Ever His Bride
Page 11
“Oh, I’m sure you do have a sense of humor. It just needs exercising.”
“It needs a reason.”
“Then look no further than the end of your nose.”
“You find the end of my nose to be humorous?” Insulted to the marrow, he stalked to the blanket chest at foot of the bed, but found it a precarious place to stand. She was too lovely and he was too close. Her back was to him, bare to the nape, where stray curls clung damply to her shoulders.
“Stand away, sir.” She quickly drew her knees to her chest and tented the Times over the opening in the tub, leaving only her bare shoulders and her fierce gaze to entice him. “You are husband in name only, Mr. Claybourne. This is my bath, sir, my private chamber. Now, turn your back and stay turned while I escape to the dressing screen.”
He did as directed, sat on the chest with his back to her, trying to rid himself of the aching need to slide his hand down the sleek column of her neck and across her shoulders. He heard her stand, heard the caressing sluice of water as she hurried to the dressing screen in the corner of the room. Every sinew and fiber urged him to turn.
And now her earthy voice came unmuffled from behind the screen. “And regarding the end of your nose, Mr. Claybourne, I used it as a figure of speech. Your nose is quite adequate for the size and shape of your face. What I meant was that our situation is fraught with humor.”
“Is it?”
“It’s all around us. You may turn now, Mr. Claybourne.”
He already had. Her watery footprints led across the unpolished floor toward the screen. He wondered if her bare feet matched the shape of the small imprints.
But damn the woman! She had distracted him again from his purpose. “You are dancing around this dressmaker’s bill, Mrs. Claybourne.”
Felicity would have thrown a pot of talc at him from behind the tufted screen, but the pot was lead crystal and must have cost an ordinary man’s annual salary.
“Then cancel the order if you think it’s too much! I don’t want to argue about it. It just seems that dressing the wife of Hunter Claybourne is an expensive endeavor. I’m truly sorry, but I don’t know what I can do about the expense, or the fact that, at the moment, I am your wife. Whether we like it or not, we seem to be stuck with each other, like a train unable to move forward or backward without its track. And please don’t ask which of us is which, because I couldn’t tell you.”
She waited for his reply as she slipped into her new chemise and petticoats and one of the day dresses Madame Deverie had sold to her ready-made. It was a bit too spriggy and yellow for her tastes, and the sleeves were too full for traveling, but it would do for now.
She found herself wondering if Claybourne would like it, if there was anything about her that he would find at all attractive. He’d looked momentarily harmless standing near the door when he’d first come in, peering at her as if she were out of focus. She’d been angry at the time, and amused as well. And even a little charmed.
Yet, he’d been too quiet in the last few minutes. She came around the screen, stockingless and without slippers. “Mr. Claybourne?”
The meddlesome scoundrel was bent over her writing table, leafing through her travel folio! The very folio that Giles had stolen and returned to her. If Claybourne had enough sense to put the loss and the return together, he might—
“Put that down, Mr. Claybourne!”
“‘The weary traveler should keep in mind the security of his or her baggage.’ If I’m not mistaken, Miss Mayfield, this is your…”
He looked up at her and his words trailed off. He seemed startled, not that she’d caught him reading, but by something else, something that softened his face and brought color to his brow. His fine mouth reshaped itself as he swallowed. When he continued to stare without comment, Felicity touched the back of her hair to see that it wasn’t standing on end.
It wasn’t.
So she dashed over to him and yanked the folio out of his hands. “Keep your fingers off my belongings, Mr. Claybourne.”
He looked down the length of his nose at her, and followed her every movement as she straightened the stack of pages. “I thought your little bandit had stolen your gazette when he stole your portmanteau. What’s it doing here?”
Excuses clambered over each other in a slippery hillside of possibilities until she came up with the perfect explanation, one that bore a great deal of truth.
“It’s been returned to me.” She tucked the folio into its sleeve. “Miraculously!”
“How? When?”
She tried to ignore the heat of guilt rimming her ears and flooding her cheeks as he studied her profile in conspicuous detail.
“Mr. Dolan had it.” One small lie wouldn’t hurt anyone. And it was certainly safer for Giles than the full truth. If Claybourne knew that the boy had been here at the manor—
“How did this Dolan fellow come by your stolen gazette?” He sat on the edge of the table and watched her every move, watched her straighten her desktop. Yet all the while she imagined his gaze on her mouth, watching for something only he could see, though she could feel his interest as if he were drawing his fingertips across her bare nape.
“Apparently the envelope was found by someone and returned to the office of the Hearth and Heath. You see the address here.” She pointed to the evidence on the front of the folio sleeve. “Anyone could have slipped it through the editor’s mail slot outside the building and gone about their business.”
That seemed the hardest for him to swallow; he exhaled as if she’d worn out his patience. “Which person in all of London would have gone out of their way to perform such a charitable act?”
Here was a perfect place to advertise the merits of her new little friend without giving him away. She tried to look casual and speculative. “Perhaps little Giles Pepperpot had a change of heart.”
Claybourne’s broad shoulders lifted with a single grunt. “You expect me to believe that the boy has a conscience, and that he can read?”
This wasn’t going badly, she thought. “Giles might be able to read. He told me that he’d once been committed to a workhouse and that he hated—”
Felicity clamped her hand over her mouth, hoping to muffle the words she’d just said. But Claybourne had heard them quite clearly. He leaned forward and tilted her chin so that she was forced to look directly into those opaque eyes.
“You’ve seen that little thief again, haven’t you?”
“Briefly.”
“Where?” he asked. Felicity twisted out of his way, but he followed and turned her, holding fast to her arms. “Where? You haven’t had any free time.”
She took a long breath while she concocted a logical answer, one she could back up with the lies she’d already spun. “I saw him with Mr. Dolan. Giles had arrived just before I did.”
“Had he now?”
She might as well make the lie enormous. “He was trying to extort money from Mr. Dolan.”
The obsidian in Claybourne eyes glinted. “Go on.”
She tossed her head for effect and tried to sound scandalized. “Imagine the audacity! He’s a lot like you, Mr. Claybourne, willing to make money any way he can.”
“I don’t steal.”
“Never?”
He released her arms. “So once again, you let the little thief go when you could have given him over to the police?”
“Yes, I let him go, and if I see him again, I plan to buy him a new shirt—to replace the one you tore.”
“Not with my money.”
“No, Mr. Claybourne, with my own.” Her miserly husband wouldn’t even spring for a three-penny shirt for an unfortunate child.
“So you’ve struck a vein of gold, have you?” Claybourne planted himself on the blanket chest at the end of her bed and stuck his heels into the carpet. His legs were long and as well-muscled as his shoulders, fashioned of the same tethered strength. “And to think, Miss Mayfield, your uncle had to go all the way to San Francisco to find one.”
“All of three guineas? How can you carry the weight?”
His snort of laughter took a jab at her pride, but she dodged it with growing resolution, relieved that she had successfully led him away from the subject of Giles Pepperpot.
“This is a goodly amount of money by my standards. I’m not accustomed to earning it by the bushelful like you are.”
“No doubt you’ll waste it all on that boy, and have nothing to show for it.”
“I suppose you’d have me invest my three guineas in one of your schemes?”
“A wise man looks always to the future.”
She stood eye-level with Claybourne for the first time, and felt equal to his smugness—though a bit dismayed by the fluttering in her chest as he stared at her from beneath his lowering brow. She had planned her future; she didn’t need his advice. She would find Giles in the next few days, settle her husband’s debt with him, and then set out on her travels.
“And what is it you see in your future, Mr. Claybourne?”
He straightened, clamped his hands over the edge of the blanket chest. “What do you mean, Miss Mayfield?”
“Oh, I know that the Bank of England would collapse on itself if you should desert it. And that you are the bedrock of the financial district. But I can’t help suspecting that you anticipate a time when you’ll have to pack up all your things and leave Hampstead in a great hurry.”
The accusation drew a growl from him. “Leave Hampstead in a hurry? Why? What brings that fool question to mind?”
“Come with me, Mr. Claybourne.” She deposited the three guineas in the lotus bowl on her writing table, then went to the door.
Claybourne stayed put on the chest, looking too handsome in his dark suspicions.
She stretched out her hand and beckoned him. “Come, come, Mr. Claybourne.”
Hunter decided his wife had become far too resourceful, and far too inviting with her hair drying in curling wisps around her face. And she was barefooted. It was strange enough having a guest in his house; the fact that this particular guest was his far too legal wife unsettled him completely. His moods had become mercurial and unreliable, from irritation with the woman’s self-assured independence, to an unwelcome response that bordered on lust—and all this could manifest itself in a matter of seconds. It would not do.
“This way, Mr. Claybourne.”
He reluctantly followed her out of the chamber into the hallway, keeping his hands stuffed safely into his coat pockets, and away from the single, undone button in the middle of her back.
“What is all this, Mr. Claybourne?” She was pointing impatiently at the crates lining the walls on either side of the corridor.
“What is what?” Her question confused him, left him wondering why the passage seemed suddenly so shadowed.
“When I arrived here yesterday, I asked Branson if you were in the process of moving. He said no, that you’ve lived here for five years.”
“Five years, three months on Saturday next. Why?”
“Well, I’ve been here for less than two days, Mr. Claybourne. And, granted, I only brought with me the clothes on my back, but I have moved in.” She bent and blew dust off a crate. “It appears that you have no intention of doing so.”
He bristled. “I am here to stay.”
“Then why all the boxes, if you don’t need to move at a moment’s notice?”
He didn’t like this kind of breezy banter, wouldn’t allow it but for the way her laughter brightened the hallway. “Claybourne Manor will be my house until the day I die.”
“Let’s hope the undertakers remember which crate they put you in before they cart you off to be buried.”
He laughed ruefully. “It won’t really matter much then, will it?”
She dusted at another label. “It certainly will matter to your heirs and your family.”
“I haven’t any.”
“Well, you have me…” She stopped her dusting and lifted her startled gaze to his.
Her words had come so easily, he knew she hadn’t meant them for him. They were something she would say, and mean, to that uncle of hers or to her feckless father. But they pricked him, as a casual glance in the mirror reveals an uncomfortable truth.
She seemed embarrassed and brushed her palms together as if to dislodge the dust. “Most of these crates were in my chamber, Mr. Claybourne. Dozens and dozens of them.”
“I’ll have Ernest remove them from the corridor.”
“That’s not my point.” She looked exasperated, as if he had spoken another language and she didn’t understand him. “I merely wondered what you expect to do with all of it.”
“Do?” He certainly didn’t understand her.
“Yes, do. The label on this crate, for example, indicates that it came all the way from Turkey, two years ago, and claims to contain carpet runners.”
“And?”
She lifted the hem of her soft yellow skirts a few inches, and wriggled her bare toes against the floor. “This very cold and dank hallway could stand a carpet runner, Mr. Claybourne. Why not open the crate and lay it out here?”
“I’ll have Branson see to it come morning.” He nodded and started down the hall, satisfied that he’d survived another of her questions, mostly that he hadn’t acted on the urge to thread his fingers through her hair.
“Mr. Claybourne, this barrel holds six copper cook pots.”
He stopped and turned. Her hands were stuck against her hips, her toes showing again. “And?” he asked, unable to read a meaning beyond her simple irritation with him.
“Mrs. Sweeney could use them to cook that delectable stew you seem so very fond of.”
“Then I’ll have Ernest deliver the pots to her in the morning.”
“And what about all these the other crates and barrels?” She lifted arms that seemed to encompass the entire county, then went back to scrubbing her fist across the labels. “Here are linens, and an umbrella stand, and more drapery, though God knows why you think you need more protection from the sun inside this house. And here is a cylinder lawn mower. Why do you keep garden equipment in an upstairs bedroom?”
“I haven’t got a gardener.”
She blew a puff of air into her hair. “That’s quite obvious. But what do you plan to do with it? What are you saving it for, Mr. Claybourne? More’s the point, why purchase a lawn mower or an umbrella stand if you’re not going to use them?”
He hadn’t a single answer for her, so he gave her none. Which ought to leave her silent and hanging onto her last question long enough for him to gain the quiet of his library.
He started down the stairs, and was surprised and strangely disappointed not to hear her quick, bare footsteps following him. He found himself straining for the soft pad of her tread as he walked the distance of the hall to the end of the west wing.
He had located his library in a room which he knew to have once been a grand ballroom. He’d purchased the house from a man who’d made his fortune in canalways, a foolish man who hadn’t had the sense to see that trains would soon replace post roads. Hunter himself had advised him to invest in the rails, made repeated offers to assist. But the man was too proud and, in the end, too late. He’d bought the house and the grounds in a rare act of charity, and because it was isolated, yet close enough to commute to the Claybourne Exchange every day.
A fire was newly set in the library grate, and two lamps had been lit against the evening. Branson had dutifully laid out Hunter’s attaché on the desk alongside a stack of the day’s newspapers.
Of course he would pay his wife’s dressmaker’s bill without further comment. Meath would expect Mrs. Claybourne to look the part when they dined at his house. Not that any man would take note of fashion, in the light of Miss Mayfield’s distrac
ting smile. He had only noticed the new dress she was wearing because of the button that needed fastening at her back. Which caused him to think of the sounds of her dressing behind the screen, which made him wonder if Madame Deverie thought to include suitable nightwear in this very expensive wardrobe. He stood up from his desk, intending to seek out Miss Mayfield—
But she was standing in the doorway, taking in the length and breadth of the library in a single, efficient assessment. Absurdly, he dearly wanted to know what she thought. It was the only other room besides his bedchamber that he used with any frequency. The tall cases of books reminded him that he’d read each one; the exotic woods and works of art satisfied his sense of order. The room smelled of solid, successful contentment, just like the Exchange.
But his wife frowned at the bookcases and the statuary, and then turned her frown on him.
“Yes?” he asked, feeling roundly chastised without knowing the offense.
“I’m sorry to disturb you again, Mr. Claybourne, but two of the crates contain dining-room chairs. May I have them set out in the—”
“Put them anywhere you like.”
She seemed to approve of his decision but remained in the doorway as if she were afraid of contracting some illness from the room. “You’ve more books upstairs in the hallway, Mr. Claybourne. At least, that’s what the crate says they are. Shouldn’t they be brought in here?”
“I’ll speak to Branson—”
“In the morning. Yes, yes, I know. Why don’t you let me take care of that? The unpacking. Set some of it aright. If I’m to call this place home—off and on—for the next year, I’d prefer it to feel more like a home and less like a dockside warehouse.”
He had never considered uncrating the house. He didn’t use many of the rooms, rarely needed anything, kept his staff at a minimum. But he could think of no good reason to object to his wife’s suggestion. And if it would keep her occupied …
“Uncrate it all, if you have a mind to.”
She took in a breath of surprise. “Do you mean it, Mr. Claybourne?” She smiled as if the library had been transformed into a wonderland.