Tempted to hide the battered old document behind her back, since it was some sort of contact with her long-dead father, Nell wondered if it was safe to let Moss see it. It didn’t make sense and there was no salutation other than the brief direction To Nell on the other side. He couldn’t find anything much out about her from a few bad drawings and a senseless series of numbers, not when she had puzzled over them all morning and still felt none the wiser.
‘I doubt it,’ she replied flatly and held out the dog-eared sheet of hot pressed paper to invite him to see for himself how little sense it made.
‘Hmm...’ was all he said in reply as he did just that.
He walked over to the window with it to take advantage of what little light there was from the leaden sky on yet another day without sun. Feeling bereft and a little bit piqued at his inattention to her, Nell was free to study him instead of her father’s nonsense, since he seemed to be totally absorbed and wouldn’t even notice her eyes were on him.
He still wasn’t classically handsome, was he? With the clear eyes of a critic she assessed his long-limbed frame with an almost-smile that worried her every bit as much as it would have him if he looked up and saw her grinning at nothing. Resetting her expression to governess-like blankness, she looked away and thought despairingly that she would never need a fine miniature or book full of sketches to recall how Moss looked in his prime.
Staring at the exquisitely carved mantel some long-dead Selford had commissioned for his splendid new library instead of his descendant’s land steward this time, she went over her private images of the man still frowning at Lord Chris Hancourt’s hieroglyphs because she couldn’t seem to help herself. He had those acute and improbably clear blue eyes, of course, they were the first thing you noticed about him, after the general impression of a tall man with power and fitness in every line and sinew of his body. It wasn’t just the surprisingly pure colour of his irises that held her attention whenever he was in a room, it was the glimpse into his acute and restless mind they gave her whenever he wasn’t wary enough to shield his every thought. Once she had wrenched her gaze away from his azure gaze, she told herself the rest of his face was just a mix of arrogant cheek bones and mismatched features. His nose was craggy, even his own mother would have to admit that. Having been broken once upon a time did little for its patrician haughtiness. His mouth was... well, it was simply his. Nell couldn’t even think about it without wanting to feel it burn and need on hers again, so she moved on as rapidly as she could. His chin—now that was firm to the point of stubbornness.
So how did such a man fare as third son of a country squire? Take those features and quirks one by one and Moss was a mixture of iron determination and secrets, put it together the whole added up to more. Nell doubted he took to being the second spare to his eldest brother very well as a boy. His boyhood must have been challenging for all concerned, she decided as she imagined him a clever and argumentative boy with a stubborn streak a mile wide and had to aim another of those almost tender smiles into mid-air. Never mind how he fitted into his allotted place in his father’s family then, he was an adult now and somehow she doubted he’d wanted to be a nobleman’s land steward since he was in his cradle. As a man he was compelling and unique and she defied a sentient female to forget he was in a room full of his supposed lords and masters and pay them proper attention when he was by, so perhaps he ought to consider a different future before those lords and masters learnt to envy him that quality?
‘Where did you get this?’ he barked as if he had every right to demand the information, but at least he’d interrupted her wayward thoughts.
‘I have always had it,’ she exaggerated slightly, to prove to herself he didn’t have that right at all.
‘Then you must know who it’s from.’
‘True, but that’s my business.’
‘Not when someone is trying to get hold of your papers it isn’t.’
‘I can’t see how an old piece of paper that makes no sense can have any bearing on the matter,’ she said defensively.
He sighed and looked as if he wished she was Penny’s age so she could be dealt with accordingly. ‘I know you are angry with me, but could we at least try to be cool and rational about this problem? What I did last night must have made you hate me, I do understand,’ he said with the sort of weary patience she used when Lavinia was at her most rebellious.
‘No, you don’t, you don’t understand at all,’ she said bitterly, feeling as if she might break if he didn’t stop looking at her as if she was a promise he didn’t dare make himself. Anyway, he didn’t understand, not when he had no idea who she really was. Lord Chris Hancourt’s daughter was the least suitable wife a hard-working man could find himself saddled with if they weren’t very careful, heiress or not. They could afford one another in the strictest definition of the word, but would he be able to live off his wife’s fortune and not learn to despise himself and her while he did so?
‘Mr Moss and Miss Court can’t afford to marry so burning for each other is wrong. It was cruel of me to kiss a woman I cannot wed,’ he said rather starkly.
Nell supposed she couldn’t have put it better herself, in reverse. Except of course they could afford a house and estate twice the size of his father’s, with her dowry.
And what of his pride, Eleanor Hancourt? she asked herself and stamped on the tiny spark of hope the look in his tired eyes lit as they met hers.
He looked as if he was saying goodbye to a dream he couldn’t afford to have. The daughter of one of the most scandalous men of his generation wasn’t a fit wife for Mr Moss. There, if she told herself that often enough it might even sound impossible. Her fortune would be a bitter pill for such a proud, contrary man to swallow; the scandal of her father’s wild life and death with his infamous mistress hanging over their heads all the time would suffocate him. She ought to tell him, perhaps make them both feel better about the heartache that would dog her footsteps, whether she stayed here or went to London to admit she was Miss Hancourt.
‘I am...’ she began. Too late when he turned away from her impatiently and began to pace the room. How could she shout something so crucial after his retreating back across half the width of the room?
‘I am a clumsy idiot,’ he told her from the furthest corner of the room. Any further away and they would have to yell and she wasn’t prepared to proclaim her identity to anyone within earshot just yet.
He was, of course, but what if he was her idiot? Her heart lurched at the notion she might let the only man she could dream of marrying go because of a silly fancy about money and her father’s black reputation. They were rational adults, weren’t they? No problem could be insurmountable if there was a chance they might manage to love each other for life.
‘True,’ she mouthed, smiled sweetly and waited for him to come close enough for them to speak softly and not be overheard.
Too late, with the warning of another set of hasty male footsteps sounding overloud in the tacked-on enfilade that Mr Rivers was here and why the devil must the handsome great fool interrupt them right now? Nell glared at the man and wondered if she dared tell him to go away. He was the brother of Moss’s employer and even a rich woman’s husband might want to work to feel better about her fortune, so she stayed silent with an effort it was as well he didn’t know about.
‘What’s this Mrs Winch tells me about one of the maids being paid to steal your papers, Miss Court?’ the Earl’s brother demanded before he noticed Moss standing stiffly in the opposite corner with a start, as if he sensed something more between them being on opposite sides of the room suggested.
‘The work of a madwoman,’ Nell said dismissively. Even if it wasn’t it didn’t seem important next to what might have been said, if not for Mr Rivers’s arrival.
‘Not necessarily,’ Moss argued with a frown in her direction.
‘What else can she be but mad to offer so much for so little?’
‘In search of something you don’t know you have?’ Moss replied impatiently and whatever possessed her to think he was struggling to hide deep and tender feelings for her under a gruff manner? He obviously didn’t care about her at all, he was just interested in the problem she’d presented him with.
‘And what do I have that could be of any interest to anyone but me?’ she sparked back at him.
‘This,’ he said baldly and held up the worn and battered paper she didn’t understand when she found it all those years ago and still didn’t understand now.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, shaking her head at the very idea it was worth five pounds to anyone.
‘We won’t know that until we’ve at least tried to work out what it means.’
‘It’s a meaningless series of numbers and doodles done to amuse a child.’
‘And someone seems to think it worth a maidservant’s wage for an entire year, so we would be foolish to disregard it so lightly, don’t you think?’
‘Well, I have no idea what it means and if I can’t understand it, why would anyone else?’
Moss turned the paper over and read the shortened form of her name on the back. ‘You are Nell then, Miss Court?’ he asked with raised eyebrows.
They had kissed passionately and risked far too much in the candlelit intimacy of Mrs Winch’s room last night and still they were Mr and Miss to one another. Nell was used as a short form of Helen and she didn’t want to confess who she was with her employer’s brother listening, so she waited warily for the next question.
‘Who sent it?’ he persisted, of course, and that was the next question she didn’t want to answer. A plain Mr Court couldn’t have secrets because he didn’t exist. The idea of untangling lies and half-truths when she had never bothered to create a Mr Court to lie about kept her silent for a long moment as she tried to decide if she had the ingenuity left to invent one right now.
‘A friend of my mother,’ she prevaricated instead.
‘One who knew you very well,’ he said, as if he suspected her mama of conduct unbecoming a lady.
‘Or perhaps he only thought he did,’ she lied, crossing her fingers behind her back because it felt wrong to deny her parents when she’d only just rediscovered them through their letters to each other.
‘I suspect this is meant to mean something to you, however well or poorly this man knew you as a child. You need to think harder about who he was and why he left you a coded message you won’t take seriously.’
‘He must have had more faith in me than he should have done,’ she said crossly, because this really was none of his business. Disappointment was gnawing away at her good manners with every moment Mr Rivers stood listening to their argument with that knowing look on his face.
‘Perhaps there’s a reason you refuse to look more deeply into this puzzle?’ Moss said as if he could read her mind. ‘And why don’t you write and ask him what it means?’
‘He’s dead,’ she said flatly.
‘Then you have even more reason to solve the problem he left you, in the mistaken belief you would bother to decipher it.’
‘You are very rude, sir. Both the problem and solution are my business and not yours.’
‘When it intrudes on Berry Brampton House and the safety of Lord Barberry’s wards it is mine and his lordship’s,’ he said with an impatient glare at Mr Rivers, who was listening attentively but leaving him to ask all the awkward questions. ‘The welfare of four vulnerable young girls trumps your privacy, Miss Court.’
‘As if I haven’t been putting them first for the last two years when you didn’t even know they existed,’ she snapped back sharply, near the end of her tether now he was intent on solving this puzzle rather than the bigger one of how a steward and a governess could find a way to love each other after all.
‘I do now and it’s my duty to safeguard them if some fool is trying to prise this away from you and they might get in the way.’
He was right, she decided reluctantly. It seemed insane anyone would want that hasty note from her father, but there was nothing else in her papers to explain why someone had such a burning desire to read them.
‘I don’t understand it at all,’ she admitted with a shrug because she still couldn’t see any sense in random numbers and squiggles.
‘Then try harder. How old were you when this was written?’
‘Three or four years old, I suppose.’
‘Why don’t you know precisely?’
‘Why do I have to, Mr Moss?’
‘You think I’m being rude again?’ he said impatiently.
‘I know you are.’
‘Then I need not worry about losing your good opinion, need I?’
Nell wanted to slap his arrogant face, but somehow controlled herself and shot a glare at Mr Rivers, standing with his hands in his pockets as if he hadn’t been this well entertained for months. ‘No, but the girls are likely to realise I’ve been gone too long at any moment and come to find out what’s going on,’ she warned with a frown for both of them this time.
‘Then we’d best hurry up and find out what this is about before they get here. Where did you find it?’
‘Hidden in the roof of my dolls’ house. I only found that slipped under the roof when it was damaged and I have no idea when it was put there,’ Nell lied again, because she could probably find out if she wanted to.
‘When did this eccentric gentleman of yours die, then?’ Mr Rivers chimed in as if feeling it was time he took a part in this odd comedy.
Ah, that was the question she’d been dreading, but why should they connect her with Lord Christopher Hancourt’s and the first Viscountess Farenze’s scandalous and tragic death in the same year?
‘1799?’ she said, as if she didn’t know all too well.
‘Why would anyone wait so long to chase this down?’ Mr Rivers asked them as if they ought to know.
Nell shrugged and Moss began to pace the room again with that odd missive in his hand, staring at it as if he might wrench Papa’s secrets off the page by willpower alone. ‘These drawings are trying to tell a story. If the man had any skill with a pencil it would be a damn sight easier to work out what they’re meant to be.’
‘Don’t swear and give it back to me,’ Nell demanded, suddenly desperate for another look. ‘Come, Mr Moss, you said yourself I alone can solve this problem—you must return it if I’m to stand any chance of doing so.’
‘Yes, give it back to her, Moss,’ Mr Rivers prompted with a laugh in his grey eyes Nell didn’t even begin to understand and he seemed to be taunting Moss with some secret of his own.
‘Very well, but don’t forget someone else wants this puzzle solved more than you seem to, Miss Court.’
‘Yes, you do,’ she snapped and saw the sudden revulsion in his blue gaze that she could even think he was behind this. ‘I didn’t mean I think you so devious you might pay an intermediary to find this,’ she said hastily. ‘Not that your insistence I look hard for its meaning when I might not want to isn’t both intrusive and annoying of you.’
‘We’ll take that as a given then, shall we? I seem to have been annoying you since the very first moment I set foot on Selford land.’
‘Perhaps you’re a very annoying man,’ she said softly, looking up at him almost fondly as she forgot Mr Rivers’s presence for a moment.
‘Or maybe you are a pernickety female, over-protective of her charges and suspicious of anyone who comes within their orbit?’
‘Arguing about which of you is most unsociable is going to help us solve this then, is it?’ Mr Rivers asked with the wave of an elegant hand at the parchment in Moss’s more work-worn one.
‘No, but it might stop worse things if we work hard enough,’ Moss muttered as he passed her in one of those restless lopes up and down the room.
‘Don’t,’ she whispered so softly she hoped Mr Rivers couldn’t hear and how badly she wanted him to go away. ‘We can’t,’ she murmured when he turned not far away and began his pass back to that remote corner.
‘Then think, woman, before frustration gets the better of one of us,’ he muttered as if he was only managing to keep his hands off her because he had something else to do, even with the Earl’s half-brother watching them as if fascinated by the spectacle they made as they almost quarrelled in his presence.
Comforted by the passion almost under control in Moss’s intent gaze, the quirk of his firm mouth and the stern control he was trying to keep it under, Nell tried to think about quirks on paper instead and failed. He wanted her; the heat and promise of being feminine and desirable to him, despite her repressive gown and spinster’s cap, burnt deep inside and made her breath come short. For a long moment he paused instead of passing her by and they both seemed spellbound by the chances of it, the possibility land steward and governess could make a life together if they tried hard enough. Then he handed the paper back to her and the crackle of expensive paper even after all the mistreatment it had been subjected to over the years reminded her how many lies and barriers still stood between them.
Stepping back, she stared unseeingly at her father’s message for a moment. It was looking at them with only half her attention that must have let her eyes see the funny little stick figures Papa used to draw come to life again. Of course, he used to laugh and tell her their drawing talent was about equal back then, didn’t he? She must have blocked the memory out, along with so much else about a man who left his children alone for the sake of a woman like Pamela Verdoyne-Winterley. Feeling the stirrings of what could be wild passion for a man for the first time, maybe she could understand what drove Lord Chris a little better, or perhaps those letters between her parents unlocked something too painful to remember until now. Whatever the reason, her favourite tale from Aesop’s Fables was suddenly there—rendered in Papa’s uniquely awful stick figures of two very familiar animals he’d danced around the edge of his message as if she was sure to understand him. Stuck in an echoing nursery with her elderly and embittered nursery governess, she must have made herself forget the life that went before. She spared a thought for that bereft little girl, but felt she had the father she’d once adored back at long last. He drew this direly executed message still loving her; this message said his every thought had not been of Pamela after all.
‘It’s meant to be the Tale of the Stork and the Fox, it was my favourite,’ she said, delight softening her voice as she remembered him reading it to her night after night when he must have been bored by it even the first time.
‘What tale; where is it from?’ Moss demanded.
‘I can’t imagine how I missed seeing it all these years now. Aesop’s Fables, of course,’ she said and made for the stacks to find a copy. ‘Mr Dodsley’s Select Fables, to be exact, as I suppose we must be if those numbers relate to the pages of a book.’
‘Which they must do, or why leave a clue only you could understand?’ Mr Rivers said as he got caught up in the mystery after all and followed them both to find a copy as fast as possible between the three of them.
‘But what is it a clue to?’ Nell mused.
She felt almost guilty for not telling either man she came from a far wealthier home than her current occupation argued. Even so, what could Papa have left her but some little present she was supposed to find while he was away? He had probably planned it as a diversion to keep her from pining, then forgot to tell her when he came back and she hadn’t discovered it. Yes, that made sense. He must have done this when she was quite a small girl, before he dreamt of running away to France with his scandalous mistress and died there with her when Nell was not quite six years old.
‘We won’t know until we find it,’ Moss said impatiently. He didn’t deserve her guilt about deceiving him when he adopted his lord-of-all-I-survey manner, as if he’d taken on Lord Barberry’s role as well as his own when he came here.
‘He probably only hid a box of sweets or a toy at the end of a treasure hunt that doesn’t exist any more,’ she warned him anyway.
‘Since you didn’t find anything else to explain why this stranger wants your papers, this is the only clue we have.’
‘Very well, but you’d best prepare to be disappointed,’ she said to Mr Rivers and moved away from Moss to find the small children’s section of Lord Barberry’s neglected library. ‘The girls have a newer copy than any in here, but I don’t want them drawn into this,’ she said in her best governess manner.
Unimpressed, Moss raised his eyebrows as if to remind her how un-governess-like she could be. ‘Here it is, although I can’t see how a series of page numbers will help us.’
‘Neither can I,’ she said, but her heartbeat speeded up anyway.
Tense now as he picked out the volume and turned to her favourite tale, she read it again over his shoulder and had to fight memories of being held safe in her father’s arms as he read it to her with a catch in his voice she must have been too young to take in at the time. For a while he had tried hard to be father and mother to her when Mama and the baby died. Instead of feeling too little for his children, did Lord Chris feel too much? She cursed Pamela anew for taking him away and blinked back a tear for what might have been. Wrong to blame only her when Lord Chris fell under the woman’s witchy spell and blithely walked away from any reminders of his late wife of his own free will.
‘What else can these numbers mean?’ she mused out loud, sure now that this was a wild goose chase.
‘You might as well look at the pages and see if they mean anything to you,’ Mr Rivers suggested helpfully.
‘Very well, but I don’t see how,’ she agreed with a sigh, wondering what the girls were up to and if that hour she gave them to read or, more likely, gossip was up.
‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’
Nell didn’t even grace that cliché with a reply and signalled impatiently at the book so both men could see what a waste of time this was. Reading each page carefully, she got to the end of the list and tried hard not to say I told you so.
‘Are you sure there’s nothing in any of your other papers this mystery woman might pay for?’ Moss said after a few moments of frustrated silence.
‘Very sure.’
‘You could always let me see your letters and papers and judge for myself?’
‘They are private,’ she said primly.
‘Then we’d best hope this means something after all. Have you got your own copy of The Fables?’
‘Yes, but it’s very battered and there are quite a few pages missing. I used to get upset about some of the tales when animals ate each other so my mother decided to cut out all the pages that made me cry.’
‘Then your numbers are different from this one,’ Mr Rivers said triumphantly and, of course, he was right. ‘You must send for it immediately,’ he added, now so caught up in the thrill of the chase he had forgotten to be amused by the foibles of his fellow men.
‘No need, I always have it with me. It may seem foolish of me, but my brother coloured in many of Mr Bewick’s illustrations as carefully as he could for me before our guardian sent him to school, so I treasure it even now.’
‘That doesn’t seem foolish at all,’ Moss said gently and here was the man she had been so terribly tempted by last night again and she had to remind herself Mr Rivers was still here to make herself turn away.
‘I will try to steal upstairs without the girls knowing,’ she said to get out of my lord’s library before she disgraced herself.
Upstairs she glanced at the small square of mirror provided for a governess. The flush on her cheeks and the slight breathlessness she seemed to be suffering from lately could be explained by a rushed search for her book. She tucked a stray curl back into her cap and nodded sternly at herself before going back to the library.
How tempting to stand and stare at Moss’s straight back, broad shoulders and narrow hips without him knowing, but Mr Rivers’s grey eyes saw more than she would like them to if he turned and caught her at it, so she nobly resisted. ‘Here it is,’ she said brightly to interrupt their murmured conversation in the far corner of the room where she couldn’t hear a word of it.
‘Good, maybe we can get to the bottom of this strange business at last,’ Moss said as if he had a hundred better things to do this morning.
‘I’m sure I can work it out for myself now, gentlemen,’ Nell said with an inviting glance at the grey sky outside they wilfully ignored.
‘You won’t get rid of us that easily,’ Mr Rivers said with a mocking grin.
‘Like a couple of burrs,’ she mumbled disagreeably, but handed over her precious book all the same, before she could give herself time to think about not being rid of Mr Moss ever again and liking it all too well.
‘Very like,’ he agreed and seemed almost as jarred as she was by the flare of something bright and hot flashing between them when their fingers touched on the worn leather binding. He cleared his throat as if that might help. ‘Read out that list of numbers, if you please, and we’ll soon see if this makes more sense,’ he ordered as if he had every right.
‘How will we know?’ she asked lamely.
‘I suppose we must have faith in this friend of your mother’s, since there’s no other explanation for Faith’s rich stranger taking such an interest in you,’ he said.
‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘Even if you don’t want me to be?’
There was compassion as well as curiosity in his acute blue eyes this time. Eleanor Hancourt, who braved the world alone, felt something aloof and a little bit frozen inside her threaten to melt. ‘Even then,’ she replied softly and never mind their unwanted listener.
‘Why not tell me about him?’ he invited, laying the book he had been in such haste to see on the window seat behind them. ‘You can trust me, I promise you.’
‘I know I can,’ she said.
‘And Mr Rivers will give you his word as a gentleman not to tattle if you don’t want him to, won’t you, sir?’
Rivers nodded obediently, ‘Word of honour, Miss Court.’
‘I have managed for myself for almost as long as I can remember,’ she said as if that explained everything, and perhaps it did.
‘Poor little girl,’ Moss said softly.
‘I was well enough and never hungry or in need,’ she argued half-heartedly.
‘You sound lonely as the man in the moon,’ he replied.
‘My brother loved me and I was very happy at school,’ she said, unable to look away from his blue, blue gaze this time and never mind if Mr Rivers was watching them with a worried frown.
Here was the magic and promise of last night almost within reach again. Her breath caught in a strange sigh that stuttered out between her parted lips as if they wanted to invite him to breathe with her, kiss her, be part of her and whatever else it meant for two people drawn to be more than the world saw when it looked at them.
‘Miss Court, there you are at last. Georgie stole my book and now she won’t give it back. I was almost at the end of it as well, so she only had to wait an hour or so and I would have given it to her,’ Lavinia informed her from the doorway.
Nell jumped as soon as she heard her voice and stepped away from Moss and Mr Rivers as if she’d been scalded. She had nearly been caught kissing Lord Barberry’s steward, in front of his lordship’s uneasy and embarrassed brother, by one of her pupils. That would have almost rivalled her late father’s sins if the story of what Miss Hancourt got up to before she met the critical gaze of the ton ever got around.
Ordering her inner demons back into their box, she raised a hand and found her cap disappointingly straight and proper. Wrong to be frustrated and cross because she was missing a chance to repeat her bad behaviour of last night, so she did her best to pretend he wasn’t here and talked to Lavinia instead, because she usually understood her and Moss was a brooding mystery right now.
‘It’s high time we got back to our lessons, but I wish you two wouldn’t quarrel like fishwives whenever my back is turned.’
‘It wasn’t my fault.’
‘I didn’t say it was. I will get your book back for you and make Georgiana apologise, but you two are setting the younger girls a bad example.’
‘They don’t need any help,’ Lavinia muttered as if there were things she could say about Penny and Caro, but didn’t want to be accused of tattle-mongering.
‘Excuse me, Mr Rivers, Mr Moss. I must get back to my duties,’ Nell said and swept her eldest pupil out of the room before they could argue.