He must have been lost in thought for long enough to make her uncomfortable for Hester coloured and, extracting her hand from his grasp, stood up. ‘I am keeping you from your sister. I am sorry, I should have asked you if she had a comfortable journey.’
‘She had a very comfortable journey, I thank you. During the course of it she sprung the news upon me that her husband has gone north to County Durham to visit a very sick great- uncle of his, leaving her to amuse herself as best she can over the festive season. Being Georgy she has decided that descending upon me and causing me to celebrate Christmas in style would entertain her best.
‘By this I imagine she expects me to decorate that hideous house with evergreens, dispense mince pies and punch to tuneless wassailers, issue invitations to the local society and generally behave in a manner that is best calculated to drive me back to London to shut myself up in one of my clubs until it is all over.’
He could not suppress the grin that Hester’s gurgle of amusement provoked. ‘Oh, poor Guy! And you such a curmudgeonly recluse-entertaining will obviously go right against the grain with you. Is Lady Broome explaining all this to Parrott at the moment?’
‘No, fortunately she decided she would call upon her very dear friend Lady Redbourn who lives in Watford, so I was able to drop her off for a couple of days of exhausting gossip and character assassination before she comes on here.’
He saw Hester was looking dubious in the face of such a frank description. ‘I adore my sister, and at a distance of twenty miles we get on excellently well. I think about a sennight will be delightful, after that I will not vouch for the Christmas spirit enduring.’ He regarded Hester who was looking somewhat relieved. ‘I think she will like you. At least, should we manage to keep you from looking like a chimney sweep. Here, stand in the light.’
The smudge on the end of her nose was irresistible. Guy proffered one corner of his pocket handkerchief and Hester obediently licked it. The pink, pointed tongue darting from between her lips was so erotic he almost dropped the handkerchief. Instead he dabbed carefully at the end of her nose. ‘There. Now the one on your forehead.’ She was standing very still, looking at him solemnly with those great brown eyes. Guy could feel his heart thudding. His hand shook slightly; was it the effort not to snatch her into his arms or was there something in her gaze that was making him vulnerable?
Another glimpse of that tongue would undo him. Guy dipped the cloth in a bowl of water standing in the sink. He dabbed at the line of dirt on Hester’s cheekbone and stopped, his hand upraised, his eyes locked with hers. ‘Those gold flecks are back again. Are you angry or happy?’
She blinked at him and then said tartly, ‘Chilly, my lord. There is cold water dribbling down my cheek.’ The dimple at the corner of her mouth showed she was feigning anger, but Guy knew he was close to overstepping whatever invisible boundary she had set between them.
‘I am sorry. Here.’ He handed her the towel, which hung on the back of the door, making no attempt to wipe the water away himself. Suddenly he could not trust himself to touch her.
Hester knew she was making rather a business of drying her face. It was ridiculous, if Guy had the slightest idea of the effect he could have on her with such a simple gesture as washing away a trace of dirt, he would imagine she was fevered. In an effort to control her hectic imagination, which had him taking her masterfully in his arms and heeding not the slightest her maidenly pleas to desist, she dragged her mind back to the last sensible thing they had spoken of.
‘You did not tell me how you intended examining the box of documents in the library at Winterbourne Hall.’
‘Let us just say that the Nugents do not have the monopoly on breaking and entering around here.’
His expression spoke of nothing but a thoroughly masculine delight in doing something dangerous, reckless and foolhardy. Hester found her anxiety surfacing in a rush of anger. ‘Are you all about in the head? Housebreaking? Breaking into a magistrate’s house at that? No one would think the worse of him if he took a shotgun to an intruder. And what if he doesn’t shoot you? What is the penalty for breaking and entering? Hanging? Of all the stupid, ill thought out…male things to be contemplating-’
She broke off, panting, as Guy held up both hands placatingly and leaned against the edge of the kitchen table. ‘It is not ill thought out. I know exactly how and where to do it and have not the slightest intention of being caught.’ He held up his hand again as she opened her mouth to disabuse him of any delusion that this was a comforting assurance. ‘And as for being a male thing to do, well, I am a man.’
‘I had noticed,’ Hester snapped.
‘I am gratified,’ he responded smoothly, apparently intent on provoking her into reaching for the skillet, which stood temptingly to hand. ‘Now, I will send over a footman again tonight at about ten o’clock. I imagine your people will be in and out of the kitchen until then. We do not want to show our hand yet by securing the secret door. In fact, tonight is the night when six roses are due, is it not? That should keep the Nugents suitably distracted, trying to find a way to deposit them. Do you not like the idea of paying them back in their own coin, sweetheart?’
Hester was too cross for the endearment to register. She was also, she realised, very chilly. ‘It is freezing in here. The front door must be open. Susan!’
The front door was indeed open. Hester pushed it to. ‘You must have left it open when you came in. Oh, no, I was forgetting, you came round the side because we were all at the back. Where are they all? They must have gone out and not pulled it shut.’
‘I can hear voices in the kitchen.’ Guy put his hand on the door handle. ‘I must be off, but before I go, how is young Ackland’s shoulder?’
‘Much better. It seemed to heal all of a sudden, although he still favours it a little and I will not let him lift anything heavy.’
‘Ah, the benefits of youth. Goodbye, my dear.’ And he was gone, leaving Hester prey to a very mixed bag of emotions indeed.
She mulled them over as she closed the door behind him and walked back to the kitchen. Anxiety over his plan to break into Winterbourne Hall warred with a warm, selfish glow of happiness that his sister was not staying with him yet and she had a few more days of his company.
The three members of her household were busying themselves with an air that Hester could not help but find suspicious. It was not until Susan said casually, ‘His lordship’s gone, then?’ that the penny dropped. They had gone off, leaving her alone with him quite intentionally.
‘Yes, he has,’ she responded robustly. ‘And where did you all vanish to, might I ask? Maria, you are supposed to be chaperoning me-did you think you were matchmaking?’
That reduced Miss Prudhome to blushing incoherence and Jethro simply to blushes. Susan, however, stood up for herself. ‘And what if we were? He’s a fine gentleman and he likes you very well indeed.’
‘And you know-and Jethro knows-exactly why I cannot think about marrying a gentleman, ever. Do you not?’
‘What do you mean, Hester dear?’ Maria emerged from behind her hands where she had retreated in guilty confusion. ‘An earl would be a very splendid match, hut not out of the question for a gentlewoman and the daughter of a distinguished officer.’
Hester sank down at the table, her legs suddenly too weary to support her. It was time to tell Maria the truth and if she decided she could no longer act as companion to someone with Hester’s reputation, then that was simply a judgment upon her for not being frank at the outset.
‘Let us go into the sitting room, Maria.’ Somehow this warm kitchen was too informal for the confession she was about to make, ‘Susan and Jethro know what I am going to tell you: I can only reproach myself for not having been frank with you from the outset.’