“Yes,” Lily said. “I’m learning that. Is there anything else about him I should know?”
“Ask him yourself. I signed a contract of confidentiality.”
Lily snorted insultingly. “You’d never know it to listen to you.”
“Your lips are not sewn together, either.”
“I
will
ask him,” Lily said.
Which she might have if she had seen him that morning. During lunch Mrs. Halford confirmed that it was Samuel’s habit to lock himself in the library every day and not emerge until he had completed at least ten folio pages. Lily was dying to peek in while he worked. Undaunted by the cook’s warning, she prepared a tea tray as an excuse, but Bickerstaff intercepted her in the hall.
“No, Miss Boscastle. It isn’t done. Interrupt him under penalty of death. When the clocks go off at four, he’ll stop his work. His temper ignites like tinder if he’s bothered before then.”
Lily had witnessed his temper only on the rainy day he’d taken her to the inn. “
Clocks
, you say? They must be quiet. I have never heard them.”
“The chimes are not quiet if one happens to be in the east wing at that unfortunate hour. The din is ear-shattering. He has to finish to escape or suffer like a cathedral bell ringer.”
This revelation only piqued her curiosity. She would rather watch Samuel at work than pore over domestic guidebooks that explained how to pack a picnic for twenty, or the importance of hiring a footman with good calves.
Lily had never examined a footman’s legs. But she had taken for granted the aristocratic parties she’d attended as a lady. As a housekeeper, she was only beginning to understand the invisible labor involved. She worked until midafternoon in her parlor copying menus and memorizing the dishes that Samuel preferred. For a vegetable eater, she thought distractedly, he was very virile. . . .
There was only one lady on the guest list. Alice, Lady St. Aldwyn.
She underlined it three times.
His sister. Her visit might be at the end of the month, but Lily wanted to prepare. Samuel had mentioned her importance to him.
She wondered if he would confirm their betrothal to his sibling on her arrival or keep this another secret. He was private to a peculiar degree. Had he even meant to propose to her last night or had he been shamed into it? But he
had
told her about the other contract he’d had drawn up in London. From everything she knew of him, he was an honorable man. He had no reason to lie. They had shared more than a bed now.
This was more than passion and obligation. It was trust.
Married to Lord Anonymous. She felt an unspeakable joy flood her heart. Samuel’s wife.
She glanced up from the desk to the window that overlooked the garden. Late-afternoon shadows fell across the rose arbor. It was almost time for tea. Would she see him then? What would they say to each other? Would he apologize? Should she?
She
was the one who had instigated their amorous encounter last evening. And if there was a proper after-protocol, she had never been taught it.
She rose and went instinctively to the east wing. She had no intention of interrupting his work. But if she was to be a duchess, she might as well learn the lay of the house.
The sudden clamor of chimes, bongs, and bells going off throughout the wing interrupted her thoughts.
“Dear God,” Bickerstaff said as he appeared in the hall. “He has failed. Prepare yourself, miss. We’re all in for it now.”
Lily squared her shoulders. “Should I intervene?”
“Intervene? I would hide in the vaults if we had any. You’ve no idea the acts we have been forced to perform in the name of literature. Beheadings, stabbings, and some I cannot describe to a gentlewoman like you.”
Actually, Lily
did
have an idea. And she was more enthusiastic about broadening this part of her education than she would ever admit.
Chapter 30
H
e hadn’t written one page worthy of publication the whole day. What a delusion to assume that after he had made love to Lily and sated his bodily desires, his mind would settle down. Now he could not concentrate. Her voice enticed his thoughts.
I do want it.
Overwrought.
Sentimental.
Rubbish.
Well, she was not alone in that opinion.
He had just gotten around to reading his most recent letter from his publisher. Philbert inquired about his health. God forbid Samuel should drop dead before he finished this book. Philbert also alluded to the latest critiques from Paris that showered praise on the Brothers Grimm. He then coyly apologized for an editorial in the
London Review
that blamed a rise in promiscuity on rogue writers such as Lord Anonymous.
Who, the editor added, wrote with the unbridled passion of a nasty-spirited spinster.
It was unlike Philbert to resort to a tactic like this. In fact, Samuel would have shredded the letter except for the tantalizing postscript Philbert added that said an offer had been made for a libretto on the next book.
He placed the letter in a drawer. He got up. He started to pace.
Within moments words flooded his brain. Fast. Too fast. He rushed back to his desk. He found his favorite metallic pen. It was a race to capture his thoughts before they vanished.
Images formed.
Wickbury spoke in a furious voice. But all of a sudden, the heroic earl wasn’t talking for the benefit of his readers. He was addressing Samuel, character to creator, trying to make sense of the chaos into which he had been thrust. “How did this happen to me again? I demand another chance to fight for Juliette. I will be damned if an entire army could lock me in another cell with my lady left defenseless in my enemy’s arms.”
Fine
, Samuel thought.
Then fight the battle yourself, you ludicrous jackanapes.
“Perhaps I will.”
Samuel shook his head. He must be going mad.
He glanced at the longcase clock that stood between a pair of wing chairs. Five minutes left.
Five minutes until he could search the house for Lily, the lady he had abandoned like one of his characters.
His future duchess.
His disgraced bride.
She would not regret binding herself to Samuel, and hang the bastard who had not only lost but ruined her. Samuel would make her forget she had ever known her captain. As soon as he finished the book that was suspended over his head like the sword of Damocles.
As a gentleman Samuel had to wonder why Captain Grace had not defended her and admitted what he had done. No decent man would subject the woman he loved to humiliation to save his own selfish arse.
As a scoundrel, however, Samuel sensed that the captain’s connection to her had not been completely broken.
He could not understand how Grace had let her go.
There was something in the story that did not make sense. Motivation. Out of character. More than a plot thread dangling loose. An entire scene omitted. Another’s perspective. The longer Samuel thought about it, the deeper his concern grew. He couldn’t put his finger on it.
But the answer would come. It always did.
Lily found a message from Samuel under her door after she had gone upstairs to change her dress. He asked her if she would tour St. Aldwyn with him after he had completed his day’s work. So she had wandered about the estate until supper, instructing the gardeners which roses and sprays of Queen Anne’s lace should be clipped for His Grace’s dinner table. Pyramus and Thisbe, the porkers that Samuel kept as pets, deigned to trot about at her heels while she walked the paths around the barns and other outbuildings. The two pigs sniffed her stockings and looked up at her as if to ask if they were going on an adventure.
Hens, turkeys, ducks. None of them destined for dinner. Lily shook her head. Samuel seemed to think he could protect all of creation. Well, she had been a goose once herself. She came to a fenced pasture and gazed over the gate to approach the moor pony inside.
“That’s Bucephalus, miss,” shouted Marie-Elaine’s young daughter, sitting with an under groom in the straw-filled cart.
“Bucephalus,” Lily said, laughing at the long-fringed pony munching at a patch of clover. “So this is Lord Wickbury’s charger, the brave steed that will allow no other rider near him.”
A deep voice spoke over her shoulder. “Hard to believe he’s charged through execution blocks and castle gates.”
She spun around, forcing herself to curtsy, if only to catch her breath. The stark emotion in Samuel’s eyes pierced her composure. He didn’t have to say a word to remind her of what he had done to her last night, and that he wanted her again. She would not be hard to persuade. He was temptation incarnate in an ebony-buttoned long frock coat over a cravat, linen shirt, and ecru breeches that tied at the knee.
“How are you, Lily?” he asked quietly.
She swallowed at his intimate smile. Sometimes he looked completely wicked. At others, he seemed winsome and lost. “I am well,” she said. “And Your Grace’s day—”
“—was an absolute waste of time. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.” He braced his wrists on either side of the fence rail, his cravat teasing the soft valley of her breasts. “Will you accept my formal proposal?”
Her heart pounded in the hollow of her throat. “I wasn’t sure that you were serious. Women are warned not to believe promises made in the dark.”
He looked offended. “Do you think I would lie to lure you into my bed?”
“Well, I was already in your bed. And you do like to tell tales.”
“That isn’t fair. I could not explain everything until I knew I could trust
you
. If I hadn’t been trying to behave properly for once in my life, you would have come home with me in London and that would have been it. My fault, it seems, was trying to initiate a correct courtship.”
“By kissing me until I nearly fainted in Philbert’s garden?” she teased him.
“Lily, I couldn’t help myself then. And I can’t now. In most aspects of my life, I show strong self-discipline.”
“But who are you? A duke with a vile reputation or Lord Anonymous? Which one of you did I give myself to last evening?”
“I was hoping you could answer that for me. I’m both. And neither.”
He was a wit, a compassionate man, uninhibited in bed. Generous. Arrogant. Beautifully formed.
He touched her shoulder. A shiver danced over her skin. His hand slid down her back. Then he bent his head and kissed her, clearly not caring who could see. She backed up against the pasture gate in breathless surprise, whispering, “The other servants are watching!”
“I suppose they shall have to get used to it. You’re going to be my duchess, not one of the plaster goddesses standing in the hall. You have accepted my proposal?”
“There was never any doubt in your mind. I began to fall in love with you at the masquerade. Yes, of course I accept.”
He smiled down at her. “I loved you before I knew your name.”
“And I love . . . all your names.”
He laughed. “Then it is perfect.”
“I should be in the kitchen now,” she whispered. “It’s getting late.”
“Don’t bother with a big dinner. I’ll be asking the staff for help during the evening. If you have a stout heart for fighting and a sense of stage direction, please join us. If not, lock yourself in your room and put a pillow over your head.”
Chapter 31
“L
ock myself in my room with a pillow over my head,” she related to Marie-Elaine and Mrs. Halford in the kitchen fifteen minutes later. “Did he ever give either of you that advice?”
Mrs. Halford lowered her knife and began chopping up fresh mint to go in a bottle of sugared vinegar for sauce. “I can’t admit that he did.”
“He didn’t,” Marie-Elaine said from the dresser. “But I wouldn’t have done it anyway. Helping the duke rehearse is better than playing whist with Bickerstaff.”
“I heard that, Mrs. Halford,” he said from the pantry. “I shall remember it, too, during dinner, if you ever get around to feeding us.”
“You didn’t hear properly, you mean old codger,” Mrs. Halford said, knife flying faster. “That wasn’t me talking. It was Marie-Elaine.”
“Peace,” Lily said, raising her hand. “Behave, the pair of you.”
The duke had requested only salad and a boiled potato in mint sauce for his dinner, with strawberries in champagne cream for dessert. He asked that the food be left on a tray outside his office. Lily didn’t see him again until it was time for bed.
She followed the nightly ritual that the other servants did, extinguishing all candles and coals, putting the animals outside for the night, closing drapes. By the time she finished her duties a hush had crept over St. Aldywn House. The rest of the house might have vanished into the walls.
Why should she lock herself in her room?
She wondered if everyone was playing a trick on her. She’d been initiated only last night, so it was possible that they would test her nerves by pulling a few pranks. She wandered about checking for hidden doors, but after an hour of hunting, she decided that if they meant to exclude her, then she’d go to bed.
Her bedroom.
She heard furtive whispers, glasses clinking, steel engaging steel, and Samuel’s voice, husky and impatient. “Are you positive she’ll figure out where we are?”
“She reads your books, Your Grace,” Mrs. Halford said in a low voice. “She’ll find us out.”
“Especially if you give us away,” Bickerstaff retorted, apparently still stung by their earlier quarrel.
Lily halted outside her door. Would this evening prove as interesting as the last? She braced herself, prepared for anything.
She turned the doorknob and entered her sitting room. Dark except for the rectangle of light that shone under her bedroom door.