Celia hopped out of Daphne’s gig. She looked up at the three-story brick house. Like most of the others on this part of Wells Street, it appeared well maintained. It was the sort of house a merchant might live in, or a prosperous craftsman.
“It appears to be a decent neighborhood, and Bedford Square is only a few streets east,” Daphne said. She had been inspecting more than the house. “You should be safe enough on your own for a few days.”
Celia lifted her valise from the gig. She had not yet told Daphne that it might be more than a few days. That would come later, once she had settled her plans.
“I still think it is odd that my mother never told me about this property,” she said. “It is much more modest than the house on Orchard Street. I suppose one of her patrons settled it on her, to be let for an income.”
Daphne climbed down and tied the reins to a post. “Perhaps you should let it as well, rather than sell it.”
“I may do that. I cannot sell until the estate is settled. Mr. Mappleton said that more debts might yet be claimed. If so, this will slip through my fingers like the other house, and everything else.”
She plucked the key out of her reticule and fitted it into the lock.
“Thank goodness it is furnished. I feared you would be sleeping on the floor,” Daphne said once they peered in the first chamber. “You will get a better price when you let it too.”
Celia set down her valise and they strolled through the lower floor. There was a nice sitting room in the front, with a library behind it. Both sported upholstered furniture that was presentable, solid tables, and simple but tasteful carpets. The library even held an assortment of books. She examined the bindings and smiled at the little tomes of poetry. Mama had loved poetry and, in stocking this library, had assumed its tenants would benefit from her own taste.
They mounted the stairs to the next level and its bed-chambers. The one in front looked over the street. Daphne lifted a coverlet on the bed. “There are sheets on it, and they appear clean. One suspects the last tenants left rather quickly. One step ahead of the bailiff, perhaps. Let us remake it anyway, so you are sure they are fresh.”
Celia found sheets in a wicker trunk and they quickly finished with the chore. They took inventory of the other chambers on this floor, and found a second set of stairs at the back of the house.
“I will investigate the attic tomorrow,” Celia said, leading the way down. “It appears all is in order here, Daphne. Do you feel better about leaving me alone now?”
“I did not object to your staying here for a few days.”
Celia giggled. “You said nothing, but your eyes assumed that expression of forbearance that said you wanted to object, but are not allowed to.”
They entered another sitting room, one of good size with cane chairs and a settee, at the bottom of the back stairs. The garden could be seen through its large windows. The view arrested Celia’s attention.
“It faces south,” Daphne said. “This is an excellent chamber. Even today, with such overcast skies, there is a pleasant light here, and the prospect of the garden is very refreshing.”
“I suspect it will be my favorite place,” Celia said. “Plants would take well to these windows.” The seed of an idea that had been planted upon learning about this house now set down some growth.
They investigated the kitchen down below, then Daphne prepared to take her leave. She would drive her gig back to the property she had near Cumberworth, in Middlesex. Daphne had a business there, growing flowers and plants for the London market. For the last five years, that had been Celia’s home too.
“We will miss you,” Daphne said at the front door. “Promise me that you will take care.”
“It is a good neighborhood, Daphne. I will be safe here.”
“I suppose I should not think like a mother so much with you. I am only four years your senior. You must find my worries silly.”
“You are not like a mother. You are the older sister I always wanted.”
With something of a mother’s worry still in her eyes, Daphne stepped out and untied her gig. Celia watched her dear friend drive away with the veils on her hat floating back on winter’s breeze.
If Daphne acted a bit like a mother, it was because Celia had been a lot like a child when they had met. A confused, lost child, seeking sanctuary with a stranger whom she had heard possessed a kind heart.
She closed the door, and set about becoming accustomed to the property that was the only legacy Alessandra Northrope had left.
Well, not the only legacy. There was one other, should Celia choose to claim it.
Chapter Two
Celia spent the remaining hours of daylight in the light-filled back chamber. She took its measure with her eyes, and imagined it furnished much differently. That seed of an idea sent up a succulent shoot of stem. Leaves began forming.
At nightfall, she retired to her bedchamber. She did not build a fire, since she intended to sleep soon. She lit a single candle, changed into her warmest bed dress, wrapped herself in two thick knitted shawls, and sat looking out the window while she plotted her use of this house.
She trusted that any debts outstanding would be called within a reasonable time. She would have to ask Mr. Mappleton, Mama’s solicitor and executor, when she would know this house was securely hers to keep.
The legalities had to wait, but the rest did not. She would clear out that back room tomorrow and assess whether her plans for it would work. Then she would go to the shops and lay in food supplies for the next week at least. When Daphne came in three days to take her home, she would explain that she would not be returning with her to that property outside London. She would break the news that she was striking out on her own, and intended to live in this house that her mother had left her.
Daphne would not like it. After five years, they had come to rely on each other more than most people guessed. It was time, however. Time to forge some kind of future for herself.
She looked around the bedchamber. The drapes at the window and bed appeared crisp and clean, but were sewn of simple white muslin. The furniture possessed elegant lines, but no costly carving. The house’s lack of overt luxury contrasted with the other house on Orchard Street, the one where Alessandra had presided over parties and salons, and played a grand lady of the demimonde.
Celia preferred this one, she decided. She was glad it had not been occupied, so she could use it for herself.
Evidence indicated the last tenants had not been gone long. No dust cloths had covered the furniture. The larder even held some dry goods. On entering it today the space had not felt vacant. Rather it contained a pleasant atmosphere. Domestic—
She froze. Her senses shed all distractions. She listened hard to the quaking silence.
Sounds so subtle they might not exist whispered on little drafts of air. She wanted to explain them away, but the chilled prickling on her nape would not permit it.
More sounds, above now. Like a cat moving about. Perhaps a stray had gotten in.
The sounds stopped. She listened a long time for more, and half convinced herself that she had not heard anything of note after all. She had taken great care to ensure every door was locked. There was no way for anyone to get in.
A footstep atop the nearby stairs to the attic chambers made her jump out of her skin. There was no mistaking it, or the ones that followed. Whoever was up there was not even trying to be quiet. And he was coming down the stairs right outside this chamber’s door.
Terror froze her for a horrible moment; then her mind raced. She jumped up, grabbed a poker from the cold hearth, and stepped quietly to the wall beside the door. Hopefully the intruder would leave as he had come, none the wiser that she was on the premises, but if not—She raised the poker, clutching it with both hands.
The boots reached the bottom of the steps and paused. She prayed they would move on, down one more level, then out the door.
To her horror they came toward her instead. They paused out
side her door. She silently urged them to move on, away, down the stairs. Be gone. Be gone.
The door opened. Her heart rose to her throat. She caught her breath and did not move a hair.
A man entered. A tall one. He stepped inside and paced to the center of the chamber. She saw dark coats and high boots and the white of a collar and cravat. She glimpsed a profile with a dark eye and an intense expression, and dark hair pulled back into an old-fashioned tail. She saw all of that in a barrage of dim, golden impressions lit by the distant candle.
He stared at that single flame that indicated he was not alone in this house. Tautness entered his back, and alertness charged his aura. She gathered her courage and advanced silently toward his back, her poker poised to fall.
He swerved just as she brought it down, and caught it in his hand. Then in a blur he caught her too, swung her around, and thrust her toward the bed. Shawls flew away and she hurtled onto the mattress.
Breathless with terror, she stared up at him from where she sprawled on the coverlet. She gaped at him while he gazed down hard at her, the poker still gripped in his hand.
She barely breathed in the tense silence that followed. His gaze drifted over her nightdress, down to where its hem had billowed to reveal her bare legs.
He moved slightly. She tensed, ready to fight if she had to. His change in position allowed the candle’s dim light to wash his face. She took in the handsome visage it revealed, and anger abruptly replaced her fear.
“Mr. Albrighton? What are you doing stealing into this house and frightening the life out of me!”
His dangerous scowl cleared. “I apologize, Miss Pennifold. I did not know you were here. I saw no lights or fires. It is an odd time for you to be visiting this property.”
“An odd time for me to be visiting? Not so odd as your presence, sir. I own this house, after all. What is your purpose in being here? Theft?”
“Hardly theft, Miss Pennifold. As it happens, I live here.”
Mr. Albrighton placed more fuel on the fire in the library. He bent to a small cabinet and removed a decanter of spirits. He poured a scant inch in a tiny glass and carried it to where Celia sat bundled in the shawls on a sofa.
She had invited him out of her bedchamber immediately. Now here they were, he dressed for a night on the town and she still in her bed dress, and far too conscious of her dishabille.
“I do not need fortification, Mr. Albrighton. I am not a silly woman who faints at the slightest provocation.”
He shrugged and downed the spirits himself. He settled into a chair near the fire. Its light flattered him, and suited the impression of mystery and danger he imparted, whether he intended it or not.
Celia had always thought Mr. Albrighton an annoyingly enigmatic man. He had revealed little of his inner self during those occasions when he visited her mother’s parties. One could put most of the other men on this shelf or that, each plank labeled by personality and intentions. One never quite knew where to put Mr. Albrighton. Since he had been only in his middle twenties back then, she had found his ambiguity disconcerting, and his entire person too dramatic.
There was something to him that appeared warm, almost intimate, however, which contradicted and confused one’s reactions even more. A depth in his eyes caused one to think he would understand one’s hurts or problems even if the rest of the world did not. But there was also much to him that spoke of things dark and hard. As a girl she had decided he was too complicated and more than a little discomforting. As a result, they had rarely spoken beyond greetings, except once.
Now he sat in that chair like he had a right to be there. Her whole body remained tight from the shock of his intrusion, but he lounged like a country squire home after shooting quail. Furthermore, he claimed that he did have a right to be here.
She both believed him and didn’t. That was the problem with Jonathan Albrighton. One never knew what one actually had in him.
The silence turned awkward. For her, not him. He appeared prepared to sit there without any conversation, altering the atmosphere to his liking, just gazing in her direction while the flames cast dancing reflections on his polished boots.
“You do appear familiar with the premises,” she said. “However, my mother’s solicitor said this house had no current tenants, so I know you are lying about living here.”
“First you call me a thief, now a liar. It is fortunate that I do not take insult easily.”
“Do not expect polite inquiries from me, sir. To my mind, I am speaking to a criminal until you convince me otherwise.”
“Criminal now.”
She could not tell if she had truly annoyed him or not. Nor did she much care either way.
“I did not take the entire house,” he said. “Only one chamber, in the attic. I have not used it much these last years, but my lease was legal, I assure you, and for a ten-year duration.”
She could believe the part about not using it much. He had a way of coming and going from town, as she recalled. He disappeared from Mama’s gatherings for several months during the year she had lived with her mother, only to reappear, briefly, right before she left herself. She knew from Mama that he had gone again right after that break.
“You had already left your mother when this arrangement was made, and I doubt she thought it worth mentioning if you saw her again,” he added.
“You let that chamber from my mother?”
“Yes. I knew her as a friend only, in case you are wondering.”
“I am not wondering.” Except she was, a little. Who wouldn’t? He was a handsome man in a smoldering, dark way, and he cut a tall, very fine figure. Alessandra had not been indifferent to a man’s appearance, and would have surely appreciated this one’s. “I already knew you were not a patron. You attended some of her parties during that year I lived with her, but I know my mother’s standards when it came to business.”
“Are they your standards too?”
There was no tone of insult in his question. He posed it like he might inquire on her health.
She would not pretend with him. There was no point. He knew it all, she was sure. Why she had been in the house at Orchard Street for a year, and the reasons she had left.
“Even though I left my mother’s house, I did not dispute the lessons she taught me about life. Her standards will be mine if I should ever hope to achieve a similar success and fame in her profession.”
He accepted what she said, as if they indeed discussed only her health. His face, amiable in expression despite the way the firelight emphasized the elegant harshness of its well-formed features and deep-set eyes, displayed no reaction. Yet she felt an intensity of interest emanating from him, and that odd sense of intimacy that he provoked, inviting her to confide.
She stirred in response to his direct gaze. There was no mistaking the little twinges of arousal. They were not unlike her reactions to him when she was a girl, and still carried an edge of danger and fear.
She had been too young back then to comprehend what all that meant. She had assumed sensual responses required the provocations of kisses and flattery and declarations of love. Only with maturity had she acknowledged the power of subtlety, distance, and even silence in such things.
It was in him too. Alessandra had given important lessons on seeing it, even when hidden. Her profession depended on recognizing a man’s interest, even when he did not admit it to himself.
She pursued the only topic that mattered, and tried to ignore how they had become too aware of each other, and how it altered the light, the air—everything. “So you had one chamber above, you claim. For when you chose to use it, which was not often the last several years. Who lived in the rest of this house?”
“Alessandra did. Were you not aware of that?”
No, she was not.
“She would retreat to this house when she tired of the game,” he said. “A few days, most times. As long as a few weeks in late summer when the city emptied.”
Celia glared at
him. She resented the calm way he imparted news of this secret part of her mother’s life. This man knew more about her mother than she herself did. She found that unseemly, and unfair. Why should a man who was almost never in London—and not even a lover!—share a part of Alessandra that her own daughter had not known?
She reined in her temper. Her anger was grief speaking, she supposed. And some guilt and regrets too. She had not lived with Alessandra long enough to learn everything, after all. Her childhood had been spent in the country, not here, and she had only come up to town when she was sixteen. Their time together had been very brief.
“I want to see the document that says you let that room up there.”
“It is buried in my trunk. I will bring it to you as soon as I am able.”
“Is not your trunk above?”
“I am only recently returned to town. I left the trunk with some friends and have not retrieved it yet.”
“If this is your London home, why would you leave your property with friends? I think you are feeding me a tall tale and assuming I am too stupid to know it is all false. I do not believe you lived here. I am not even sure she did. I think that you were spying around for something tonight, and are spinning a lie so I don’t lay down information with the magistrate.”
“Is there something worth spying for? I can’t imagine what that would be. I would say your mother’s life was an open book. More than most women’s.”
His charming, vague smile distracted her enough that she almost missed the fact he had not denied anything. Now that she remembered, Mr. Albrighton had a talent for dissembling most elegantly. He had a way of not answering questions, but evaded them so cleverly one almost did not notice.
“Have you also visited the house on Orchard Street in recent days?” she demanded.
“I have no right to enter that house. Why do you ask?”
Again, no denial. “Someone was there, perhaps today during the burial, or before. I visited the house with the executor this afternoon, after the funeral. Her papers were too neat. I had never seen my mother’s drawers so tidy.”
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