True Story (The Deverells, Book One)

by Jayne Fresina

"Please be specific, Mr. Deverell. Do you mean at the club?"

  He scratched his cheek. "I'm not really sure what I mean, Mrs. Monday." A naughty gleam had come into his eyes, even though he tried to hide it by looking down at the papers on his desk again. "You do bring me a feeling of serenity which could be most useful...wherever I go. With you in charge I can't go wrong, can I?" The corner of his lip turned up.

  "Oh, am I in charge now?" The idea amused her greatly.

  "I think I'm in danger of letting you be," he replied gruffly, gesturing at his tidy desk. "I could easily let you get away with...all manner of crimes."

  Olivia counted her neat row of goose quills and tried to calm the rush of light-headedness that swept her so hard it almost lifted her out of her chair. "I can stay with you only half a year, sir. As we agreed." To remain any longer than that in Deverell's employ would make her into a creature too dependent on him, and the whole purpose of this exercise was to give herself a measure of independence from all men.

  Then he said, "Perhaps my son Storm will persuade you to stay in Cornwall, if I cannot entice you."

  "Why...why would he do that? He didn't mention needing a secretary."

  "He may have another purpose for you."

  "Such as?"

  "Not for me to say," he muttered. "He's old enough to speak for himself." Then he added slyly, "I know how you like to be useful."

  Olivia rubbed furiously at an ink stain on her palm. "I hope I have been useful to you, sir."

  "In your own inimitable, damnably annoying way— and despite all my attempts to distract you— yes."

  "I suppose that's something then." She was far more pleased by it than she could allow him to see.

  After another pause, he said, "You hint that we should negotiate a new salary, I suppose? To reflect your hard work at all hours of the night, above and beyond the terms of service."

  "That is not what I—"

  "Now that you've wormed your way in and made yourself almost indispensable to me, you want to raise your fee. How much would you charge for the occasional smile?"

  Very well, she would go along with his teasing. "It depends what you mean by occasional."

  "Shall we say, one a day? I imagine your smiles are costly. Like your kisses. I don't want to ruin myself."

  Naturally, he thought money was the answer to everything. Would buy him anything. "I'm sorry, sir. My smiles cannot be bought."

  "It's a good thing I can afford the parts of you I have now at my disposal," he grumbled, scribbling messily across the paper to correct something she wrote, his letters tangling with hers. "I suppose I must be satisfied with that."

  She stared at his hand, watching as he drew a thick line of ink through another sentence. "I'd rather not talk of finances, sir." The teasing had ventured too far again off the cleared path.

  "Ah. One should not mention finances to a lady. I forgot. Does Chalke handle all your affairs?"

  "Yes. He is a good family friend. Before my father died he asked Mr. Chalke to look after me."

  "Then he did not trust your kindly parson to do so? You were married to him by then, were you not?"

  "My father trusted William, of course. But he had known Mr. Chalke for longer, and there can be no harm in two caretakers."

  "Seems excessively cautious to me. Especially for a woman who says she is fearless, not in the least delicate and dainty, and who seems capable of looking after herself." Deverell glanced at her across his desk. "Perhaps your papa had a suspicion that Kindly Parson Monday would meet an untimely end as the other husbands did."

  "Perhaps. Nothing is certain in life." She didn't want to talk about that again. Her employer often edged the conversation around to William. By doing so he had made her think harder about that last morning. Of William putting on his hat and grasping for his umbrella from the stand by the front door, of the cold grey light falling through the arched fanlight, the moist air clinging to everything like a very fine shroud of damp lace.

  That sensation she'd felt of something being...off. If only she knew why such an awful chill had come over her on that last morning, before—

  Quite suddenly, Deverell reached across the desk toward her face. Olivia froze, startled. The tip of his finger stilled the little pearl hanging from her ear. He kept it there a moment, his eyes narrowed. Did he look at her lips? She could no longer tell what held his attention.

  "Your mother gave these to you," he said.

  Her pulse skipped. "She did."

  "You didn't keep much of hers when she died, because you're not sentimental. But these you held on to."

  "How could you know that?"

  Slowly he smiled. "I have my ways." His finger swept along her jaw to her chin and then pressed lightly to her parted lips, before leaving her and returning to its work on the manuscript.

  Olivia's mouth felt too dry to swallow. She couldn't speak. His son Damon had warned her that True Deverell claimed to read the history of an object just by holding it. Did that mean he knew her history now too? Would he know what a naughty child she'd been and how hard she'd worked to amend her ways since then?

  "Good lord, look at the panic on your face! Fret not, woman. It was an educated guess based on the probabilities. Not witchcraft. Sadly." He stretched and put both hands behind his head, leaning back against the dimpled leather of his chair. "But if you dare tell anyone that, I'll have to punish you."

  "I see." The moment of anxiety passed. "So it's not a secret you mean to divulge in your memoirs."

  "Certainly not. A man has to have some mystery. You are privileged, Olivia, to be entrusted with that particular secret. I don't know what came over me, but I had to tell you. I fear you hold a key capable of undoing my very soul."

  She put her chin up, determined to ignore the wicked sensation he left coursing through her body. "Shall I be sacked if I tell your secret?"

  "No," he replied smoothly. "But I shan't let you leave my service. Ever. You will belong to me. Entirely to me for the rest of your life."

  She took as deep a breath as she could manage. "That would be a punishment."

  Yes, she was getting used to him now. It was teasing. Merely teasing. And Olivia was learning how to tease him in return.

  * * * *

  He knew he had to stop doing that— looking for excuses to touch her— but he didn't want to stop. In all likelihood he couldn't stop.

  That night, unable to sleep, he took a lantern and strode through the corridors to her room in the far wing, where he stood outside her door.

  There was no sound within, but he saw a little flicker of light under the door. She must be reading.

  True sat on the hall carpet, his back against her bedchamber door, the lantern beside him. He closed his eyes and pictured her by the fire, turning the pages of her book. A calm and quieting presence. She didn't demand that he talk, and she didn't sulk when he was silent. Olivia did not require constant attention to reassure her. She was very self-sufficient, which made him wonder why she had married three times. It could not have been for money, evidently, as there was none.

  He remained there for some time, arguing with the need to knock upon her door. Just to talk to her a while longer. Or to sit and look at her. That was all he wanted— her company.

  Pah, who was he trying to fool?

  He wanted much, much more from her than that. He wanted to possess her completely, inside and out. He wanted to understand her, and that was a desire he'd never before felt for a woman.

  Chapter Twenty

  One day Sims came to show him a letter she had written.

  "I thought you might wish to see this before the Blewett woman carries it to the mainland with the post. I noticed it left on the dresser in the kitchen, sir."

  True studied the address written in Olivia's neat hand. "Christopher Chesterfield, esq? Who might that be?"

  "I do not know, sir. She has made no mention of a young man. A relative perhaps?"

  He was curious. And annoyed.

>   Sims added slyly, "I know you don't approve of the female staff having followers, sir."

  No, he bloody-well didn't approve.

  A man she hadn't mentioned, but who was special enough to receive her one and only letter. Yet a man who had not been able to stop her from taking this post.

  The address was written with her usual steady hand, but there were more curlicues and sweeping tails than he had seen when she wrote for him. Clearly then, it was written with extra special care.

  No one ever wrote that way to him.

  True tossed the letter back to Sims' tray with a terse flick of the wrist. It almost spun right off the polished silver and over the other side, but the butler managed to hold on to it, flipping the sealed missive like a pancake.

  "Yes, I see. Thank you, Sims. Diligent as ever."

  "Shall I send it with the other correspondence of the house, sir?"

  He ground his teeth, glaring at the marks on his desk blotter. "Yes." He managed a tight smile. "Let me know when she receives a reply."

  "Certainly, sir."

  That afternoon, torrential rain kept him confined to the house. His secretary took advantage of the weather and soon they were at work together in his library. For once it was still light out when they began, but it was a gloomy day, the rain making the clouds heavy, blurring the line between sea and sky.

  When he felt cheated out of a day like this, True often became short-tempered over little things. As winter ambled closer into his view, shortening the hours of daylight, a general moroseness settled over him, made him want to hibernate until spring.

  He sank in the chair, his heels up on one corner of the desk, chin on his chest, fingers restlessly sending little balls of paper across the room via a slingshot he'd once confiscated from his daughter.

  "You seem out of sorts today, Mr. Deverell," his secretary observed coolly. "I was hoping we might advance further with your story."

  "I'm not in the mood."

  "So I see." She turned to watch another paper ball fly into the far corner, bouncing off a framed map of the Empire. "Perhaps I should make myself useful elsewhere until you are ready to work."

  "No. You'll damn well sit there." He glowered across the desk. "Where else could you be of use? I'm paying you, aren't I? So sit there and do as you're told."

  "Excuse me for asking, sir, but did you get out of the wrong side of the bed today?"

  No, he wanted to shout at her, I got out of the wrong bed. "Damnable rain."

  "Yes." She sighed heavily. "I know what you mean. I'm not fond of it myself these days." Her lashes swept downward, secretive again.

  He got up and paced around his chair, trying to lift his mood out of this dark place. "I don't like to be trapped indoors," he growled. Why was he explaining himself to her? Perhaps she really did hold the key to unlock his soul.

  Another wave of rain hit the window like steel-tipped arrowheads. Behind him she was silent, waiting patiently. All innocence, of course.

  Finally he turned to face her again. "I hear you wrote a letter, Mrs. Monday. "

  Nothing. She was reading, her head bent forward, eyes hidden.

  "I hope you spoke well of me in this letter, and did not feel obliged to tell your lady friend how ill I treat you, keeping you up late, making you drink wine and sprain your ankle."

  She looked up, nudging her spectacles back onto her nose with one finger in that gesture now familiar to him. "Why would I tell anyone such a thing?"

  He dropped back into his chair. "You might regret coming here and start spilling your troubles to a sympathetic friend, exaggerating. The way women do to each other."

  "You do not treat me ill at all, Mr. Deverell."

  Equivocation! Twice! Aha. Since she wouldn't know he'd seen the address, he'd given her a chance to confess that she wrote to a man, not a woman. Yet she skipped over it.

  True aimed another paper missile across the library and it landed in the fronds of a potted plant. "I don't, eh?"

  "Not at all. You treat me with prodigious care."

  He was somewhat mollified by that. But, still...."In what way, pray tell? I hope I haven't been spoiling you."

  A real smile at last. Just a little one, shyly formed, rather ashamed of itself and half hidden by streaks of shadow from the rain. "I meant, sir, that you take good care of my appetite especially. I want for nothing. I am certainly not overworked. In all honesty, I wish you would give me more to do."

  He dropped the slingshot and tapped the edge of his desk with four fingers, drumming them in a fast tattoo, mimicking the sound of rain hitting the window. "Hmm. What else? What else do I do for you?" True liked hearing her talk of these things she appreciated, he realized. Felt rather chuffed that he pleased her. It wasn't an easy thing to do, as he knew already, and on such a bleak day as this any good news was welcome.

  "My room is more than adequate, warm and comfortable. Jameson brings up a fresh scuttle of coal every evening so I never run out." Her clear eyes widened, shining through the glass of her spectacles. "And I have two candles, in addition to a oil lamp for my own use at night, which allows me to read as long as I choose in bed."

  Apparently she didn't need much to be impressed, he mused.

  The rain made lines of gray light flicker diagonally across her face. She could be a ghost sitting there, watching him, fading in and out, elusive. He wanted to put his hands on her, to be sure she was still there. Suddenly the thought of her leaving his house was intolerable. He curled his fingers, cracked the bones.

  "The offer of my former wife's room is still open," he muttered. "There you could have even greater comfort than a few extra candles and some coal."

  "I'm afraid anything more would be too grand for me. I wouldn't know what to do with myself in that much luxury."

  He scowled. "Well, if you catch cold in that drafty wing this winter, don't blame me." Truth was, he didn't like having her so far off in another side of the castle. She was all alone down there, writing letters to other men. And it was drafty. The old nanny used to complain about it all the time.

  Olivia showed him the empty inkpot. "We've run out. I made it last as long as I could."

  "There's more in the bureau. Take whatever you need. No need to skimp."

  Most women he'd known loved to be pampered. This one was so painfully frugal anyone would think she feared an extra bite of cake, or a softer pillow would lead her straight to hell.

  If only Storm pulled up his breeches, polished his boots and finally got around to pursuing her properly, she would stay there and True wouldn't have to worry about where she went next or what sort of trouble she might encounter. Or whether she would one day contract a deathly influenza from this foolish insistence on drafty accommodation.

  But Storm evidently needed more time to win her over— and encouragement, which this prim secretary wasn't giving. Her politeness, in fact, was more deadly than her sharp tongue. At least when the latter came out of hiding one knew a soft spot had been touched.

  Unfortunately, he liked touching those soft spots too much himself.

  "Have you given any further thought to staying in my employ a while longer, Olivia?"

  She opened the bureau. "Must we talk of this again? I cannot stay more than six months as we arranged."

  "Why? You haven't any plans." He felt his frustration mounting again, as he thought of that letter.

  "But you can't even say why you would want me to stay," she exclaimed. "Why would I agree when I don't know what my duties might be? Your memoirs will be finished by then."

  He grumbled, "I may decide they're not over yet. I may have more living to do, after all."

  She said nothing, busy searching in the bureau for more ink.

  Through narrowed eyes he pictured her without that awful gown, her naked body beneath his, lightning decorating his bedchamber in pulsing silver lines, sweat gleaming on his skin, her perfume surrounding him.

  In bed he would conquer her. He would write his memoirs inside her,
just as he once suggested.

  Too hot and uncomfortable suddenly, he shifted in his chair and picked up his letter opener, tapping it rapidly on the desk.

  Damn her. He hadn't felt like this about a woman in...appalled, he stabbed the silver letter opener into the blotter. Ever. He had not ever felt this way about a female. It was confusing, befuddling, humbling. In danger of making him into a fool.

  Even now he was a few breaths from storming across the room and sweeping her over his shoulder, when all she'd done was tuck a loosened wave of hair behind her ear.

  "So," he cleared his throat, "who is this special friend to whom you wrote your one and only letter since coming here?"

  He waited for yet more cunning evasion, but this time she replied, "Christopher Chesterfield is my stepbrother. His mama married my father when I was sixteen. I'm quite sure you read the address, so I don't know why you asked."

  A stepbrother. He stopped drumming on his desk. Well, that was good news, wasn't it? For Storm. No prior claim to get in Storm's way. There could be no romantic connection between stepsiblings.

  It was his son's future happiness he was thinking of, when he first saw that neatly addressed letter. There could be no other reason for his concern.

  So he'd had a moment of madness, imagining how he might keep her for himself. That was probably due to the fact that he hadn't had a woman in his bed for quite some time. It was nothing. He would amend that soon; he didn't really know why it had taken him so long. His shoulder wasn't causing him as much trouble now and he really ought to get back in the saddle, so to speak.

  Oh, for the love of ... would she stop fiddling with that lock of hair?

  He took a deep breath and adjusted himself again. "Christopher, eh? Married?"

  She hesitated. "Not yet. Soon to be."

  "Hasn't been as unlucky with spouses as you then."

  "No... he is favored with better fortune."

  Hmmm. What did that pause mean? He took a deep breath and resumed tapping his fingers, this time with better rhythm. The Sailor's Hornpipe again.

  "Sounds like the rain isn't letting up," he exclaimed jauntily.