How to Marry an Earl (A Cinderella Society 1)

Chapter Six

Persephone had had her fill of genteel entertainment.

She rose at dawn the next day, passing more than a few revelers who were only now stumbling back to their beds. She drank a cup of tea standing up at the sideboard, filled a napkin with toasted muffins and sailed past the footman manning the front door. His powdered wig was slightly askew. Lady Culpepper held to the old traditions and she was rather fierce about it. Persephone reached up to straighten the offensive tilt to the curls. The footman jumped.

“Thank you, my lady,” he then murmured.

“Our little secret,” she grinned. She paused. “Any word from Henry?”

“No, my lady.”

She refused to let her smile slip. Henry was fine. He had to be. In her head, she listed the ways he might have been detained. It helped a little. A wagon wheel could have snapped its axle on the way to port, a sandstorm could have landlocked them before they even made it to the ship. And no matter his rank, soldier, captain, general, their time was not their own. She breathed through the anxiety. He had survived Bonaparte; he would survive this. Whatever this turned out to be.

She couldn’t remember a stranger house party. She was fiercely glad to be returning to her normal schedule, even if that included several hours digging through crates at the assembly hall. She was even more keen to get down to it now; never mind the ancient treasures, she had to find Henry’s wayward forgery.

The sun burned away the morning dew and tattered the mists. It was invigorating, cleansing. She had to shake off the secret sneers the guests had tried to hide behind their hands, the mess of her hermitage. Conall’s kiss under the fireworks.

The man had no business kissing like that.

How was one supposed to muster defenses against it? Heat snuck up her spine and tingled the back of her knees at the memory. For heaven’s sake, he was making her knees tingle a full day later. She was outgunned. Entirely. And thirsty for something she could not quite name. Or, more truthfully, had no wish to admit to. Surely, she had enough to be getting on with.

She marched all the way to the village and an hour later, with a wet hem and grass stuck to her boots, finally felt refreshed and more like herself. Kisses were nothing to lose one’s head over. House parties were ripe with far juicier scandals. She was on an even keel again. She was Lady Persephone Blackwell again.

“Good morning, your ladyship.” John, the Duke’s burly footman, regarded her with mild concern when she jumped, yelping.

So much for an even keel.

“Are you well?”

“’Twas an early morning,” she assured him, sunnily. “I’m perfectly well.” He had been waiting for her outside the assembly hall which was really the second floor of the inn. The duke insisted upon sending his strongest footman to help her, even though he had already sent an army to unpack the crates. John was to be nearby at all times, should she need his assistance. He was kind, quiet and built approximately like a bull. She’d seen ladies with waists smaller than his neck.

“Another three crates arrived,” he informed her. “With two more on the way.”

“Thank you, John. Won’t you take a seat? And some tea?”

Every day she offered the same courtesies and every day he refused them. He stood alert, more like a soldier than any footman she’d ever seen. “I cannot, my lady. Thank you.”

“One day, John, you’ll take tea and a scone,” she teased. “Mark my words.”

He smiled but did not otherwise respond.

The hall did not have the grandeur of a proper assembly room in London, of course, but it was lovely in its own way. There was a small card room off to one side, with refreshments procured downstairs in the main inn’s dining room. The building dated to the sixteenth century and was still in possession of its original beams, crossing overhead and dark with soot and age. The walls had been recently whitewashed for the event, and the mullioned windows scrubbed until they gleamed. Shelves and tables were brought from the duke’s house, as well as begged, borrowed and outrighted commanded from the neighbours.

It bustled with movement and energy, with chatter and shouts and the hammering of nails securing displays. She felt as though her stays loosened. This was important. This, the pursuit of history and knowledge, not tossed belongings and scandals and cold shoulders.

Or heated kisses.

Not that she wouldn’t take a horsewhip to whoever had desecrated her private museum, because she fully intended to do just that.

But for now, this gave her the space to think and breathe again. To plan. To plot.

The open crates offered tantalizing peeks of pottery shards, broken stone statues, Greek amphorae, Roman mosaics, and Viking glass beads of the sort often found in the hills around Little Barrow. This exhibit had every possibility of rivalling even the collection of the British Museum. And this was only the secondary exhibition, the main display would be set up in the duke’s private ballroom.

“Is that a canopic jar?” she blurted out with all the finesse of a child on Christmas morning with a fistful of sugar plums.

The worker currently holding the jar blinked at her. “Don’t know, my lady. It came in this crate.” He waved his hand. The one currently holding the jar. Persephone charged forward. He froze.

“Please be careful with that,” she said, as though he were holding a newborn. Or a wasp’s nest. “It’s several thousand years old. It might still hold some ancient Egyptian’s liver. Or his intestines.”