Dangerous Diana (Brambridge Novel 3) (24 page)

All feeling of feigned calm fled Melissa.
Oh dear.
Uncomfortably she pulled at the dress which was now beginning to itch.

Carter brought in three silver tureens and laid them on the table. Delicately holding a plate, he ladled some stew, some roast potatoes and the honey covered parsnips onto the china.

“Mind you,” Dowager Lady Harding continued, sniffing appreciatively, “I do think the high-necked fashion was rather underrated. Most of the debs these days look like they don’t get dressed in the morning they are showing so much flesh.”

Carter laid the plate in front of Dowager Lady Harding, and served a similar portion for Melissa. She gave him a weak smile. She had already eaten a large amount downstairs. Picking up her fork, she pushed a small amount of parsnip into her mouth.

“This is delicious,” Dowager Lady Harding exclaimed. “Are you sure Carlos and Charles are still here—it doesn’t taste of biscuits at all. I wonder where they got the recipe from? I remember an inn in Bayswater that used to be famous for something similar. They called it Winter Warmer and would never give away the recipe!”

“As far as I understand, this is something similar,” Melissa said, crossing her fingers.

They ate in a companionable silence for five minutes until Dowager Lady Harding put down her cutlery and picked up her wine.

“So, you are not a courtesan, and I’m sure I saw your name somewhere on one of the deb rosters a couple of years ago. And yet you are living in my son’s house, alone, with no companion, and you have already managed to get Carlos and Charles to cook a decent, nay, fantastic evening meal.” Dowager Lady Harding took a long slow sip from her glass and gazed at Melissa over the rim. “Is this one of those strategies that he is always telling me about? The one’s that the debs and widows always pull to attempt to interest him?”

Melissa shook her head. “I’m afraid he doesn’t even know I’m here,” she said ruefully.

“What? But how come Carter let you in? I will have to have words with him.”

“I have been a guest here before,” Melissa said delicately.

Dowager Lady Harding’s eyes widened slightly. She made a rolling motion with her hand. “Do tell?”

Melissa was surprised. Dowager Lady Harding’s tones were not censorious, nor damning. They sounded light, and more interested than anything else.

“It’s a long story.”

“Believe me, my dear, when Izzy Mayhew said that my son had a smile on his face, and that a strange woman was seen walking his silly dog, I decided I had all day to find out what had changed his fortune.”

Melissa started to protest.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Dowager Lady Harding said firmly. “I also decided that whether it was a servant or a courtesan,
I don’t think you are either,
I would believe it to be a good thing.  Since Elsa…”

Not Elsa again.

“Since Elsa,” Lady Harding said with a sniff, “my darling boy has been a right…
cad
.”

Melissa was so surprised she laughed. She hadn’t expected the dowager’s cant phrase. She had more expected a lecture on his bookishness.

“I was more expecting you to have blamed his love of books,” Melissa said carefully.

Dowager Lady Harding looked at her sharply. “You know about him and books.”

“It is hard not to if one is forced into his company for days on end!” Melissa shut her mouth with a snap.

Hades’ mother looked at Melissa sideways. “You love him,” she crowed, stamping her rod on the floor for effect. “Face it girl, you are not here avoiding something, you are here running to something!”

“That’s not true,” Melissa said hotly, but her heart thumped in protest and her ears burned. Love? To love a man who had kidnapped her, left her as bait, and who thought that she was running after him? What lesser recipe was there for love? It was as harsh as if her mother and Edgar were back again.

“And do you know if he feels the same way?” the dowager continued, flattening all of Melissa’s protests as if she could not hear them. “I would be surprised if Hades admitted to himself that he loved another woman. He has a problem with what he thinks of as losing, you see.”

“Behind every defeat there is a triumph,” Melissa muttered.

“What? Oh. You’ve found my present to Hades? I gave him that on his thirteenth birthday after he had dyed all those silly older boys red. He hadn’t quite understood at that point about personal victories.”

Dowager Lady Harding stopped speaking as Carter arrived to take the plates away. She gave Melissa a long hard look. “I don’t care about your pedigree. So long as you make him happy. Now what’s for pudding?”

CHAPTER 25

“Welcome back, my lord.” Carter stood back to allow Hades into the hall. “Umm.”

Hades could already see that there had been some changes in his absence. A lady’s hat lay on the hall table and even from the outside of his house he could see the front room drapes had changed.

“Is there any lunch, Carter? I’m famished.” Hades said brusquely. He’d find out why his house was so topsy turvy after he had eaten. He couldn’t think straight after the breakneck coach ride back to London, and the knowledge that he now knew who the Viper was.

“Would you like lunch in the dining room or in the study, sir?” Carter asked nervously.

“In the dining room? Why would I have it in the dining room?”

“Because that is where I am having it, Hades.” Melissa appeared at the entrance to Hades’ study. Hades grasped the hall table with clenched fingers in shock. He had thought of Melissa often in between the Viper. In his dreams, her black hair had curled into snakes, and she had wrapped her body around his. He took a step towards her and lifted up his hand, at the same time as she stepped towards him.

Carter’s cough brought him to his senses. Without losing Melissa’s gaze, he dropped his hand to his side. “I will join Miss Sumner in the dining room.”

It was a wrench to drop his gaze.
Melissa.
She exercised a sort of sorcery over him.

As he slowly sat down at the dining room table, a walking stick dropped away from the chair he sat in. “What is my mother’s cane doing here?” He leaned down to pick up the dragon-headed rod.

“She left it here last night,” Melissa said calmly. “After dinner.”

“Dinner, but she would never stay to dinner unless—” Hades sat back up with a start.

“Luncheon is served, your Lordship.” Carter was followed into the dining room by a train of footmen. They held bowls of salmon en croute, asparagus, butter and new potatoes.

Hades gazed at the spread in silence as Melissa helped herself. “What have you done with Carlos and Charles?”

“Oh, they are still here. They’ve just had some help from Mrs. Hobbs.”

“You’ve moved Mrs. Hobbs in as well as changing my curtains and meeting my mother?”

Melissa nodded. “I thought that you might appreciate something other than biscuits.”

“I do, but I…”

“And the salmon en croute is rather nice.”

Hades took a bite. It was. “That still doesn’t take away from the fact that you are in my home pushing me out!”

“I’m not pushing you out!” Melissa took her glasses off and narrowed her gaze at him. Distractedly she put them back on again, pursing her rosebud lips. In that instant Hades was struck anew by her beauty, with or without the spectacles. He swallowed and stood up.

“I have to go.”

“But you only just arrived here!” Melissa said quickly. “Have you any more news of the Viper?”

Hades gazed at the beautiful woman in front of him. He just wanted to protect her. “No,” he said uncomfortably. Protect her, ravish her, lock her away and use her for his own. “No,” he repeated.

Hades pushed himself abruptly away from the table and walked blindly into the hall. Carter was busy dragging his bags in.

“Sir, where shall I put this bag of books?” Carter huffed as he pulled in the still unopened saddle bag of books that Hades had tossed with the rest of the luggage. “I wish you would stop visiting the Temple of Muses’ book shop. We haven’t anywhere else to put all these old things.”

Hades waved his hand impatiently. “Just leave them on the hall table.”

He pulled open the front door. “Are my travelling bags still on the coach?” he asked Carter.

Carter nodded. “Yes sir, I’m sorry, I have only just started to unload it.”

“No matter. I won’t be staying.”

“But sir!”

“If anybody wants me, I shall be at Lord Lassiter’s. And if he won’t have me, I suppose, my mother’s.” Hades shook his head in disgust. He didn’t really want to hear what his mother had to say about the lone woman that had taken over his household.

“Hades,
wait
.” Melissa appeared in the hall. The candlelight from the chandelier glinted off her glasses. It was hard to know what she was thinking. As she moved closer Hades could see a furrow in her brow.

He turned to yank open the door. Pulling it open jerkily, he stopped as a soft hand was laid upon his arm. Melissa looked up into his face, cornflower blue eyes wide with worry.

“You will come back, won’t you, Hades? I… I need to talk to you.” Melissa took a step closer to him. Hades inhaled her familiar scent of lavender and closed his eyes.

“Is it important?” he asked tersely, his arm rigid where she had laid her hand. He desperately fought the urge to take her in his arms, to smooth away the worry from her face. He had a name for the Viper now. He would spend a day planning, and then he would pounce on the man. Professor Lisle’s days were numbered. He would lay the Viper at Melissa’s feet. It would be his wedding present to her. It was her victory. He knew when he was defeated. That was, if she would have him. A sudden doubt assailed him and he swallowed.

Melissa’s frown deepened, and she removed her hand suddenly. “I suppose it can wait,” she said slowly.

“Good.” Hades stepped out onto the front step and pulled the large door shut after him. But not before her whisper reached his ears.

“Be safe.”

The coachman was surprised to be given the order to get moving again, but the journey wasn’t far to Freddie’s townhouse. In fact, Hades had only just dropped the Freddie off the hour previously. He took the steps two at a time and pulled impatiently at the door knocker.

Freddie answered the door himself, already clad in a dressing gown, a snifter of brandy in one hand and a cheroot in the other.

“Harding!” he said, waving his cheroot in the air. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

“Freddie.” Hades eyed his snifter. How many had he had in the last hour? “May I come in? I need somewhere to stay.”

“Sure thing old boy!” Freddie said expansively. “
Mi casa es su casa
and all that.”

With a sigh of relief Hades stepped into the large hall of the townhouse, Freddie drawing back so that he could enter.

Freddie took another sip of his whiskey and placed the cheroot on a vase on the hall table. “Tell me Hades… why exactly do you need to stay with me?”

Perhaps Freddie wasn’t as inebriated as Hades had first thought. “It’s a long story,” he said with a sigh. “Could we talk about it over dinner?”

“Hmm, might be hard, old chap. I’ve given the cook the night off. I can get you a sandwich?”

Freddie had given his cook the night off on the day that he had come home? Things were definitely very odd in Lord Lassiter’s household. If only he had had some of the salmon en croute that he had left on his plate in his own home. The first real meal that he might have eaten there, were it not for his nemesis who had sat opposite him, daintily picking over the food.

“A sandwich would be fine.”

“Good, good. I’ll show you to your room. Lovall normally stays there so it should all be shipshape. I don’t know about the state of the other rooms in the house. I never normally bother with them.”

Hades nodded. It wasn’t up to him to pass judgement on how other people lived. He couldn’t talk, what with two pastry chefs, an over-familiar butler and a woman who had pushed him out of his home.

Hades followed Freddie up the curving stair and into the first door that appeared at the top. It opened into a large well-appointed room, with a bay window facing onto the back of the house. The room was clean, if crowded with more military pictures and regalia. It was almost the mirror image of the morning room downstairs where pikes were leaned negligently up against the wall. This time however, the regalia was of an older type, from the civil war and perhaps earlier. Thankfully, the bed itself was clear—a four-poster heavy oak monstrosity without drapes.

“This will be fine,” Hades said, edging round a suit of armor. “I’ll send my coachman in with the bags.”

“Mmm, do,” Freddie said, kicking at a helmet. “Sorry ‘bout the mess. Went through a phase of collecting a while ago. I think it might have got a little out of hand.” He laughed a little too forcefully.  “Lovall calls it a reflection of my mind.”

Hades nodded, embarrassed, and turned towards the bed.

“I’ll get on and make you a sandwich and you can tell me all about what is bothering you.”

Before Hades could turn around in surprise, Freddie and his snifter was gone. The man was mercurial. Shaking his head, he called his coachman up to the room, and made arrangements for his bags to be delivered.

Freddie was waiting for him in the morning room. He had made a giant sandwich of bread and beef. Hades fell on it with gusto. It was a long time since he had last eaten. Freddie waited in silence, smoking a new cheroot. His glass now contained port. He stretched his leg out in front of him on a second chair and puffed silently at the cigar.

When at last Hades pushed his plate away, Freddie nodded. “There is no point in holding it in, you know. Sometimes things become so big that they want to burst out of you. You start leaking emotions at every step.”

“Leaking emotions?”

“Ye…es. I could tell you were agitated as soon as you turned up here. You would barely look me in eye and hopped from foot to foot like you were in quicksand. That is not the earl I know. If any deb saw you like this they would put you in the ‘nice to look at but a queer fish pot’, if you see what I mean.”