ranford’s complicity in her husband’s demise, we might speed along their decision.”
“You mean if she were accused of murdering her husband, the lords might rule in my favor rather than her own?”
“If she is guilty, yes. She would be unsuitable and imprisoned. Hung. They might still hold the title in abeyance or note well that your claim to the barony would be the only remaining one.”
“No matter Lady Ranford’s fate, I doubt my claim is as firm as hers. I’ve never heard of Chancery awarding disputed titles on the basis of personal integrity, only recorded line of descent. And I do understand that my father’s family had a case or two of unrecorded marriage vows.”
“Newport ignores those rumors.”
Finnley snorted. “My uncle is a prudent man. He does not like to think he is associated with illegitimate sons and daughters, even if they are through wedded in-laws. Lady Ranford’s claim descends from a paternal line that, from what I hear, can prove the marriage records back three hundred years. That’s good enough for me.”
Winston slapped him on the back. “I know you. You don’t wish the money.”
“Not if it’s ill gotten, no. I have enough income from my own imports and from my uncle naming me his heir. I won’t ever build follies like Prinny or resort to sartorial splendor like Beau Brummel. I’d rather see my tenants don’t want for bread. And influence politicians to support increased wages of the working poor. The riots since the massacre in Peterloo grow worse. I was accosted as I came here this morning by a gaggle after my purse.”
“Many hate Wales. He spends too much on houses and clothes.”
“Too many women and money lost on gambling, too,” Finnley said.
“You are so right.,” Winston said and shook his head.
“Whenever I inherit from Newport, I will gladly sit in my seat in Parliament and vote against his expenditures.”
Winston nodded. “For now, discover the truths in that house. See you next week?”
“Yes. Next week. Unless I have more information sooner.” Finnley shook hands with his old friend. “Do give my regards to your wife. I miss her apple pie.”
“Finish this job and I will tell her you wish her to invade our cook’s kitchen.”
“I need to finish soon and leave,” Finnley told him with all honesty. Before I ruin Alicia and she ruins me for any other woman.
He entered through the kitchen door, wiped his shoes, tore off his sleet-soaked hat and coat to hang them on the peg.
“There you are, Mr. Finnley. We worried about you, we did,” Mrs. Sweeting said with a wave and a smile. She stirred a pot on her stove. “You look wet and chilled.”
“It is beastly out there,” he told her, combing back his shock of hair with both hands.
Mrs. Gordon, the housekeeper, appeared before him. Her tiny black eyes bored through him, assessing him. “Lady Ranford asked for ye a bit ago, sir. I’d say you’d better go up. She needs ya.”
“I will. Where is she?”
“In her sitting room,” the woman said with a slight curl of her lip. “It’s tea she has. A service for two.”
For her and him. “Thank you, Mrs. Gordon.”
At a run, he took the back stairs past the first story up to the second. He hated the looks he got from Mrs. Gordon who disliked the familiarity with which Alicia and he got on. He didn’t mind so much for himself. But Alicia could suffer if the Ranford servants told the ones next door, and they told others. All because she and he were…friends.
He knocked on the door, opened it at Alicia’s ragged invitation—and when he looked at her, he said to bloody hell with remaining friends.
Chapter Seven
She sobbed, her fair skin blotchy with red marks of her distress. Raising her face to him, she let the tears roll down her cheeks.
He shut the door—and ran to her.
“Sweetheart,” he blurted and caught her up in his arms, bringing her up off her chair in a swoop that crushed her long lush body against his. “What’s the matter? What has you so upset?”
“Oh, Wallace!” She grabbed the edges of his black coat and buried her face in the linen of his shirt. “I cannot bear the loss.”
“What? A loss?” Had she been notified by Chancery that she was not to gain the barony? She wouldn’t mind the lack this much. Would she?
She was wetting down his linen in her torrent and his embrace did nothing to calm her. “Alicia, please stop crying. Please, my dear.”
“I can’t! Oh, Wallace!” She looked up at him and her misery cracked open his heart. She’d suffered enough this past year. Alone, save for her aunt coming to visit, she’d become insular, tender, a recluse. Of course, she’d break apart at the least thing. Was it a small event?
“Tell me what’s wrong.” He ran a hand across her cheek, his fingers delighting in the raw pleasure of touching her silken skin.
She sighed, closed her eyes and sank against him.
This would not do. He appreciated her proximity too much.
But he could not move and she wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Oh, Wallace,” she said, sniffling. “My governess has died.”
“Your—?”
“My old, laughing, smiling, joking governess. She was a gem of a woman. The best.” Shivering in her sorrow, she choked on her tears and her words came out in gasps. “I hate… that she’s… gone.”
“Gone.” Tucking the crown of her head under his chin, he stroked her hair, unbound and abundant through his fingers. He marveled at her. The sweet confection he held in his arms was stricken to the core by the loss of a woman whom she’d loved long ago.
And her tears rolled out, her body trembling.
“Come with me.” He led her to the settee near her fireplace. “Sit. Let me get you your—“
“No.” She tugged at his hand and hiccupped.
He dug out his handkerchief from his vest pocket and wiped her cheeks.
“I want only you.”
Her appeal was too heartfelt, too delicious to refuse. As if he were a marionette at a puppet show, he sat down and put his handkerchief on the table. Smoothing her ringlets from her cheeks, he sucked in air when she caught both his hands and brought each one to her lips and kissed each palm.
“Wallace,” she beseeched him, “I need you.”
“Alicia, we must not do this—“
/> “We will.” She slid closer to him. “I will.”
“Oh, Alicia—“
“You’ve called me ‘dear’ and ‘darling’.” She moved so near that she brushed her lips on his. “You’ve called me ‘sweetheart’.”
“Did I?” He was demented.
Her hands cupped his face as she blessed his mouth with a fond kiss and breathed, “Oh, yes. Call me that again.”
“I can’t.” But oh, he wanted to. He circled his hands around her waist and brought her nearer. Her breasts met his chest and she wiggled against him.
The temptation blasted through him like a typhoon. He hauled her up and into his lap. His arms bound her close, his need for her ravenous, his body iron hard and straining to gain more of her. Bracing her with one arm, he brought her face to his and the kisses that began as tender explorations of her sorrow and his care, turned to hungry feasts. He caressed her lips, nibbled at them and kissed her once more.
Some shred of decency claimed him. “Alicia, we must not do this.”
“Wallace, darling,” she said, smiling like a siren, and honing in on his mouth with her luminous eyes, “we are doing this. Again.” She took his lips and ran the tip of her tongue over the lower swell of his. “And again.”
“You are too tempting.”
“I wager you have not said that to other employers,” she teased.
He snorted. “There have been no other employers.”
“Oh, marvelous.” She settled against him, drawing him down to her with a hand around his nape. “And how many other women have you kissed?”
“None like you.”
“I’ve never craved my butler, either.”
Her sincerity melted him. “Alicia—“
“Darling Wallace, I want more than fine words and kisses.”
He shook his head. “No. That’s madness.”
“Is it? Life is perilous, my dear man. One day you are well and hail and hearty, and the next you are run over by a lorry.”
“Well, I dare say, sweetheart,” he said, laughing against his better judgment. “That is harsh.”
“Is it?” She took his lower lip between her teeth and bit him. “That’s how Lucille Dewitt died.”
“Your governess?”
“One and the same,” she affirmed. “One day you are alone and lonely and the next, you have a man before you whom you enjoy. His looks.” She ran her long fingers through his hair. “His eloquence.” She licked his upper lip. “His restraint.” She nipped his nose. “If you don’t seize what joys are offered you, how can you say on your last day that you lived to the fullest?”
“We are not often permitted the pleasures we would like.”
She stared at him, pouting. “If I am awarded the barony of Bentham, I will take my pleasures where and when I can.”
Desire sparked in his guts, his groin. His fingers sank into her curls, the strands fine as silken threads. He yearned to taste her. Sanity drifted away and he snatched it back. Although he’d overheard her declare her philosophy to her aunt, he could not condone her plan. “You are not made for defiance of the ton.”
“Who says I’m not?”
“My sweet woman, you are a creature of your time and convention.”
“Perhaps you misread me.”
“I doubt it.”
For an overlong minute, she stared at him. “I’ll show you.”
He grew wary of this budding determination of hers. Askance, he beheld her. “How?”
“In two ways. Agree to let me prove it to you.”
He hesitated, scanning the hard set of her features. “Very well. I agree. What are they?”
“Come with me to Sevenoaks. My governess will be buried in that town day after tomorrow.”
A day in a coach with Alicia? A night or more in lodgings? He’d never survive the temptation to savor more than her conversation. “A butler does not travel with his lady.”
“So you go back on your promise already?” She tsked. “Come, come. This is not like you. Besides, if you refuse to go, I will take Grimes.”
“No.” No other man should sit beside her. Jealousy, sharp as a rapier, cut through his reason.
She set her teeth. “Then I’ll leave alone.”
“Absolutely not. The roads are not safe. We’ve had too many riots lately.”
“Unless you accompany me, I will make the journey by myself.”
“You can’t! Ladies do not travel unaccompanied.”
“I have no male relative, distant or close, on whom I may depend. Only you.” She arched both brows to counter him.
“Your Aunt, then,” he suggested.
“No. She does not attend funerals. Ever. Not even of her those in her family.”
He shook his head. “I cannot do this. The ton would be outraged. You’d be banned for ever more.”
“I doubt I care.”
He grew frightened she’d destroy her future, her good name. And what if she were awarded the Bentham title? Ancient as it was, that would do nothing to enhance her standing in society if she were ridiculed for cavorting with her manservant. A title would only make her more likely to become a target of gossip. What else could he do but help her? “I’ll hire a traveling coach and leave your coach and coachman here.”
“Superb idea.” She lifted a shoulder. “You see how indispensible you are, Wallace?”
His name on her lips had him envisioning her beneath him, calling to him. “I will hang back. You will not introduce me.”
“If you say so, darling. I cannot drag you to the churchyard.”
“Churchyard?” He could not have her ruin herself in so many ways. “No lady goes to the burial of anyone. Not even family.”
“I do. I will for her. You cannot dissuade me.” She gazed at him, coy as a girl. “But I welcome your company in the coach and the inn.”
Confounded by her willingness to walk rings around him, he put on a scowl. “I do not like this.”
She merely smiled. “But you’ll do it.”
Hell, yes. He’d follow her anywhere. “Only because you’ll find yourself a victim of a highwayman or a rioter.”
She softened in his arms, her lips caressing his. “You’ll love my conversation, dear sir.”
“Too much, I wager.” He drew away, much as he hated to part from her. “And the second task you would have me do? What is it?”
She glanced down at the button on his waistcoat and reached out a finger to toy with it.
“Alicia?” He caught her hand, stilled it. He could barely breathe, hardly speak, his throat was so thick, his heart so aching.
She struggled from his lap, gained her feet and whirled to gaze upon him. “We know not what tomorrow brings. We have only today. Tomorrow when we climb into my carriage and make the trip to Sevenoaks, you will be beside me. If you do not wish others to see you for what I wish you to be, that is your problem. As for me, I will have you as my lover.”
He clamped his teeth together. Damn if she wasn’t setting fires along his spine.
She stood before him, not pouting but insisting. “I want this. I need you. If you will not have me for a permanent companion, so be it. I will have you for one night,” she purred and he was lost to visions of her wearing nothing but her luscious skin. “For one grand affair. Because I care for you, Wallace, far more than I have cared for any man. And for once in my life, I wish to experience rapture in my bed.”
One grand affair. One love. Precisely what he’d never thought to gain or experience. Precisely what he’d never seen in his own parents. But with her, here it was—here she was. And he could not ignore her lure and his need to possess her. He rose. “Listen to me, Alicia.”
“No.” She cut him off with a swipe of her hand. “I will hear no objections. You want me.”
He opened his mouth to refute her claim.
But she stepped against him, one arm around his neck, and kissed him with all the fervor of a
woman who was enchanted. Her lips were silk seduction.
And he could not push her away.
He caught her close, pressed her against him and seized her lips. She was heaven and he was in a fabulous hell. “Oh, my darling, you are so delicious.”
“And you won’t deny me.”
Though he called himself a fool, an idiot, a foul roué who took her offer too readily, he shook his head once. “I won’t deny you. Or myself.”
She smiled. Slowly, softly. Like an angel. ““Let’s see then. Have you a pair of fawn breeches? A waistcoat? Hessians? I have a pair of my husband’s and—“
He laid a finger across her lips. “Darling, I have clothes suitable to appear beside you.”
“Superb. I look forward to the transformation.” She giggled in anticipation and planted a light kiss on his lips. “From Finnley, my butler, to Wallace, my lover.”
She snuggled into his embrace and he clamped his eyes shut.
What in hell had he just agreed to?
To become her lover for one night? How ridiculous that notion was! If he took her, kissed her, caressed her naked skin and sank inside her, how could he walk away?
And yet if she ever learned how he had deceived her, she would toss him out on his ear. Revile him.
Then her one night of rapture would not be recalled with any fond delight.
And he? What would he do when the only woman he had ever loved took his name in vain and cursed his existence as the liar he was?
He had no solution.
He could not remain in her employ—and he dare not leave her to an unknown villain.
Chapter Eight
She settled under the fur throw in the hired coach and avoided looking at Finnley. He sat across from her, huddled in a corner, as far from her as he could get. He’d crossed his long legs, beautifully clad as they were in very good looking fawn breeches. Both his waistcoat, a handsome ivory and sapphire brocade, and his coat, a superbly cut navy superfine wool, reaffirmed her conclusion of his excellent taste. He’d even done a superb job of a complex knot in his cravat. She could close her eyes and relish the looks of him, the dashing cut of his coal-black hair, mussed as it was with his occasional displays of frustration.
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