Downstairs they knew he was here.
He threw back his head to stare at the ceiling. “I must not.”
“We can be quick.”
“We should be slow. I should be gone.”
She danced away from him and opened a drawer of her dressing table. She whirled toward him and extended a hand. In two fingers, she held a thin parchment paper. He knew the wrapping. Inside was a French letter.
“I found a few in Robert’s drawers when we cleaned them last year.” She grinned and swirled her long blonde hair over her shoulder. “I had no use for them…until now.”
Then she shrugged from her robe and her body shimmered beneath the cambric. And he could not refuse her.
He took the letter from her and tossed to the bed. Sweeping her up into his embrace, he sidestepped her robe and strode with her to the vast expanse of her downy bed. There he set her against the edge of the mattress, brushed her gown from her shoulders and gasped at her bare beauty. Before him, she stood as god had made her, lush and lovely, giving and his. Her breasts were large and firm, with ripe nipples of rose against the cream of her flawless skin. He cupped the wealth of her bosom and licked at the hardened tips of her breasts. She sighed and arched into his touch, her head thrown back, her delectable body on offer.
He sank to his knees to kiss the hollow beneath her hips and the indentation of her waist. He caressed her trim knees and then buried his lips in the wealth of her feminine flesh. She was warm, wet and musky to his tongue.
Sinking backward to the sheets, she urged him down with her. Like quicksilver, he shoved off his breeches and boots, then lay along her length, her servant in more ways than one.
He stroked her and she writhed. He laved her nipples and she keened. He opened her pretty pink folds and sucked on her so that she cried out in her delight. Her pleasure spurred him on. His cock jerked upward, hard as stone. She sank her nails into his shoulders and he knew she urged him on.
Fumbling to find the letter, he snatched it up from the mattress. In a daze of need, he wrapped the thing around him and bent to her once more. He smiled at the beauty of her. His. Forever his. He’d make it so. With the vow upon his lips, he parted her luscious flesh, slid along her silken folds and dropped inside her depths with a sighing ardor.
Lost in her torrid sheath, he plunged into the rhythm of his desire for her. He took her up into their mutual pleasure and clutched her close.
She was all things to him, perfect and pure. She’d had a man but he had done nothing for her but shame her and neglect her. She’d had a husband but he had never honored her, nor kept her in all sanctity.
But he would. He had no idea how, but he would.
He adored her. And she must be his. Because to be inside her was paradise and to possess her was more heaven than he had ever expected he’d attain. She shuddered in completion and he did the same, wishing he might give her all the pleasures of their joining without the sheath.
He rolled to his back and brought her to him, tight to his length.
He shoved a hand through his hair.
She mewled, cast an arm over his torso and snuggled closer.
He had to tell her who he was. He winced, knowing that would not solve every problem they had. Correction, every one he had. To proclaim himself once more in society was a task he did not relish. He’d given up such fripperies so long ago. Shamed by his father’s improprieties, he’d run from the disgrace of his sire’s drunkenness and gambling. The ton would talk like magpies if and when he ever reentered their world.
But he had to have this woman, this lovely creature who wanted him even now above and beyond social dictums.
God help him, but he had to find the culprit in this household first.
Chapter Eleven
Late the next morning as he reviewed the week’s menus with Sweeting, he fought a headache and terrible malaise. True, he was tired from making love to Alicia, but he was young and healthy. Or he had been. And he wondered about that nightshade. Could the plant be dried? Disguised in food?
Rubbing his temples, he sat lax in a chair at the tiny kitchen table. No one among staff this morning seemed to glance at him oddly. Yet they must have all known that he’d remained in Alicia’s room longer than necessary. He sighed.
“You’re not well, are ye, Mr. Finnley?” Sweeting asked him.
He rubbed his throat and winced. “I think I took a chill at my brother’s.”
“Oh, not good. I can make you a tisane, if you like. An old recipe from me mum. Fix what ails you, I do predict.”
“Yes, thank you. I’ll take a remedy from you.” And watch you at it, too.
“Why don’t you go into the parlor and rest. I’ll make my brew and call you when I’m ready.”
“Thank you. I will wait here.” He picked up the paper with the menus and read them once more. His vision blurred and he shook his head to clear it.
Sweeting went about her work, boiling water in the kettle, spooning out tea leaves and warming the pot. If nightshade could be dried like an herb and if she had mixed it in the tea leaves, he had no way to know.
“Come to the large table, sir.” Sweeting carried a tray laden with teapot, cup and saucer and a small cake.
“I brought you a poppyseed cake and orange jam. Tea is best with something to fill the stomach. What do you say?”
“I say thank you, Mrs. Sweeting. I’m very obliged.” He watched her while she poured him a cup of tea. “You brought none for yourself? Go. Get a cup. I insist. Join me.”
She smiled, then trotted off.
Within minutes, she was back and seated. Grinning, ready for a bit of talk, she nestled into her seat like a little rabbit burrows into its hovel. Then she poured herself a cup from the same pot. “Have you tried my cake?”
“I have,” he said, his mouth full. “Fabulous. Moist. You do have a fine touch. How long have you been in residence?”
“Here? Oh, year and years. A year before the first Lady Ranford died.”
“So you knew her better than most.”
She shrugged “If a cook can know her ladyship.”
“Was she a kind mistress?”
Sweeting frowned and sipped her tea. “Why do you want to know?”
“Curiosity, Sweeting.”
“Good enough. The first lady liked her position in society. Always out to call or to dinner. The theater too.”
“Did she have any pastimes at home?”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “Some ladies knit. Play solitaire. Some perfect their skills at the piano or the harp.”
“No, nothing like that for her.”
“No collections or gardening?”
“No. She enjoyed her evenings out, rose late and had no time for anything but readying herself to go out again.”
“Hmm. Good to know. So the garden in the back is yours?”
“It is. Always has been.”
“I see.”
“Best way to get flavor into any of my dishes is to take fresh from my own plot.”
“I agree. Works best.”
So if the cook put nightshade in the tea leaves, she covered her tracks by drinking it herself and in his presence, too.
What a tangle.
To find Cybil Preston alone was another matter. She was dedicated, hovering over Alicia any hour of day or night. Finally in frustration, two days later, he’d encouraged Alicia to pretend to retire for the evening early one night so that Preston might adjourn to the servants’ parlor for the night. He hoped he might catch the woman in a talkative mood.
The only problem was that Preston had gone to bed early herself and Finnley never got a chance to speak with her.
That left him Grimes to plumb for his secrets. And Finnley vowed to do it this evening over brandy in the servants’ parlor.
Finnley rounded the corner of the sitting room and halted in his tracks. A lightning bolt of pain shot through hi
s head. He clutched the door frame and stood a moment, blinking.
This morning he’d experienced a similar stroke but not as debilitating.
This blinding light was new. Disturbing.
“I say, are you well?” Grimes asked him. He sat in one of the kitchen chairs staring up at Finnley.
“A moment’s passing. Nothing drastic.” Finnley continued to the table, putting down the bottle of brandy. “Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all.” Grimes shook out the morning paper and resumed his focus on the pages.
“Will you have a drink with me?”
“No, thank you. Tomorrow’s Sunday and I want to be up early and doing so I can take my half day with ease.”
“Good idea.” Finnley took a seat and poured himself a drink. He’d take this chance to get closer to the footman. “What do you do on your half days? Something amusing, I hope.”
“I call on a maid who lives next door at the Stanleys’.”
“Is that right?” Finnley had no idea Grimes had a romantic bone in his body. “Wonderful.”
Grimes nodded and went back to reading his paper.
“Any news in there of when they’re to bury the Duke of Kent?” he asked Grimes. The king’s youngest son had died six days ago and they still hadn’t announced his funeral plans.
The footman glanced over at him. “Nothing.”
“Seems odd, doesn’t it, that they don’t get on with it.”
“It does,” Grimes told him. “I suspect everyone’s waiting for ol’ Farmer George to go in his latest bout of madness.”
Finnley nodded. King George the Third who’d ruled for nearly sixty years had taken to his bed again last week, blathering about his mother and asking for his wife, both long dead, poor souls. “The royals prepare for his death constantly.”
“He’s too stubborn to die,” Grimes said with disdain.
“And the Prince Regent’s too eager to have it be so, ” Finnley said, stating a fact all in society knew to be the truth.
“You have the right of it there, sir.”
“I say, tell me something Grimes. How do you like it here?” No butler in his right mind would ever ask such a thing of an underling. Servants worked and were expected to have no views on their condition. But Finnley wished to shock—and he had.
Grimes let the papers drop to the table as he stared at Finnley. “What?”
“Are you satisfied with the running of the house?”
Grimes pulled a face. “Of course.”
“Good to know,” Finnley said, trying for nonchalance.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Curious. It seems the house has had so many changes in the past year.”
“To say the least, sir.”
“Did you like the former butler? What was his name?”
“Norden.” Grimes folded his hands upon the table. “A fine bloke.”
“Was he—perhaps—unsure of his footing? Suffering from dizziness? Headaches?”
Grimes grimaced and took his sweet time thinking about that. “He was old. Fifty. Maybe more. And headaches? Yes, now that you mention it, he complained of them.”
“Do you think that’s why he fell?”
Grimes rolled a shoulder.
Finnley sat back and drummed his fingers on the table. “I often wonder if Ranford died of natural causes. Do you?”
Grimes examined him with doleful eyes. “No. I have no reason to ask that.”
“But two people died here.”
“A lot of people die, Finnley.”
“In such a short space of time in one house?”
“The only thing I noticed was Norden talking to himself the last few days of his life.”
“Oh, about what?”
“A dish,” Grimes said.
Finnley arched both brows. “A dish?”
“’It shouldn’t be there,’ he kept saying. I asked him about it and he told me it was none of my business.”
“Odd. Did Norden mutter to himself a lot?”
“No. Not until just before he died.”
“I see,” said Finnley. “And only about this dish?”
“Yes.”
The chimes of Finnley’s pocket watch struck the quarter hour.
“Quarter to eleven,” Grimes said when it had rung eleven times and then three short pings. “Quite a watch you’ve got there. Where’d you get it?”
Finnley put a hand over his waistcoat pocket where he kept the timepiece. “A family heirloom, it was.”
“A nice one. Good thing you have a fob on it.”
“Why’s that?”
“Wouldn’t want anyone to steal it.”
“No. I wouldn’t.”
Grimes picked up his paper. “Never know who’d take it into his head to snitch it.”
“Do you think there are robbers about? In this neighborhood?”
The footman shoved to his feet. “You never know about the desires of people, do you, Mr. Finnley? One day they’re hungering for a good place to lay their heads and the next, they’re after your mother’s jewelry.”
“What are you after, Grimes?” Finnley asked it with good nature and a smile.
“Me, sir?” Grimes scratched his head. “Why a roof over my head and a good woman to cook for me. And no worries of a Bow Street Runner coming after me.”
“Did you worry about that?”
“Once upon a time, I did. But I’ve changed. For the better, I can say.”
Sounds of people shouting, some crying, rose outside in the street.
Grimes frowned at the noise. “What’s that, do you think?”
Finnley cocked an ear, perplexed.
The chorus grew to a ruckus.
“Let’s go outside and see.”
As Finnley passed into the front hall with Grimes right behind him, Preston ran down the stairs. Sweeting and the scullery maid emerged from the stairs, both in their mobcaps, nightgowns and robes, eyes wide with concern.
“What’s happening?” Preston asked him and Grimes.
Mrs. Gordon appeared, wide eyed. “Napoleon’s not up from St. Helena, is he?”
Dora, the scullery maid, began to whine. “Oh, no. Not again!”
“Be calm.” Finnley raised his hands. “I’ll find out. I’m certain it’s not Napoleon.”
“Why not? Could be, sir,” the scullery maid insisted. “He’s like the devil. Pops up anywhere ‘e looks.”
“No, not him. Can’t be. He’s thousands of miles away. Stay here. Mrs. Gordon, why not pour a spot of brandy for everyone? Grimes and I left a bottle on the table in the parlor.”
“Finnley?” Alicia called to him from the top of the stairs. In the faint candlelight, she looked like an angel. She wore a blood red brocade robe, her hand at her throat in alarm, her long blonde hair shining over her shoulders. “What’s the matter? Why is a crowd in the street?”
“I’ll see to it, my lady. Not to worry. We are locked up. Grimes, come with me. We’ll see to the ruckus and return with word.”
He took the steps down at a jog. From next door emerged the butler and two of their footmen.
“Ho, there! Finnley, I say.” Camden the Stanleys’ butler hailed him. He was tying a sash of his robe around his belly. His sparse white hair stood up at all ends. “What do you think?”
No sooner had he asked the question than a servant from across the square whom Finnley recognized came upon them. He waved a single broadsheet.
“An announcement,” he said to them. “Printed. From Windsor Castle, it is. Dear god. Old George is dead! George is dead?”
Finnley thought the man must be mad. “Let me see that.”
“It’s not from Windsor. But the ink’s wet, Camden.” Finnley looked at the butler. “Who gave you this?”
“A rider running all over town, throwing these about, he is. The king is dead. Long live the new king!”
Finnley stared at him.
No time like the present to pursue a few issues. “I say, Camden, may I have a word?”
The man nodded. “Certainly.”
“Let me see that,” Grimes stepped near and snatched the paper from Finnley’s hand.
Finnley glared at him. Rude bugger.
“What do you want to discuss, Finnley?” Camden asked him while he craned his neck to watch the crowd leave the Crescent.
With Grimes standing there, Finnley could not talk freely. “I’ll call tomorrow morning, if I might.”
“Of course. Well, good evening. Much to do. See you in the morning. Eleven, shall we say?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“I can’t believe it.” Grimes stood, stiff as a board in shock. “But I doubt it’s a joke.”
Church bells began to chime.
“Must be true,” Finnley said, dazed himself.
“And it’s snowing,” Grimes said without emotion, one palm up in air to catch the flakes.
“He’s been king so long, no one thought he could ever die,” Finnley said and wiped weariness from his brow. He had a throbbing headache now, the church bells clanging in his head. He was utterly fatigued again and abnormally so.
Another set of bells began to ring. The chimes came from another corner of London.
And a third began to gong. The chorus was now a racket.
“Finnley?”
He turned to see Alicia next to him, her hand on his arm.
“Is it true?” she asked him, her large eyes luminous in the flickering lamplight.
“You should not be out here in the cold, my lady.”
She stood in her robe and slippers and he killed the urge to wrap his arm around her and hold her close.
“King George is dead. I would say it must be so else all the bells would not ring. Come inside.” He extended a hand and watched her slowly pick her way across the snowy path back to the steps up to her front door.
More than an hour later after all staff had taken to their beds, Finnley donned his banyan and joined her in her bedroom. One look and she rushed into his arms.
“I cannot believe it. He was more legend than man. And now he’s gone. What will we do with his scoundrel son for our king?”
Her Beguiling Butler Page 10