AFTER DEVOURING AN UNOBJECTIONABLE beef stew mopped up with a fine slice of bread washed down with a glass of wine from a bottle donated from the Earl of Ardmay’s cellars, Lavay rang for Mrs. Fountain, almost as a reflex. The way some men would have a pleasant snifter of brandy or a cigar after dinner.
He knew a certain amount of impatience before she arrived. He had an agenda.
But when she did arrive, he briefly forgot why he’d rung for her. It was just that it was such a pleasure to look at her, particularly after she’d clearly taken the stairs at a run and her cheeks were pink and her hair wasn’t anywhere near as tidy as she thought.
“Ah, good evening, Mrs. Fountain. I should like to say that it was very kind of you to inflict the willow bark tea upon me. Or rather, it was three parts kindness, one part desperation to make me something other than insufferable.”
Her eyes flew wide in alarm, but then he could see that she decided he was teasing.
“I’ll add ‘how to tame a prince’ to my heirloom recipes.”
“Splendid. You taught the girls at Miss Endicott’s Academy? A variety of subjects, I would imagine.”
“Yes.” She was clearly suddenly wary.
“And you enjoyed your position?”
“Yes.”
“Ah. My loquacious new housekeeper is suddenly taciturn. Why are you now a housekeeper, Mrs. Fountain, and not a teacher?”
She hesitated, then said, “I thought we conducted our interview on the day I was hired, Lord Lavay.”
“Mrs. Fountain, why don’t you have a seat and indulge my curiosity, if you will.”
He said it pleasantly, but it was the sort of tone that clearly brooked no argument.
She sat down in the chair as if she were mounting the steps to the guillotine.
He sat down opposite her. The firelight turned her fair skin a glowing amber, and her eyes were softer and shadowier.
“I said something out of turn,” she admitted softly.
“Shocking.”
That made her smile, and that was better.
He was a little concerned that if she’d said I committed a murder, he would have found a way to rationalize her current position. Perhaps merely keep her away from the meat cleavers, that sort of thing.
He shrugged with one shoulder. “In some places, such a thing is more welcome than others. One must choose one’s moment, of course, and one’s opponent. And do you see, I can shrug now with less pain. You have restored my vocabulary to me, Mrs. Fountain, with your willow bark tea and speaking out of turn.”
“I’m glad to hear it, sir.”
“And now I must ask you to rewrite the letter to my grandfather.”
She looked astonished again. “Was it unsatisfactory?”
He was amused at how doubtful she sounded. Clearly Mrs. Fountain was rarely found unsatisfactory.
“Someone wept upon it.”
It was stealthy. He’d deliberately ambushed her.
She froze.
And then she looked up at him with something like a plea in her eyes, as if she’d been caught in the act of a crime.
He loved that she hadn’t denied it.
They locked gazes for a moment.
“Where is your home, Mrs. Fountain?” he asked softly.
“Northumberland.” She said it almost numbly. Still surprised by the ambush.
“Ah.”
The big, healthy fire gave a hearty pop.
“Home becomes a part of you, doesn’t it?”
She seemed to be breathing through some sort of pain.
“Yes.” The word was thick.
“Les Pierres d’Argent was my home,” he mused softly. “We’ve a number of homes, my family. But this was the home I knew and loved. It has belonged to my family for nearly two centuries. I know every tree as if they were playmates with whom I was raised. After a manner of speaking, they are. I fell out of more than one of them.”
She smiled faintly. But she was still tense. Her hands had vanished beneath the table, and he suspected they were folded together in a knot.
“I know every flower in the garden. I know every stone in the walkways and walls. I scraped knees, caught fish, climbed, took a whipping for stealing a tart meant for dinner, fought and played and laughed with my brother and sister and cousins. I learned how to be a man there. The voices of my family, all the laughter and tears, who we are, are in the timbers of it, in the stones. It is as much a part of me as . . . this.” He raised his hand. “And it was taken from us. Those of us who could scattered like insects to new countries. Taking only what we could. Things like . . . sauceboats. Silver spoons.”
She was imagining it, and her eyes looked hunted.
He found the notion of making her suffer in any way very distasteful. But for some reason, he wanted her to know.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I took only a hairbrush with me.”
He nodded shortly but didn’t ask any questions.
“You miss your home, Mrs. Fountain.”
Another pause. “Yes.”
So tentative, that word, and he was certain it hid multitudes.
“When will you go for a visit?”
“I cannot.”
She’d gone pale with tension.
“You are allowed time off from your position, Mrs. Fountain. Provided you last beyond a fortnight and outfit the footmen in livery.”
That ought to have brought a smile.
She tried for one. “I . . . cannot.”
He sensed he ought not press.
And yet.
“Why? Did you say something out of turn?”
This made her smile in fact. “In a manner of speaking.”
But her eyes were imploring him not to ask any more questions.
He relented.
“If you would be so kind as to copy this letter word for word again? I should like to take it to be mailed tomorrow.”
“Of course, sir.”
With apparent relief, she bent her head and applied herself to the foolscap and ink. In all likelihood happy not to show her face to him.
“I don’t need to return home. I’m quite fine on my own,” she said suddenly, after a moment.
“Of course you are,” he said lightly.
I thought I told you I didn’t like liars, Mrs. Fountain.
He settled onto the settee with Marcus Aurelius. One of the benefits of his convalescence was that he was able to read to his heart’s desire. He’d much rather be out galloping a horse on the green, of course, but that day would come again soon, and meanwhile he could improve his already satisfactory brain.
He turned the page and didn’t read a word of it, and watched the firelight amber her cheeks, and turned another page and didn’t read a word of that, and watched her tongue dart out to touch her top lip as she dipped the quill in the ink again, and he turned another page and glanced down at it, when the quiet was interrupted by a sharp rap on the door frame.
“Messenger for you, sir. Seems rather press—”
The messenger was the same granite-faced person who had pushed past Elise and hadn’t wanted tea, and he pushed past Ramsey into the room now.
Lavay, she noticed, didn’t even blink. As if he was expecting the man.
The messenger was an interesting man, Elise thought, glancing up, then reflexively ducking again so as to seem as unobtrusive as possible. He didn’t radiate any particular self-importance or station, but neither was he subservient or humble; his face was expressionless—she would not have been able to identify him in a crowded room after this evening, she was certain. But single-minded intensity of purpose accompanied him into the room.
Lavay rose to his feet.
The man held a missive out to Lavay, bowed, saluted, turned and was gone.
Lavay broke the seal.
He looked up. “Mrs. Fountain, have you finished with the letter?” His voice was abstracted and dismissive.
“Yes, sir.”
“That will be all this evening, thank you.”
And just like that, after he’d fished around and unearthed her deepest pain based on a teardrop on a letter, she was dismissed with the usual head-spinning abruptness.
But oddly, he had shared with her a peculiar moment of absolute peace, so singular and distinct that she realized that nothing had been peaceful about the last six years of her life, no matter what she tried to tell herself. His silent understanding, their complicity, had flowed into all those fissures that ached like cracks in skin.
She’d seen his face when he’d read the message from the messenger. It had gone cold, abstracted, intent as a predator’s.
She’d felt a clutch in her gut that she recognized, unnervingly, as concern.
She was forgotten.
But some things, she suspected, were more important than her pride.