A Return of Devotion

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  The door to the house stood open, with the enigmatic Mrs. Brightmoor nowhere in sight. He crossed into the front hall once more and nudged the door closed with his foot.

  Then he stared.

  He’d been too focused on his housekeeper to look at the room earlier, and if asked, he wasn’t sure he could have said what he expected it to look like.

  But whatever it was, it hadn’t been this.

  The large room, nearly devoid of furniture, was still impressive, especially when one considered how long the house had been empty. A scattering of intricate tables so small they couldn’t hold anything and equally useless delicately carved chairs lined the tall walls. Bright red wall coverings that had clearly seen a better day made a stark contrast to the white trim and wainscoting.

  But the part that most took his breath away was the art. Painting upon painting covered the walls. Statues stood like sentinels in the corners. A glance through the open doors on all three walls revealed that the abundance of art was not confined to the front hall.

  And every last bit of it, even under closer inspection, appeared clean and meticulously cared for. His housekeeper might not be able to speak well, but she—or someone else lurking around the house—could certainly wield a cleaning cloth.

  As if his thoughts had conjured her, the woman appeared in the large open archway across from the front door. The smile had returned, though it seemed more natural now, changing the shape of her round, sun-kissed face into a charming combination of hills and valleys. She looked entirely too young to be the housekeeper of anything. Perhaps she merely felt intimidated by him? It was understandable. He might be the only nobleman she’d ever encountered.

  “There you are,” she said in her quiet, cultured, and entirely non-subservient tone.

  So, she’d gotten prettier while he went to get his bags, but not much else had changed. He sighed. “Yes. I’m here. Perhaps you could direct me to my rooms?”

  She blinked. “Of course. The stairs are right this way.”

  Of course. Because everything else had gone as expected in this encounter.

  He strode after her, entering a room equally as large as the hall he’d just left but with two grand staircases climbing up the side walls and framed by even more artwork.

  She was already halfway up the stairs, impressing him with the pace she seemed to achieve despite her shorter stature. It was a pleasure to walk somewhere with someone without having to alter his normally brisk pace. Not that he walked places with servants, except occasionally Morris.

  He caught up with her on the first-story landing as she approached a door and flung it open with a wave of her hand that was disconcertingly different from the discreet easing open of doors he was accustomed to servants doing.

  It might be worth keeping Mrs. Brightmoor around simply for the plethora of surprises that came along with her.

  Chapter two

  Your rooms, my lord.” Confidence wasn’t something Daphne felt anywhere outside her comfortable little routine, which the imposing Lord Chemsford certainly didn’t fit into, but she knew she’d done a good job preparing these rooms. Well, as good a job as could be done.

  There was a certain disrepair that came from twelve years of hard use. Not on the furniture, of course. Daphne and her friend Kit had been sure to have all the valuable and ornate furniture stored away carefully before converting the room into a bedchamber for all the boys in their care.

  Boys who no longer lived here. Only Reuben remained. Benedict was living with Mr. Leighton, the master woodworker he was apprenticed to, and all the others, now living with families who’d taken them in as their own, were much better off with secure futures and a place to belong. Most of the girls Daphne had once cared for had been placed with families as well, but they’d stayed in the room on the other side of the landing.

  This room had been for the boys, and it was evident on the walls and the floors. She couldn’t blame them for the watermarks on the ceiling, though. That was simply evidence of a roof in need of much repair.

  Daphne stepped farther into the room, making sure Lord Chemsford could easily enter and set the bags he carried on the floor.

  Bags she had suggested he carry.

  It would be a miracle if she stayed employed through dinner. So many years of living away from anything considered polite society had obviously made her forget what was acceptable and what wasn’t.

  She cleared her throat. “I’ve been airing it out frequently and changing the linens every few days so it would be ready when you arrived.”

  After setting the bags down, he strolled about the large chamber.

  An enormous bed sat in the center of one wall, with ornately carved posts extending nearly to the ceiling. It was an exceptionally heavy bed, and they’d nearly taken out the banister bringing it back up to the house, but hopefully it and the plush Turkish rug in front of the hearth were eye-catching enough that he wouldn’t notice the waist-high marks that lined the wall from where the iron beds the boys had slept in had rubbed over the years.

  No such luck.

  He crossed to the wall and rubbed a hand along one of the faint grey lines before looking up, his gaze tracking from one spot of water damage to another.

  “They’re old,” she said, since it was obvious she wasn’t going to be able to pretend they weren’t there. “Nothing is going to drip on you should it rain tonight.” Not unless there was a new leak she didn’t know about, which was entirely possible. The roof certainly had been showing its age of late, and there was more than one bucket strategically positioned in the upper garret rooms. The roof above this room, however, had been carefully repaired.

  “This will do,” he said.

  Daphne didn’t realize how tightly she’d been holding herself until he uttered those words. She’d grown up in London, on the fringes of the ton. She’d held up enough drawing room walls in her short, first, and only Season to know more than one aristocratic gentleman who would have been outraged to be given rooms this shabby, even though as far as he knew the house had been sitting practically empty for decades.

  Yet, here was a man, a marquis, who was willing to carry his own bags and wasn’t going to squawk about the reasonable shabbiness of the room.

  How different life would have been if he had been the man she’d met on that one night she’d tried to be someone other than herself. What would have happened if her one devastating adventure in life had been with a man who wouldn’t set out to ruin a girl’s honor and reputation? What if she’d met a gentleman who would come to her rescue instead?

  The man in front of her certainly looked enough like the man who had devastated her and changed her life that it was easy to imagine the marquis as a better, more noble version.

  Except he wasn’t. Regardless of what he looked like or how practical he seemed to be, she had no business imagining him in the role of rescuer. He wasn’t here to love her in spite of her past and love her child as his own—particularly since Benedict didn’t even know he was hers but thought he was just another unwanted child she’d taken in to care for . . . and honestly her life was so much more complicated than it felt when she really stopped to think about it.

  No man in his right mind, and particularly not a nobleman, was going to want to be involved with her.

  She shook her head and brought her focus back to the man who was now looking at her rather expectantly.

  Oh dear. What had she missed?

  She was going to offer to have hot water brought up, wasn’t she? Perhaps tea and refreshments? There might not be footmen but surely there were maids? Someone? She couldn’t be caring for this entire house on her own.

  But she simply stood there, eyes wide as she stared back at him, occasionally blinking slowly.

  He had to allow that she might never have cared for a guest. She couldn’t be much past five and twenty, though the solicitor had indicated the current housekeeper had been working at the house for many years. This woman must have spent the bulk
of her adult life practically alone. Though inconvenient, he had to remember that her lack of personal interaction skills were understandable.

  Hopefully she wouldn’t mind much when he had a competent housekeeper hired and moved her to the position of parlor maid, which, if the cleanliness of the parts of the house he’d seen thus far was any indication, would be more in line with her skills.

  “Have hot water delivered,” he said with a sigh. “And perhaps—”

  “Tea?”

  William cut his sentence short as another woman walked into the room. While there could be some debate as to whether or not the housekeeper was shorter than average, there was no question this woman was. Was there something in the water in Wiltshire that stunted its women’s growth? The new woman’s blond hair was scraped back into a tight bun, a contrast to the slightly fuzzy brown halo caused by the housekeeper’s looser hair configuration.

  In the new woman’s hands was a tray. Steam rose from the teapot that sat in the center, surrounded by a cup, saucer, and an assortment of small sandwiches and biscuits.

  “Er, yes.” William cleared his throat. “Tea.”

  The blonde inclined her head at the housekeeper. “I’ve brought up the refreshments you ordered. Water is heating as you asked. Reuben will bring it up after he finishes caring for the horses.”

  William’s attention pulled from the tray his apparently not-as-incompetent-as-he’d-thought housekeeper had requested. Those long, skinny limbs on that boy he’d seen earlier were going to haul his water up? He’d be lucky to have a bath by morning.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Brightmoor said in that same slow, stilted way in which she’d talked about his bags earlier. “Thank you. Good.” She nodded and blinked a bit more as she watched the little blonde deposit the tray on a small writing desk in the corner.

  Once everything was arranged, the petite woman gave a small curtsy and moved toward the door.

  As she walked past, she plucked at the housekeeper’s sleeve. William would have missed it if he’d blinked. Even now he wasn’t sure he’d actually seen it, but the strange little jump the housekeeper gave was proof the incident had, indeed, occurred.

  Mrs. Brightmoor gave her own elegant curtsy. “We’ll leave you to . . . it.”

  She smiled again and followed the other woman out the door, shutting it firmly behind her.

  Something wasn’t right here, but he wasn’t sure if it was the remoteness of the house or an indication of a bigger problem. The growl in his stomach reminded him that while he couldn’t answer that question right now, he could solve the problem of the gnawing hunger in his belly and the throat parched from travel dust.

  As he bit into a biscuit, an explosion of flavors he couldn’t identify but refused to live the rest of his life without filled his mouth. In the quiet solitude of his room he allowed himself to groan in pleasure and drop down onto a large upholstered chair. Not a speck of dust drifted into the air. He took another bite, savoring the taste on his tongue as he chewed. For food this good and a house this clean, he’d be willing to put up with a considerable number of oddities in his servants. The fact that it gave him one more excuse not to have any guests at the house was simply an additional benefit.

  Daphne made it down the stairs to the ground floor before her trembling body refused to go another step and she collapsed against the wall.

  Instead of boys she’d loved and raised from infancy, the room upstairs was now occupied by a stranger. Daphne didn’t handle strangers very well most of the time, and she certainly wasn’t managing this one. This man could crush her with a word and was somehow painfully connected to the most grievous mistake in judgment she had ever made.

  What was she going to do?

  A strong, small hand snagged her elbow and hauled her toward the stairs that dropped down into the servants’ domain. It wasn’t a grip Daphne could easily break, given the strength Jess had earned in the several years she’d spent working as a spy for England. Jess had come to the house three years ago as a stranger, too, but she’d been a stranger in need of care, and nothing got past Daphne’s defenses faster than that. Over the years, they’d become friends.

  Although forcibly propelling her down a small stone staircase wasn’t exactly friendly.

  As opposed to the grand steps she’d nearly tripped down moments before, these were worn and plain and devoid of the grandeur of the rest of the house. Daphne had been down these stairs countless times in the past twelve years and the difference had never bothered her.

  Today it did. Until fifteen minutes ago, no one living in this house had ever been subordinate to anyone else. They’d been a family, working together to maintain the building, produce enough food, and make enough money to survive.

  For the past twelve years, the plain stone stairwell had simply been the way to the kitchens. Now it was a threshold, a passageway that denoted the people who used it were of a lower class than the people who didn’t.

  Daphne had been raised above those stairs. Well, not these particular stairs, but ones that were very similar. But when she’d moved here, there’d been no distinction. Everyone in the house belonged everywhere.

  Not anymore.

  Now Daphne’s status had changed, and her comfort and security depended upon serving the man upstairs. Keeping her position was hardly her greatest concern anymore, though.

  Jess kept her grip on Daphne’s elbow until they’d moved all the way in to the kitchen, then she let her go with a little push.

  Daphne stumbled toward the worktable and groped her way to one of the stools next to it. She breathed in until her lungs burned from the stretch and focused on a deep gouge in the surface of the table. There was no way of knowing what had made that gouge, but there was something comforting in its existence.

  Unlike nearly every room upstairs, this table was the same as it had been for years. It was comfortable. She could pretend nothing had changed.

  But it had.

  He was here now, and he was a problem.

  Jess moved about the room, going on with her business as she usually did. The woman was always unruffled, but wasn’t she at least a little bit worried about their current situation?

  “Did you see him?” Daphne asked in a harsh whisper.

  Jess paused and looked at Daphne, one delicate, pale eyebrow arched high. “Of course I did. You think I’d enter a room and not look around?”

  “Yes, yes.” Daphne sprawled her upper body across the table. “But did you see him?”

  Jess set down the onion she’d pulled from a box and crossed the kitchen to wrap her hands around Daphne’s cold fingers. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  Daphne rather doubted that. By the time Kit had brought Jess to Haven Manor three years ago, Daphne had learned how to, for the most part, suppress the tendency she’d had as a young woman to drift into imagined scenarios and detailed fantasies. With the responsibility of raising a dozen children, losing track of reality during the day could be dangerous, so she’d waited until she was alone washing the dishes, going to bed, or rocking a sleeping toddler to indulge in such daydreams.

  But with only three nearly grown children remaining in her care, Daphne occasionally lapsed back into old habits. Such as now. There was no way for Jess to know that currently a part of Daphne’s mind was busy coming up with all sorts of possibilities, including wondering if the man she’d tried so hard to forget had somehow over the past fourteen years turned into the man residing in the master chamber.

  Never mind the fact that Benedict’s father had brown eyes and this man had blue and Daphne had never heard of a man’s eyes changing color like that.

  “You’re thinking,” Jess continued, seemingly oblivious to the fact that nearly half of Daphne’s attention was turned inward, “that our new employer looks remarkably like Benedict.”

  Silence fell between the two women as they looked at each other. And while that hadn’t been exactly what Daphne was thinking, it was certainly close enough, though she’
d hoped perhaps the striking similarity was only in her mind.

  Jess gave Daphne’s fingers a squeeze, and a renewed energy surged through her. If anyone had a solution to this problem, it would be Jess. The mysterious woman may have entered the home looking a bit like a lost puppy that had been backed into a corner, but she was a survivor.

  The blond woman gave a short, sharp nod. “And you would be correct. They look identical.” She let go of Daphne’s hand and turned back to the onion, sliding a knife from the wooden block on the table near the wall. “Since you didn’t faint dead away in the middle of the front door, I’m assuming he’s not the father. How are they related?”

  Daphne propped her elbows on the worktable and dropped her head into her hands with a groan. She didn’t want to think about Mr. Maxwell Oswald, didn’t want to remember the details of that night, but they were burned into her memory with a branding iron. Recalling those memories created so many conflicted emotions—guilt and shame certainly, but also joy because of Benedict and her new life purpose. She couldn’t imagine her life without those. She’d much rather think about the good that had come from her bad decision than to think about the decision itself.

  She’d been caught up in the moment, pretending to be her friend Kit, who was vivacious and popular and not terrified of moving more than two feet from the wall in a room full of people. If she were honest, she’d been more engrossed in the idea of what could be than with the man himself. She’d never had a tendre for Mr. Oswald, had barely even known him by more than sight and reputation.

  The idea of being wanted, though, had been intoxicating. For once she’d been the center of someone’s attention. She’d been seen and hadn’t felt a burning need to run away because she wasn’t herself. She’d been completely covered from head to toe in a masquerade costume, including wig and mask.

  But that wasn’t what she needed to remember now. She didn’t need to remember that she’d not only compromised herself but also betrayed her nearest and dearest friend in the process. This wasn’t about remembering her. It was about remembering him.