Dolly’s hand shot out, her eyes wide, looking as surprised as if she’d been a puppet and someone had yanked her strings.
Gripped in her fist was the blue Sevres sauceboat.
The sense of betrayal was immense. How, how, how could she have been so foolish as to trust Dolly?
Elise’s temper was sizzling dangerously. She’d given her trust before and regretted it deeply, and she would be damned if it would be trampled upon like this again.
“Why are you holding that sauceboat? Were you about to use it to put out a cheroot on your little jaunt with your ‘sister’?” Her voice was low and menacing.
The silence was deafening.
Elise was smaller than Dolly, but her anger radiated from her like the fur on a furious cat. She felt three sizes larger and twenty times meaner.
Dolly remained silent.
“How did you get into the cabinet, Dolly?”
“Ach, ye poor dear, ye think ye’re so kind and clever, and ye’re such an amateur. Ye wi’ yer sweetness and kindness and thank-yous. One thump with me fist at the corner and it popped right open.”
Elise blinked. “I thought we reached an agreement.” Beneath the fury, she was surprised to find that her feelings and pride were hurt.
“‘Tis better to be quick than kind, Mrs. Fountain. Now, if ye’ll kindly step aside.”
“Listen to me, you fraud. You are as of now released without references. I care not what becomes of you. You are fortunate I won’t ensure you are hanged for theft.”
Dolly finally, appropriately, blanched, which was not a pretty sight.
The first appropriate thing she’d done since Elise had arrived.
“‘Tis just one thing. That rich cove has so many things and I’ve—”
“You’ve what? A job? A roof over your head? Food in your belly? A sense of entitlement? No gratitude? How dare you. How dare you. The ‘he’ of which you speak is a prince of the House of Bourbon, who shed blood for this country and his own so that the likes of you can remain safe and enjoy, as you say, ‘your little pleasures.’ He is a remark . . .” Elise felt her voice crack. “. . . remarkable, kind, and just man, and he is the one currently keeping you alive. The thing you hold is one of the few things left of his possessions when his home was stolen from him. And now you would steal from him again? You’ve been treated a sight better than most servants ever are, and you repay him with thievery. Which you then, astonishingly, attempt to justify.”
It was such an assault of passionate eloquence that Dolly stood blinking, stunned, as if she’d been sprayed with shrapnel.
A fraught little silence ensued.
“What will ‘e do?” Dolly murmured nastily. “Chase after me?”
Elise had never been so tempted to strike someone.
“He doesn’t need to run in order to shoot you, and if he should wish to shoot you, I’d lie to the magistrate and say it was in self-defense. That you had gone mad and attacked him, because surely you must be mad to think I wouldn’t eventually discover your thievery. You’ve always struck me as the sort who would eventually meet her end at the end of a rope.”
Dolly was now scorching red.
“You’re one to judge, ain’t ye, Mrs. Fountain,” she hissed. “I’ve ‘eard a thing or two about ye, so’s I have. Let ye who be without sin—”
Elise stepped forward abruptly and put her face up to Dolly. So close she could see the hair in her nostrils and the color of her eyes and the tiny broken veins fanning from either side of her flaring nostrils. She could smell the woman’s sour breath, which was coming rapidly now.
“Spend a lot of time in church, do you, Dolly?” Elise said it very quietly, but apparently she managed to sound sinister. “I dare you to finish that sentence.”
Dolly’s throat moved when she swallowed.
“If you can tell me from whom I stole, and who I injured, then you may keep your position.”
Dolly remained wordless.
“I thought not. Give me the sauceboat.”
Dolly lifted her hand, prepared to throw it, but Elise was faster and snatched it from her.
“Drop that valise and get out of this house. NOW. You’ll find any belongings you left behind in the road tomorrow morning.”
Dolly spat toward Elise’s feet, missed, dropped the valise, and stormed her way out of the house, slamming the door behind her.
Elise seized the valise to search later, whirled on her heel, prepared to storm off, and staggered to a halt.
Lord Lavay was standing at the end of the hallway.
He was watching her.
His expression was very nearly . . . wonderment.
As if something was dawning on him.
He must have heard her passionately defend that blue sauceboat as if it had been Lord Lavay himself being spirited out of the house by a ham-handed Dolly Farmer.
They mutely regarded each other. The expression in his eyes nearly buckled her knees, so soft yet fierce it was.
“Thank you for defending my honor, Mrs. Fountain. You looked for a moment there ready to do murder,” he said softly. “And I should know, as I’m quite familiar with the look. Pirates frequently sport it.”
She tried to smile. She couldn’t quite do it.
If I were to kiss you . . .
She held his sauceboat out to him wordlessly. Tenderly. As if it were, indeed, a kiss.
He strode slowly over to her and took it from her just as gently, almost ceremoniously, his fingertips brushing hers.
He looked down at it for some time without speaking.
Very like he didn’t want her to see his expression, either.
“She was wrong, Mrs. Fountain. It’s better to be kind than to be quick. Please don’t lose heart.”
“I won’t. But I think we need a new lock for the porcelain cabinet.”
He looked up. “I’ll find room in the budget.”
She smiled at that.
“I fear she was the cook, Lord Lavay.”
He shrugged with one shoulder. “I’ll eat bread and cheese if necessary. Or dine out with the Earl and Countess of Ardmay.”
“It won’t be necessary,” she rushed to assure him. “A man can’t live on apple tarts alone. I can cook adequately until we find another. And I’ll have your coffee brought up to you. My apologies for the delay in bringing it to you this morning, if that’s what brought you down.”
“I can survive a few minutes more without coffee. And fear not. These things happen, Fountain. I’ve sacked many a man in my day. None so large as Dolly Farmer, however.”
She smiled at him.
He turned to return to his study, and over his shoulder called, “Oh, and congratulations. The job is officially yours.”
ALL THE WAY up the stairs, down the hall, and back to his study, Philippe was savoring in his mind’s eye the expression on Mrs. Fountain’s face when she’d defended him.
He could not recall ever before seeing quite the same expression on a woman’s face. That tender ferocity. Moments of peril had much the same effect as alcohol: they shook loose truths.
He held the sauceboat tenderly, as if escorting a prisoner of war to safety.
He came to an almost skidding halt, just as a small boy he’d never seen in his life did as well. They were approaching each other from opposite directions.
They perused each other silently, nonplussed and warily, from a distance of about twelve feet.
“You must be the giant,” the boy said finally.
“The giant?”
The house likely had its share of ghosts, given that it was a century or so old, but he hadn’t yet encountered any of them. This one wasn’t transparent. He had what appeared to be crumbs clinging to the corner of his mouth. In all likelihood apple tart.
Philippe approached slowly, as if the boy were a
feral animal with sharp teeth rather than a child.
He stood and looked down.
The boy stood his ground, his eyes huge.
“Please don’t eat me.”
“I’m not hungry,” Philippe found himself saying inanely.
Did he work in the kitchens? What was he doing running amuck on this floor of the house?
“You can eat Liam,” Jack offered, as smoothly as a courtier maneuvering palace politics. “He can run faster than me, but there’s more of him. For now,” Jack vowed. “I’ll be bigger.”
“You really ought not betray your mate. It’s a matter of honor, young man.” This was somehow a reflex, too.
“Honor?” Jack repeated, testing the word and clearly liking it.
“Yes. It means to be proud to do what is right. And a true man is loyal to his compatriots.”
He couldn’t shake the dreamlike quality of the dark hallway. And there was something about the boy . . . it was like a word at the tip of his tongue that he couldn’t quite reach.
“Are compatries like apple tarts?”
“‘Com-pa-tri-ots’ is a word that means ‘friends’ and ‘comrades in arms.’ The men who look out for you when you go into battle. And every day in life, too.”
Why had he launched into a lecture as naturally as if it were something he did always?
“I wish I had a lion,” the boy said suddenly.
“Of course. Everybody does.”
“And a horse.”
“Naturally.”
He’d happened into a conversational labyrinth without a compass, clearly.
Jack brightened. “Do you eat little girls instead, then? I know where you can find loads of them. Over at Miss Endicott’s Academy. They’re usually cleaner.”
“I’m partial to apple tarts. I have not yet eaten a person. I have eaten a weevil.” He said this as if playing a trump.
“Ewwww!”
A gratifying reaction.
“When I’m a little bigger, I’ll be able to ring the church bell by myself with no help at all.”
“An admirable ambition.”
“I like apple tarts, too,” the boy confided. “Have you slept in a hammock?”
“Have I wha—yes. I have.” He’d begun to rather look forward to where this conversation would next lead. It was a bit like fencing, but much less dangerous. “I was a sailor on a great ship. I slept in a bunk, which is simply a very hard bed. But my men slept in hammocks.”
“My mama says sailors sleep in hammocks.”
“Your mama . . .”
“She told me not to bounce on the bed or I would sleep in a hammock.”
The back of Philippe’s neck prickled portentously. His mama . . .
“What do you think giants eat?” the boy asked.
“Whatever they want to eat, I should imagine.” Philippe heard his voice go remote, a little colder now, because a realization was beginning to solidify.
The boy giggled.
Lavay did smile reflexively at that, because one would have to be made of stone to not smile in the face of a child’s giggle.
And as Mrs. Fountain had pointed out, he was most assuredly not made of stone.
Oh, most assuredly not.
“I’m not a giant, young man. I’m merely very tall. You will be one day, too.”
“Do you think so?”
“It’s inevitable.”
Children were merely young humans, and he didn’t believe in speaking down to them.
“Because I think I need to get a little taller to get up a beanstalk. That would be grand.”
“Has someone given you magic beans, then?”
“Ohhhh!” Jack breathed. “Do you know the story, too? My mama named me for Jack. She sings a song about Jack before we go to sleep.”
Philippe closed his eyes briefly as realization sank in, peculiarly sharp, like an arrow.
The soft dark eyes, the curls, the dark slashes of brows.
The little dimple in his chin.
A peculiar cold knot solidified in Philippe’s gut.
It felt like betrayal.
He could not for the life of him have said why.
He heard the frantic clicking and skidding of the slippers on the marbled hallways, the huff of her breath. “Jack, where have you—”
Elise came to a halt when she saw two men, one very small, one very tall.
Young Jack’s face went brilliant.
“Mama! I found the giant!”
“So I see.” Her voice was cheerful, if wary.
“This young gentleman says he’s your son,” Lavay said.
“He is indeed, and a luckier mother never lived.”
Jack glowed up at her, and she dropped her hands like epaulets on his shoulders and gripped him tightly. Two against the giant.
“Jack, I am pleased to present you to Lord Lavay, who owns this beautiful house that I look after, but I am disappointed that you disobeyed me. We live at the top of the house, and this part belongs to Lord Lavay, and it’s impolite to intrude. Have you made your bow to him?”
“No, Mama. Sorry, Mama. I was looking for you, and here he was. It was an accident, Mama.”
“Do make your bow now, if you please.” She lifted her hands from his shoulders.
Jack bowed so low that his forehead nearly touched his knees.
“A handsome bow, Master Jack. Thank you,” Lord Lavay said gravely.
Jack glowed, then began to fidget happily.
She dropped her hands back onto his shoulders and he went still, leaning against her.
“Please go and return to your room now, my love, while I speak with Lord Lavay. Do you know the way?”
“Follow the cupids on the banister, the wallpaper with the pattern a bit like pretty eyes, go all the way down the stairs, wait for the smell of apple tarts and then go into the kitchen, down the hall and up the stairs.”
It was like he was describing the vast distance between their social stations.
“You are quite correct and very clever, Jack.”
“All right, Mama. Good-bye, Giant Lord Lavay.”
“Until we meet again, Soon to be Tall Master Jack,” he said gravely.
Jack laughed and turned, poised to bolt.
“Walk!” she admonished.
He adopted a mockingly sedate pace that made her smile after him.
They watched him until he was out of sight.
Or rather, she watched him.
Lavay watched her.
Her expression stole his breath.
“I was unaware you had a son,” he said softly, as if hesitating to wake her from a beautiful sleep.
Her attention returned to him abruptly.
She looked worried. “I apologize if you feel I excluded this information, my lord. I didn’t think it would interest you or that it would be a condition of my employment.”
“It is not,” he said shortly.
Another silence.
“I’m terribly sorry if he troubled you.”
“He did not.”
He feared he sounded quite brusque.
“He is charming,” he added.
And then they stood regarding each other in silence, in the now well-lit and dusted hallway.
The air was so aswarm with unspoken things that he felt he could reach up a hand to swat them. There were questions he had every right to ask, given that he was her employer, and he was arrogant enough to do it. Then again, he had no right to wonder about them, because she was his housekeeper for a house he intended to live in after he could gracefully waltz again, and in his hierarchy of concerns she ought to rank a step or two above the furniture.
But it was even more damning and awkward that he didn’t ask the questions.
/> “He’s a handsome child.”
“He’s beautiful,” she said instantly, in a rush, and then flushed, because it sounded like a correction.
There was a silence.
He smiled faintly. “Yes,” he said gently. “That is the word I was thinking. Thank you, Madame Je-sais-tout.”
“Thank you,” she said faintly, which is what she ought to have said the first time.
Her face was pink.
“Will there be apple tarts soon?”
“Yes, of course. I will go see to them.”
They could always take refuge in apple tarts, it seemed.
Chapter 16
HUSBAND.
He’d of course been contemplating becoming one, but now he thought it was a surprisingly distasteful word.
Made even more distasteful with the addition of another word: her.
As in her husband.
He returned to his study, settled his sauceboat on the desk, and paced—how gratifying to be able to pace again—as he repeated the word in his head, as if it were a purgative or a hair shirt. Was that the reason she kept the best of herself back?
Because she was Mrs. Fountain, and surely there must be a husband somewhere? Housekeepers were often given the honorific of “Mrs.,” even if unmarried. But there was, after all, a son.
Her. His. That was the point of pronouns, after all—to indicate ownership. Perhaps “ownership” was wrong. Perhaps “belonging” was a better word. A more painful word, in a way, because it implied choice. She’d chosen to belong to someone else.
He’d never been one to shy away from hard truths, because once he knew the truth, he could do something about it.
And so, as if to flagellate himself, this is what “belonging” meant: some man knew what it was like to see that shining black hair spread out over a white pillow, and knew what it felt like to feel her bare limbs tangled with his, and to hear her laugh in the dark. Someone woke next to her every morning and knew whether she sprang from bed cheerful or grumpy and needing coffee or tea—or was it chocolate?—to start her day.
He didn’t know. He didn’t know. So many things he didn’t know. All the mundane things seemed absolutely the most important of all, suddenly.
And he hadn’t realized until now that he wanted to know them.
It Started with a Scandal Page 16