Adam arrived back at Marsley House in time to see a carriage pull away from the front entrance. He gave the signal to the driver to halt for a moment as it passed. Her Grace, the Duchess of Marsley, turned a white face toward him. He had the curious sensation that she needed assistance and that he was the only person who could help her. Their eyes met. Hers widened just for a moment before she composed herself once more, facing forward.
She’d been on his mind ever since last night, but the fact that no gossip had surfaced about the duchess being ill reassured him somewhat.
After the carriage passed he gave the signal for his driver to take him around the back of the house to the stables. The encounter, brief as it was, disturbed him. This assignment had been difficult from the beginning, but she was at the root of his sudden wish to be gone from Marsley House.
Until last night, he hadn’t been excessively impatient with the slow pace of his investigation, knowing that it could take some time to find proof of the duke’s treason. Now he wanted it done, completed, and over.
He hadn’t wanted to come back to the house, but he’d done so because duty was a word that meant something to him. He’d been a dutiful soldier in India despite the stupidity of the orders he’d been given. Now he was a dutiful servant of the War Office and the Silent Service. Duty, however, sometimes required a sacrificial commitment. He’d learned that at Manipora.
He’d been a boy when he entered the army and it had molded and shaped him. Growing up in the tenements of Glasgow, he’d been concerned with elemental things like eating and keeping warm. It was only later, after comparing himself to his fellow soldiers, that he’d realized how much he was missing.
He could read, thanks to his mother, who’d died early of a lingering cough, but not before she had instilled some knowledge in her son and daughter. It was Mary, his sister, who had insisted on him learning his numbers and practicing his reading. After enlisting in the army, he’d begun to procure books, spending his hard-earned wages on a volume that he carried around in his knapsack. He would sometimes trade with another soldier. One of the wives at the British Legation in India had given him two books. He still had them at his lodgings and they were among his most treasured possessions.
A book, to him, was like a portable school. A book, unlike a headmaster, didn’t care in what area of Glasgow he’d been raised, or whether he’d had the time or the energy to haul a bucketful of water up three flights of stairs so that he could wash. A book didn’t offer judgment about his accent or his profanity. But the words, assimilated at his own pace, taught him.
So did his fellow soldiers. He emulated those men who’d purchased their commissions for a lark. He learned to eat with manners, figured out which words were insulting and not to be used often. Over time he softened his Glaswegian accent so that people didn’t have any trouble understanding him.
“You’re like a hawk,” one of the women at the garrison once said to him. “You watch everything, Drummond, but you rarely speak. Why is that?”
He hadn’t been able to explain it to her. Thankfully, she’d turned away so he was spared the necessity of trying to be polite.
His early years had been like barren soil. Only two flowers had brightened the landscape: his mother and his sister. They’d both been gone too soon, leaving him nothing but a brown-and-gray existence. Ever since being sent to India, however, he’d gradually begun to realize that life—for most people—was a flower garden.
They took for granted that they would be healthy and, for the most part, happy. They smiled and laughed, rejoiced in their children, good food, and companionship.
He had wanted that and he’d cultivated it for himself. At the same time, he decided that he would never willingly go back to that barren world of barely existing, of drawing breath but resenting even that because nothingness was so much more preferable to his current life.
He read philosophy and poetry and, like the Duke of Marsley, military theory. A few times, he even read novels, although in some cases he found the prose overblown and the dialogue ridiculously dramatic.
Nor was he like any of the heroes portrayed in some of those books. He might have been considered brooding, but that was only because he believed in thinking more than speaking.
But he certainly wasn’t a duke or a count or a mysterious owner of a deserted castle. He was only himself, and while he might be proud of some of his accomplishments, he doubted that they would be of interest to any woman like the heroines in some of those novels.
He made his way upstairs. From the information he’d acquired from Mrs. Thigpen, he knew that Marsley House was one of the largest private homes in London. He couldn’t help but wonder if the builder, the third duke, had wanted to rival a palace. He’d come close to doing exactly that with the building’s seventy-eight rooms. No wonder the staff was almost as large as a company.
In addition to all the bedchambers there were rooms to polish shoes and rooms to trim lamps and rooms to clean cutlery, press the newspapers, store the common dishes, and dry the dish towels. There was even a room that was set up with a broad oak table, stools, and a wooden clock over the door. On a shelf was a book on the peerage and one on etiquette. He’d taken that to be where the newest members of staff were educated on their duties. He’d had more than one peek at both of those books, but had found even more information in the library.
When Adam had first arrived, there were additional footmen assigned night duty—one for each of the wings and one outside the duke and duchess’s quarters.
He’d gradually limited the number of personnel assigned to night duty. One of the reasons was simple logistics. He couldn’t explore the library—and any of the other rooms—if he had to avoid eleven footmen. The second reason was that they didn’t need all those footmen whose sole duty was to stand there and try not to fall asleep.
Because of his position Adam had a corner suite on the third floor with a bedroom, a sitting room that had been converted into an office, and a bathing chamber. He returned to his rooms now and spent several moments changing. He’d become accustomed to a uniform in the army, but a majordomo was supposed to dress in formal attire day and night. He wore black trousers, well-shined black shoes, a black tailcoat over a white shirt that had been starched to the point it could almost stand alone, a white waistcoat, and a white tie.
Once dressed, he walked into the office. The room was plain, devoid of any furnishings but his desk and one straight-backed chair. Someone had tried to add a touch of color to the room in the draperies, a crimson-and-beige stripe that looked as if it had been taken from one of the downstairs parlors.
He had not, despite the length of this assignment, attempted to personalize the space. Depending on who he was supposed to be, he often furnished personal items: a picture of a wife, or a sweetheart, a book or two, a watch inscribed with the name he was using at the time. They all went toward corroborating his false persona.
At Marsley House, his bedroom and office had been left bare. Perhaps because he had a more personal connection to this assignment.
For a few hours he occupied himself with the tasks of his role. The sheer volume of documents he needed to read, approve, sign, or forward to the family solicitor seemed to increase every day.
He arranged for the alterations to the uniforms of two fast-growing footmen. After writing down a recipe for silver polish, he tucked it into his pocket to give to the head footman who was responsible for making it, showing how it was to be applied, and supervising the staff in its application. Adam would inspect the silver later and arrange for it to be returned to its place in the pantry. It was his responsibility to count the damn stuff every night and make sure that one of the staff hadn’t made off with a fork or spoon. At least he wasn’t required to sleep next to the pantry, although Mrs. Thigpen had informed him that such had been the arrangement for years. That’s why there was a room across the hall now used for extra china and stemware.
Before coming to Marsley House, he’d always thought that a housekeeper was responsible for everything that happened in an establishment. His assumption was incorrect, at least here. Adam was tasked with Marsley House running smoothly, which meant that if the roof needed retiling he had to ensure it was done. The same went for filling the pavement in front of the house. Last week he had the bother of getting one of the wrought iron gates at the front of the drive repaired.
He’d replaced an elderly majordomo, one Mrs. Thigpen called Old Franklin.
“The poor man became so forgetful and hard of hearing that he needed help with his tasks,” Mrs. Thigpen had told him. “Sankara helped him a great deal. Sankara Bora. He was the duke’s secretary and handled a great many details about the house. And Fairhaven, the family’s house in the country.”
Adam had found that Mrs. Thigpen was a font of knowledge. He went back to the well now, finding the housekeeper in her office beside the kitchen. The room smelled of cinnamon, but all of Marsley House was perfumed in some way. One maid was assigned to exchange the potpourri in all the rooms on a weekly basis. The scent was different depending on the chamber.
Mrs. Thigpen—or Olivia, as she insisted he call her—was eating what looked to be a raisin biscuit and passed the plate to him.
He smiled his thanks, sat on the chair next to her desk, and took one of the biscuits. Like anything Grace cooked, it was delicious.
Olivia had a long thin face with a broad nose, an appearance that made him unfortunately think of a horse. She had a similarly horsey laugh and large teeth. In addition, she had a curious gait. Not a limp exactly, but she tended to list a little to the right side when she walked.
He’d wanted to ask if she’d had a childhood accident that affected her, but it was too personal a question. However, he tried to ease her burden whenever he could, giving orders to all the footmen to assist her if they saw Olivia carrying anything.
“Have you any idea where the duchess has gone?” he asked after spending a few minutes in pleasantries. He helped himself to two additional biscuits, which only prompted Olivia’s smile.
“Has she gone somewhere? Not very usual of her, Adam. I don’t know. Shall I ring for her maid? Ella will probably know. She doesn’t share much about the duchess, however.”
“Never mind,” he said. “It isn’t important. I merely saw her on my way in.”
“She may have gone visiting,” Olivia offered. “The new duke is a second cousin of the late duke. They socialized some. Perhaps she’s gone to see him.”
Was she even considered a duchess if there was a new duke? He didn’t know. Nor was he comfortable in sharing his ignorance with Olivia.
A good deal of the time he had to hide his lack of knowledge from the rest of the staff. To do that, he had to appear standoffish, demonstrating a haughty kind of arrogance that always irritated him when he had to face it in another individual. He’d managed to frighten a good percentage of the maids, most of whom did a curious little curtsy when they saw him. It wasn’t until Olivia said something that he understood why.
“You’re new,” she said. “A great many of the staff are frightened of you, Adam. You could let anyone go at any time.”
“I have no intention of letting anyone go, Olivia,” he’d said.
“Well, if you don’t mind, Adam, I shall convey that to the rest of the staff. I know it would reassure everyone.”
Now whenever he encountered one of the frightened maids, he went out of his way to smile. They still acted nervous, but if they’d come from a background similar to his, he could understand their fear. Being a servant helped them escape from grinding poverty. Of course, nowadays, there were other avenues as well. A girl could find work in the shops or the factories. They didn’t have to go into service. But it seemed to him that working at Marsley House wasn’t a bad plan for making your way in the world.
He advised Olivia that he was ordering another two bolts of cloth for uniforms and was sending the monthly expenditures to Mr. Barney, the family solicitor. She nodded and said she’d tell the seamstress who made most of her living sewing livery for the Marsley House staff. She informed him that one of the maids had tearfully left their employ this morning, citing homesickness. He would be responsible for hiring a replacement.
He thanked Olivia for the biscuits and headed for the library, specifically to the third floor and the shelves containing the duke’s journals.
When he’d first begun his assignment, he’d started with the duke’s years in India. None of those books had furnished the proof that he needed. Then he took the last book and moved backward through time. A gap existed between that journal and the date of the duke’s death, but there had been other times when the duke had simply stopped writing for a while. Adam had finally started over at the beginning, giving himself the chore of reading all of the Duke of Marsley’s self-indulgent writings. So far he’d learned a great deal about the duke and most of it was boring.
This week he’d reached the man’s early twenties. George Whitcomb had written extensively about his conquest of the ladies. On more than one occasion he’d seemed to delve into self-examination and said something cogent like, “It is my title, I am sure, that brings them like bees buzzing around the garden.” Then he’d added a comment that made Adam realize he wasn’t aware of himself at all. “But it is my title, after all. It is part of me. My heritage. I was reared to be the Duke of Marsley. And as such, I will accept any bounty that my title delivers to me.”
The duke had had the same attitude in India, the same self-glorification. It was as if, when he spoke, he simply amazed himself and had to spend several minutes in silent awe of his own brilliance. Of course, his aides and the other men surrounding him acted as impressed as George no doubt felt.
Beware a man who holds power with no one to check it. One of the many lessons Adam had learned in the army.
He grabbed two of the journals and returned to the desk on the first floor. It would be better if he could examine the books without the possibility of being interrupted by a maid. However, he didn’t want to change the schedule and therefore incite curiosity. The less attention he attracted, the better.
At least there was no threat of the duchess coming into the library.
Where had the duchess gone and why had he gotten the feeling that she needed to be rescued?
The sooner he found the proof he needed, the better. He wanted to be gone from Marsley House and its duchess in all possible haste.