“It’s not that I mind his affairs,” she confided, leaning back and letting her eyes run over him. He knew she would want him to come back to bed with her after talking, thinking about her unattainable husband, but he really couldn’t afford the time. She was a venal woman, though, and he had to tread carefully. A house of cards could collapse with one strong puff of wind.
“No?” he questioned politely, using Cecily’s silver shoehorn to put his own footwear on.
“After all, there is no one in London whose sheer physical beauty can possibly compare to mine, and I don’t mind if he settles for less. It’s just that woman…”
Rufus was getting bored, but then, Cecily had always bored him. She was simply a beautiful, annoying means to an end. “What woman?” he said wearily.
“The new housekeeper. She’s a tall, skinny, washed-out creature with a hideous face! He hired her deliberately. It was an affront, a deliberate one, to insist the creature join my household. And he’s insisting on dealing with her, telling me the strain is too much for me.”
She was sounding positively disgruntled, and he controlled his urge to laugh. She must have backed herself into that mess with her protestations of exhaustion and pain. Considering their active night he could testify that the only exhaustion Cecily, Countess of Kilmartyn, suffered was from a surfeit of fucking.
But his job was to placate her. “Kilmartyn is doing it to annoy you, darling. How could he possibly prefer her to you? It sounds as if she’s perfectly ghastly. Of course, the pathetic woman is undoubtedly grateful for any attention Kilmartyn might toss her way, but he would hardly lower his standards to sleep with her when he can have anyone in London.”
“He can’t have me,” Cecily said promptly, which he knew was an outright lie. “Whether he beds her or not, I want her gone. She got rid of my favorite footman.”
“Ah, yes, the esteemed Alfred.”
“I won’t have it, Rufus! The woman would fall into his bed in a welter of gratitude, and do anything he required of her. Anything! He’s only doing it to spite me.”
“Are you hatching evil plans, my love?” Rufus murmured as he buttoned his waistcoat.
She smiled up at him demurely. “Always.”
He made himself smile back. “I’m here to help you, my love. Is there something you need taken care of? A throat to slit, a reputation to ruin? You know I’m your man.”
“Get rid of my housekeeper.”
Rufus glanced at himself in one of Cecily’s many mirrors. He had trained the most adorable curl to fall to the middle of his forehead, and he arranged it carefully before turning back to her. “Fire the woman.”
“I can’t. I didn’t hire her—Adrian did.”
“How did you let that happen? You’ve always held the running of the household, haven’t you?”
Cecily looked sullen. “No longer. He hired the wretched woman over my objections, and I know he’s planning on seducing her, just to spite me.”
Rufus allowed himself a small smile. “That’s not very wise, considering the trouble you’ve had maintaining a housekeeper. Trifling with the servants leads to nothing but trouble. Besides, I thought you told me she was hideous?”
Cecily sniffed. “Not exactly hideous. One side of her face has pox scars, which I find most distressing. You know what a sensitive creature I am—I need to be surrounded by beauty. Ugliness makes me melancholy.” She gave him a doleful look. “Unfortunately my wretched husband is an insensitive brute. He had the temerity to tell me she was pretty!”
Rufus laughed. “Darling Cecily, we’re all insensitive brutes when it comes to pussy. We take what’s available.”
Cecily sat up, affronted. “I beg your pardon?”
“Not you, my pet. You make your lovers work for it.” He gave her his most charming smile. “The greater the challenge, the greater the reward, and you are magnificent.”
“You redeem yourself, Rufus, but just barely,” she purred, a faint hint of menace in her voice. “I want you to get rid of the housekeeper for me.”
“And how do you propose I do that? Shall I simply strangle her and dump her in the Thames?”
Cecily laughed uneasily. She had no idea what he was capable of, and he preferred to keep it that way. “Of course not.”
“Will she be hiring new staff?” he asked, doing his best to sound only randomly interested.
She shrugged. “I suppose so. We need more footmen, and Mademoiselle told me that the maid told her that the woman thinks she can hire a valet for him. As if my husband would be gentleman enough to use the services of a valet. He’s bog-Irish and always will be, and I was a fool to marry him.”
“Bog-Irish or not, he’s got a gift for making great pots of money, darling. Yes, I know, money isn’t everything but it does solve a multitude of problems. And pays for all that lovely jewelry you like to adorn yourself with.” He leaned down and pinched her willful little chin. “Leave it to me, my precious. I’ll take care of things.”
Bryony woke early, the gray sunlight coming in her newly cleaned windows, and she groaned. The tiny space under the eaves wasn’t that bad, considering the state of the household. The bed was small and narrow but there was a comfortable chair, a desk, a washstand with decent china. The cupboard held her two cheap mourning gowns as well as one dress she’d managed to hold on to when they had left the house they’d grown up in.