Not Quite a Lady (The Dressmakers 4)

“The plans are here, Mr. Carsington,” she said, tapping a slim finger on the portfolio.

“I’m looking for the trap,” he said, keeping his voice low. “First Mrs. S, then Mrs. B, then Lady L. What next, I wonder? A hinged door that opens up beneath my feet and drops me into a vipers’ pit?”

“I’ve never seen a viper at Lithby Hall,” she said.

“Vipera talka-lot-icus, Vipera henpeck-us-to-death-icus, Vipera-bankrupt-me-remodeling-my-house-icus.”

Her lips quivered. To his disappointment, though, the placid cow expression swiftly settled back into place.

“Here is a drawing of Lithby Hall at the end of the seventeenth century,” she said in the dispassionate tone of a lecturer. “Here it is a century and a half later. This is more or less how my stepmother found it when she first came.”

Darius drew nearer. “Is that a moat?” he said, sliding one of the larger drawings toward him.

She nodded. “It’s less obvious now. Grandfather turned a section into an ornamental lake. An orangery once stood where the kitchens and servants’ hall are. In this one you can see how they closed in the kitchen court. Stepmama added the vestibule, there.” She pointed. “But the greatest changes were inside. This house used to be gloomy and oppressive and cold—or so it seemed to me, as a child. She brought light and warmth.”

He gazed at her, surprised, as he had been earlier, at the way her voice softened when she spoke of how her stepmother had transformed Lithby Hall.

“You are fond of your stepmother,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I know it is abnormal. I am supposed to hate her.”

“It’s certainly unusual,” he said. “Females can be more viciously territorial than males.”

“Can we, indeed?” She looked at him, and he had the distinct sensation of being assessed or tested in some way. “Have you made a study of women, then, too, Mr. Carsington? I’m surprised I haven’t heard of it. Papa quotes you all the time. I envisioned you as a sage.” She looked away, her brow knit. “I saw you with sparse, white hair and a stoop. And spectacles. People must be shocked the first time they come to hear you lecture.”

Oh, she was good. She’d turned the conversation smoothly from herself to him.

She ought to know how to do it, at her great age!

And he ought to know how to press on, at his age. “I have not yet lectured on familial relationships,” he said. “I have studied them, however.” In self-defense, he could have added. “Your case is most intriguing. You had already emerged from childhood when your father remarried. You had to give way to a woman merely nine years older than yourself. This same woman has borne your father four sons so far, the eldest of whom will inherit the title and property. Yet you seem neither jealous nor resentful.”

“It is like having an older sister,” Lady Charlotte said.

“One might resent or be jealous of a sibling,” he said.

“One might,” she said. “You speak from experience, I daresay, having four older brothers.”

Damnation. She was too good.

“I don’t have to live with them,” he said. “Boys are usually sent away to school. We don’t have to live under the same roof for years on end. Women do. They are usually eager to have homes of their own.”

“This is my home,” she said.

She took some sketches out of a portfolio, clearly wishing to put an end to the subject.

Perhaps he had become too personal. He was not used to conversing with Society maidens—but it was maddening not to know why she was a maiden still.

Though Mrs. Steepleton had talked endlessly, she’d added only one more rumor to those surrounding Lady Charlotte.

This one concerned a mysterious illness in her youth: For a time it was believed that Lady Charlotte would soon follow her mother to the grave. However, after her stepmother took her for an extended stay in the north, then another in the Swiss Alps, she’d recovered from the ailment and made her debut belatedly, at the age of twenty.

The illness, Mrs. Steepleton whispered, was the reason Lord Lithby allowed her more freedom than some people thought proper.

Not much of an explanation. A debut at age twenty still left Lady Charlotte eight Seasons to get a husband.

Darius would find out the answer, eventually. He always found out the answer.

“Not all of the changes Stepmama made are merely aesthetic,” she said. “It was more than decorating. She made important repairs and improvements.”

He drew closer to her and tried to fix his full attention on the sketches.

“New floorboards for certain rooms,” she said. “New airholes cut for ventilation…”

She went on about chimney pots, windows, and tiled floors, about water closets and washstands and calling bells, about painting and plastering and carpentry.

He was soon left in no doubt that bringing Beechwood House into order would cost a king’s ransom. Simply maintaining it at a minimum level would be costly. He couldn’t afford it.

He didn’t want to think about money.

He didn’t want to think about pipes and drawer pulls and stove bottoms.

He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. He’d come too close, and he’d caught her scent. She spoke of ventilation, and he was aware mainly of the light scent of flowers or herbs wafting about her—the soap she used or the herbs stored with her clothes. He bent his head and drank it in.

The soft skin of her neck was inches away from his mouth.

You are three and a half inches from serious trouble, said Logic.

Darius made himself straighten.

What he couldn’t do was keep his mind on house maintenance.

When she talked of stoved feathers—cooked first, she explained, to kill vermin—to fill mattresses, he saw himself lifting her off her feet and tossing her onto a bed.

He saw her grinning wickedly up at him, the same wicked grin she’d worn when she delivered him to Mrs. Steepleton.

She’s playing with you, said Logic. Maiden she may be. Naïve she isn’t.

He firmly banished the pictures from his mind. “It seems a great deal of work,” he said. “I wonder at Lady Lithby’s undertaking it. Though others will do the actual labor at Beechwood, she must supervise and keep track of everything.”

“Not if you hire a competent house steward.” Lady Charlotte tipped her head to one side and studied the sketches with a critical eye. The movement set her eardrops swaying. One lightly touched her cheek. “Your land agent Quested will find the right man for you.”

“He’s

finding me a land steward,” said Darius. At two hundred pounds per annum. “I understood that the steward would manage the household as well as the land.”

“That is how Lady Margaret arranged matters,” she said. “And that is how my grandfather did it. But it is an old-fashioned system. Not at all efficient. Ask Papa.”

“Beechwood is not like Lithby Hall,” Darius said. “It is a more modest dwelling, and my needs are far more modest than those of a convivial peer with a large family and an extensive acquaintance.”

She turned her head toward him. Captivated by the teasing eardrop, he’d drawn closer, so very close that he could feel the warmth radiating from her body. Her clean scent was everywhere, it seemed. His mouth was mere inches from hers.

Her gaze lowered to his mouth.

Her breath came a little faster.

He leaned in a little closer.

She turned away. “Colonel Morrell,” she said. “What is your opinion regarding house stewards?”

Darius swore silently, casually eased away from her, and looked in the same direction.

The colonel crossed the threshold and quickly covered the length of the room.

She must have spotted him in the pier glass. But how long had she known he was there?

How long, before she noticed, had Morrell stood in the doorway, watching and listening?

“I should think a butler sufficient for a smaller property, particularly a bachelor’s abode,” he said. “But we soldiers are accustomed to spartan living. I should consider a housekeeper and valet and perhaps a few day servants more than sufficient. However, I am told that this is a disgracefully nipfarthing, cheeseparing way of getting on, not at all in keeping with my consequence.”

He did not say who had told him this, probably because the critic’s husband snored nearby.

Morrell joined them at the table, taking a position on the other side of Lady Charlotte.

“I was ordered to come and look at the pictures and discover ways to make my house grander,” he said. “Is this your work, Lady Charlotte? Your draftsmanship is very good.”