His Housekeeper's Christmas Wish (Lords of Disgrace 1)

ers is married?’ Somehow he had not looked married, whatever that looked like.

‘Widowed.’ Alex’s tone gave no encouragement for further questions.

Perhaps that was why Grant Rivers’s eyes were so sad. She closed her lips on questions that were sure to be intrusive as the landlord came out to greet them.

‘LeGrice, I need an extra room.’ Alex was obviously known and expected. ‘A comfortable, quiet chamber for the lady, a maid to attend her, hot baths for both of us and then the best supper you can lay on in my private parlour.’

‘Milord.’ Known, expected and not to be denied, obviously. The innkeeper was bustling about as though the Prince Regent had descended on his establishment. Perhaps she would see the Prince Regent when she was in London. Tess was distracted enough by this interesting thought not to protest when she was carried upstairs and into a bedchamber.

The sight of the big bed was enough to jerk her out of fantasies of state coaches and bewigged royalty, let alone thoughts of romance. ‘Please put me down.’

It must have come out more sharply than she intended. Alex stopped dead. ‘That was my intention.’

‘Here. Just inside the door. This is a bedchamber.’

‘I know. The clue lies in the fact that there’s a bed in it.’ He was amused by her vapours, she could hear it in his voice, a deep rumble that held a laugh hidden inside it.

Her ear was pressed against his chest. Tess jerked her head upright. ‘Then, please put me down. You should not be in my bedchamber.’

‘I was last night when I put you to bed.’

‘Two wrongs do not make a right,’ she said and winced at how smug she sounded.

‘Nanny used to say that, did she?’ Alex walked across to the hearthside and deposited her on a chair.

‘Sister Benedicta,’ Tess confessed. ‘I sounded just like her, how mortifying.’

‘Why mortifying?’ He leaned one shoulder against the high mantelshelf and lounged, as pleasing to the eye as a carefully placed piece of statuary, the lamplight teasing gilt highlights out of what she had thought was simply dark blond hair. She wondered how much of that lazy perfection was deliberately cultivated.

‘Because it was a commonplace thing to say and I have no intention of being commonplace.’

That faint smile curled Alex’s mouth again and Tess found herself staring at his lower lip and puzzling over why, when he smiled, which stretched his lips, the centre of the lower one seemed somehow fuller.

‘That is an uncharitable insult to Sister Benedicta,’ she said hastily. ‘Only sometimes, when she managed to string an entire conversation together consisting of nothing but clichés, I had to bite my lip to stop myself screaming in sheer boredom.’ Biting lips…why on earth should that image…? Stop it!

‘I will remove my dangerous male presence from your bedchamber and leave you to bathe in comfort.’ He straightened up and strolled to the door. ‘Supper in an hour, do you think?’

‘Yes. Perfect. This is lovely, thank you. A fire and a hot bath and a maid,’ Tess gabbled, as a pretty girl, all apple cheeks and blond braids, ducked under Alex’s arm as he held the door open. He simply grinned at her and went out.

This was indeed the Primrose Path to Perdition. Luxury, warmth, leisure, being waited on. And all because she hadn’t had the willpower to stay awake last night and insist she be taken down to Sister Clare to do her duty. It was not fair, she had thought she had conquered all those silly yearnings and what-ifs and if-onlys. Now she was having a taste of things she had dreamed about, all served up by an attractive man, and it would make her new life that much harder to adjust to. My dangerous male presence. Oh, yes, indeed.

It’s a hair shirt, that’s what it is, she thought wildly as a serving man lugged in a tin bath, set it in front of the fire and another brought buckets of steaming water to fill it. She was being given a hint of the life she might have had if Mama and Papa had not died, if she’d had a few pounds to her name. If she’d had a family.

If…if. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. And there’s another cliché. The maid said something and Tess grabbed her handkerchief, blew her nose inelegantly and made herself concentrate. ‘Dank u,’ she said and submitted to having her cloak unfastened and her gown unlaced. ‘Wat is uw naam?’

*

Damnation. Tess was crying, or on the edge of it, he could hear it in her voice. He was not used to feminine tears unless they were accompanied by a tantrum and demands for expensive trinkets. Alex pushed himself away from the wall outside her door and negotiated the ill-lit landing towards his own room. Her ankle probably hurt, she was tired, she was cross, cold and hungry and she wasn’t used to men. He shouldn’t tease her. In fact, he should probably find some respectable Flemish maid of at least forty summers and employ her to travel with Tess to London while he took another ship.

On the other hand, he knew he wouldn’t do anything out of line, she would probably feel fine in the morning once she was rested and he was enjoying her company. She was refreshingly different, was Tess. He was used to simpering young ladies who had been schooled in the arts of husband catching until they all appeared to have been pressed from the same gingerbread mould, or to experienced women of the world who would flirt and employ their charms on him, just as he amused himself in return.

Tess was as straightforward as a schoolroom chit, but with maturity and intelligence to go with it. Perhaps she was what all those little butterflies flitting around Almack’s in their pastel gowns would have been like if they hadn’t been spoiled. Anyway, he enjoyed her company, when she wasn’t prosing on about Christmas and families, so he would award himself the gift of escorting her. After all, she would be safer with him than just a maidservant if there were men up to mischief on the way. He knew all about men up to mischief, none better.

And the indulgence of observing innocence at close quarters was made safe by the fact of who she was. No one was going to descend like the wrath of God announcing that he’d compromised the chit and must now marry her. Marriage was not in his plans, and wouldn’t have been, even if he had every intention of infuriating his family. A wife, he had long ago decided, would mean a loss of freedom for no discernible gain, given that mistresses combined sexual expertise with no limitations whatsoever on his lifestyle. One day, perhaps…but not yet, not for a long while.

He grinned at himself for finding virtue in doing what he wanted, sobered at the memory of her wide eyes and almost trembling lip and peered at the next door in search of his chamber. The room numbers were hard to make out in the gloom. Where the devil was his? Ah, next one. His foot made contact with something soft, there was a muffled sound somewhere between a mew and a squeak and a weight attached itself to the toe of his right boot.

Alex lifted his foot, hopped to the door, opened it and in the light from several branches of candles examined the small ball of orange fluff attached to the immaculate leather of his Hessian. ‘Let go.’ No effect. The dratted creature obviously only spoke Flemish. Ignoring the hastily muffled laughter of the maid who was laying out towels on the bed, he hopped to the chair, bent down and attempted to prise off the kitten without leaving scratches that would give his valet hysterics.