Not Quite a Lady (The Dressmakers 4)

Darius grasped at the lifeline. “Indeed, I haven’t. What do I know of cooks and housekeepers and scullery maids? What do I know of proper furnishings? Should one paint the walls or paper them? What color goes with what? Is this piece of furniture too ornate or unfashionable? I hear women speak of these things and it makes me dizzy. I should rather tackle a hard problem in trigonometry.”

“That is perfectly understandable,” Lady Lithby said. “One cannot expect a man to deal with these matters.”

“But they must be dealt with,” said Mrs. Badgely. “Are we to excuse him on grounds that he is a man?”

“Yes, we must,” said Lady Lithby. “You may put the house out of your mind, Mr. Carsington.”

“Thank you,” he said, resisting the childish temptation to stick out his tongue at Mrs. Badgely.

“I shall be happy to do what needs to be done there,” Lady Lithby said.

Then Darius saw, too late, the pit yawning in front of him.

Ye gods, the Marchioness of Lithby, accustomed to a bottomless purse, renovating his house.

In his mind’s eye, Darius saw ledgers with long columns of expenses, totaling in the thousands. He would have the devil’s own time turning a profit as it was. How could he do it if he refurbished the house?

But only a madman would attempt to speak to women of money. First, the subject was vulgar. Second, ladies of the upper orders had no notion of basic rules of economics. He might as well try to explain Ampère’s Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena to Lord Lithby’s pig.

Third, and most important, his pride would not permit it. He’d be hanged before he’d reveal anything of his financial or time constraints.

“I shouldn’t dream of asking you to add this burden to your present responsibilities,” he said. “You are expecting a large party of guests, I understand, next month.”

“Entertaining guests is nothing,” her ladyship said. “We do it all the time.”

“But to take charge of another household, one that is in complete disorder, without adequate staff—”

“Your agent Quested is completely reliable,” she said. “I shall apply to him for staffing. And you must not fret about how much work needs to be done. Work is what I seek. I recently redecorated Lithby Hall from top to bottom. We were obliged to make some architectural changes as well. While Lithby is happy with the result, he has made me promise not to do it again until the youngest boys are at university. I am at leisure, you see. Too much so, in fact. You would be doing me a favor.”

“Beechwood House is in a ghastly state,” he said, though he had no idea, having not yet darkened its door. “The rats—”

“I shall bring Daisy, my young bulldog,” she said. “She will enjoy catching rats. Charlotte, too.” She signaled to her stepdaughter.

“To catch rats?” Darius said. He watched the stepdaughter approach. She still wore the vacantly agreeable look.

Lady Lithby laughed. “Charlotte is not afraid of rodents. She’s a countrywoman. She will enjoy the challenge, I don’t doubt. Is that not so, my dear?”

“What challenge, Stepmama?” said Lady Charlotte.

“We are going to put Beechwood House to rights.”

Lady Charlotte gave her stepmother one short, shocked look. It was so brief that Darius would have missed it had he blinked. A fraction of a second later, her placid cow mask was back in place.

“Are we, indeed?” she said coolly. “I should have supposed that the last thing in the world Mr. Carsington would want is a pair of women he hardly knows fussing about his house. He has so much work to do, and a great deal on his mind. I should think he would want a refuge. Instead of allowing him an island of calm, we shall turn his house upside down. We shall have bricklayers and carpenters and plasterers and paperhangers and such banging about. And scaffolding everywhere. Not to mention we must pester him about this, that, and the other thing—for after all, it is his house, and ought to be the way he likes it.”

She met his gaze then.

For an instant he was lost in a vision of a beautiful someone making a refuge for him, a place of warmth and order, a place of his own where things were as he liked them to be.

Then his mind cleared, and in the cool blue eyes he saw the death threat once more.

The message was plain enough: Agree to this, and I will kill you with my bare hands.

That was amusing.

Logic told him he couldn’t afford to be amused. He must decline the offer, and to hell with Mrs. Badgely. Lady Lithby’s involvement would cost him thousands. He was supposed to turn a profit.

The trouble was, Lady Charlotte clearly wanted nothing to do with his house.

The trouble was, she had left him to Mrs. Steepleton’s ear-numbing chatter, then Mrs. Badgely’s scolding.

“When you put it that way, Lady Charlotte,” he said, “how can I possibly say no?”

Charlotte really was going to have to kill him.

She smiled sweetly, and said, “If Mr. Carsington does not mind our destroying his peace, I shall be happy to help. It should be a most interesting undertaking. I do not believe Lady Margaret made any improvements to the house in all the time she lived there.”

“A fossil of a house,” said Mrs. Badgely. “The same as it was in your great-grandfather’s time. Lithby Hall was a fossil, too, but not so ramshackle.”

“A little old-fashioned,” said Lady Lithby.

“Inconvenient,” said Mrs. Badgely. “The rectory was more modern when I came, and that isn’t saying much.”

“It was a good while before I did anything of importance here,” Lady Lithby said.

This was because she’d spent most of the first three years of her marriage saving Charlotte from herself, and several years after that giving Papa four healthy little boys.

“You are too modest,” Charlotte said. “From the first day you came, you made us more orderly and comfortable.”

All the same, it was naughty of Lizzie to give Charlotte no warning at all before dragging her into her Beechwood House scheme.

“Comfortable is all very well, but the recent work is splendid,” said Mrs. Badgely. “I only wish you could have seen Lithby Hall three years ago, Mr. Carsington, to compare. You would hardly recognize it.”

Being a man, he was unlikely to notice what was wrong and inconvenient, Charlotte thought. Certainly he could have no idea what he was in for once Lizzie took charge. Papa certainly hadn’t realized.

Oh, but it had been great fun.

Perhaps, after all, Lizzie had done her a favor. A large project like this would offer Charlotte a happy distraction, if only temporarily, from the nightmare of the coming house party.

The project would certainly offer Mr. Carsington an unhappy distraction, and that would be fun, too. Meanwhile, she’d love to see his face when he began to understand what would happen when Lizzie took control.

Charlotte donned her most innocent expression. “I made some paintings and drawings before, during, and after the alterations,” she told him. “We have architects’ renderings and artists’ paintings of the old house and property from various times, too. Papa keeps a portfolio containing estate plans and such. He has made a great many changes to the property, as he may have told you. Perhaps you would like to see these documents?”

Mr. Carsington arched an eyebrow.

“They’re in the library,” she said. “I’ll be happy to show them to you, if you are interested.”

He glanced at Mrs. Badgely and quickly away. “I should like nothing better,” he said.

Chapter 4

Yes, Darius would do better to spend his time with the gentlemen.

Yes, he was asking for trouble, following Lady Charlotte out of the drawing room.

But he had to know: What was she up to now?

She led him across the great hall to the library.

The large and comfortably arranged room was obviously in frequent use. Books, covering every subject under the sun, filled the oak shelve

s lining the walls. In the room’s center stood an orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system. Elsewhere Darius saw a pair of globes and a telescope, several more tables of various kinds, and a ladder. All the usual accoutrements, in other words, of the well equipped library.

The rector sat snoring, his head resting upon the back of a sofa near the fireplace. A book lay open on the table in front of him.

“It seems I’m not the only one eager to get away from Mrs. Badger-Me,” Darius whispered.

He received one sidelong glance from the cool blue eyes, too quick for him to read.

“Papa has always encouraged his guests to wander the public rooms as they please,” she said. “He wants them to feel at home.”

She continued across the room to a large table near the south-facing windows. Beyond the windows, the long summer day had ended early under a thickening blanket of clouds. Darius heard rain pattering on the terrace outside.

Inside, pier glasses hung between the darkened windows. In their mirrors danced the flames of the recently lit candelabra standing on the matching pier tables. In the nearest glass he saw, too, the open doorway behind them and servants passing in the hall outside.

Lady Charlotte opened the large portfolio that lay on the table.

Darius did not immediately join her at the table. He bent and looked under it. He walked around and looked behind it. He looked up at the ceiling, then at the windows.