Chapter Two
‘That heathen servant has been in here, sniffing around.’ Mrs Bishop, the cook, pounced on Lina the moment she appeared in the kitchen at half past six to make sure everything was going smoothly.
‘I am sure he is not a heathen,’ Lina soothed. ‘Gregor sounds like an Eastern European name to me. Perhaps he is of the Orthodox faith, but a Christian nevertheless.’
Mrs Bishop had perforce been acting as housekeeper for eighteen months, ever since the last one had been driven out by the late Lord Dreycott’s robust language, and she had welcomed Lina with open arms. Now she settled down to unload her worries.
‘I can hardly understand a word he says,’ she complained, not at all mollified. ‘Accent that thick you could cut it with a knife.’ As she had a north Norfolk accent that had taken Lina a week to comprehend, some mutual misunderstanding with the newcomer was only to be expected.
‘Perhaps he just wanted some supper,’ Lina suggested. ‘Where has Trimble lodged him? I do not think he is a servant, precisely. Lord Dreycott called him a travelling companion.’
‘Well, Mr Trimble’s given him a room in the attic, but he looked at it a bit sideways, so Michael says.’ Cook’s nephew was first footman and an unfailing source of backstairs information on everything.
‘It is the best he’s going to get at the moment if he does not want to live in a lumber room,’ Lina said. ‘It is uncluttered, which is more than can be said for the family and guest chambers in this house. Was hot water sent up?’
‘Hot water!’ Cook went red in the face and banged down her ladle. ‘Don’t talk to me about hot water, Miss Lina. They’ve drained the copper! His lordship saw that sarco-whatsit in my late lord’s chamber and said it would do as a bath and had the whole thing filled up with hot water, would you believe? And they both got in it, so Michael says—after they’d stripped off, mother naked, and got under the pump in the stable yard!’
‘That is outside of enough!’ Lina stared at the other woman. ‘What if one of the maids had seen them? Or you or I?’ The thought of Lord Dreycott, stripped naked and dripping with water, was outrageous. Yes, that was the word. She was…shocked.
‘All the footmen were up and down stairs with water cans for an age. They told Trimble to keep the female staff out of the way and then traipsed through the house dripping and got into the sarco-whatsit.’
‘Sarcophagus,’ Lina murmured. Trust his late lordship to keep a vast marble coffin in his bedchamber. It was a miracle he had not insisted on being buried in it. ‘Both of them together?’ It was certainly big enough to bathe two large men in.
‘Yes. Funny way to go on if you ask me,’ Cook said darkly. ‘You don’t think he’s one of them, you know—mollies—do you?’
‘No,’ Lina said, the memory of those green eyes running over her all too clear for comfort. ‘Whatever else the new Lord Dreycott might be, I do not think he is attracted to men.’ Cook still looked disapproving. Lina had been startled herself when the girls had explained that particular variation in sexual preference to her, but on reflection it seemed no stranger than many of the things that the customers at The Blue Door asked of the girls.
‘They travel together all the time, no doubt they are simply used to sharing bathing facilities,’ she suggested. ‘And I think they have been in the East, so perhaps bathing is different there.’
‘Fine behaviour for Lord Dreycott, I must say. Foreign.’ Cook returned to garnishing a dish of whitebait with a sniff that dismissed everything from beyond her home parish as outlandish and uncivilised.
‘I am sure he will become a conventional member of the aristocracy soon enough,’ Lina said. And after all, if the staff could learn to adapt to the old baron’s eccentricities, this one could hardly be worse. Although, dripping through the house stark naked… No, she was not even going to think about it.
Those long, muscled legs, those shoulders… No. It was surprising to discover that however dreadful the experience with Sir Humphrey had been, and however alarming it still was when a man stared at her, her response when confronted by a young, handsome and intelligent man was attraction and curiosity. There had not been many men like that in her life, which no doubt explained it.
‘He wants to know if we’ve got an ice house.’ Michael appeared in the kitchen, clutching an armful of bottles wrapped in straw. ‘I told him, of course we’ve got an ice house. Wants this putting in it and leaving.’ He held up one bottle. ‘And this one is for before dinner. They both look like water to me.’
‘I am certain we will soon adapt to his lordship’s little ways,’ Lina said. Men in her, albeit limited, experience, were demanding creatures, but most of them were at least predictable once one had sorted out their preferences.
The sound of the dinner gong reverberated through the house and set Lina’s heart rate accelerating with it. ‘I had better go up.’
The clock struck seven. Lina gave Cook a reassuring smile—although which of them actually needed the reassurance was moot—and hurried up the backstairs. Trimble held the dining room door open for her. ‘His lordship has just come down, Miss Celina.’ He permitted himself an infinitesimal lifting of his eyebrows.
It did not take more than a moment to see why. Lord Dreycott was studying the portrait of his great-uncle over the fireplace, his hands on his hips, his head tipped back. It was as though the two men confronted each other, the impression made more vivid because the portrait must have been painted when Simon Ashley was about the same age as his great-nephew.
The figure in the painting wore a powdered wig and a full-skirted suit of spectacular figured silk in powder blue. Ruffles and lace foamed under his chin, rings flashed on his fingers. But all the ruffles and silk in the world could not disguise the arrogant masculinity of the stance or the intelligence in the piercing green eyes that stared down at the room. Lina had looked at it many times over the past weeks and wondered what that dashing rake had been like before extreme old age had dimmed everything but his spirit.
Now she could see, for his heir’s resemblance to the young Simon was startling and, in his own way, he was dressed in as spectacular a fashion. Full black trousers were tucked into soft crimson suede boots, and a knee-length over-tunic of dark green figured silk was open over a white lawn shirt with an embroidered, slashed neck. His thick tawny hair was tied back at his nape and his pose made that determined chin and the long muscles and tendons in his neck even more obvious.
Lina could have sworn she made no sound, but she had only a moment to recover from the shock before Lord Dreycott turned. She dropped her eyes immediately, startled by a movement in the shadows at the back of the room. The man Gregor had also turned to look at her, his face impassive. He was dressed like the baron, except that he was all in plain dark blue save for his white shirt, and his hair was cropped short.
‘Miss Haddon.’ Lord Dreycott came forwards. ‘You will forgive my costume; I have no European clothing suitable for evening w
ear as yet.’
‘Of course, my lord.’ Who could object to sitting down to dinner with an exotic creature from the Arabian Nights or Childe Harold? She felt like a drab little peahen against his peacock magnificence.
‘Will you sit here?’ He pulled out the chair to the right of the head of the table, then took his own, which Gregor held. The man stepped back, folded his arms and gazed impassively over their heads as the footmen began to serve soup.